One Of Those Afternoons… Tilt

Twisted up into shapes
… unrecognisable…
where’s your Soul?
The Old Bill
… plodding along…
Copper’s Avenue
… as Cages open.
‘Shaking Hands’
is rarely heartfelt any
-more… it’s business.
We used to call
‘Cockblockers’
Gooseberries… back
when I was young
and not quite sweet.
We also used to
Forgive and Forget,
and wait for
adequate Explanations
before Attacking…
not anymore, sunshine!

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry books “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration” and “It Is Big And It Is Clever: Book 1 Of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” are all now available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

Bomb

The sky’s collapsing
from the weight
of all the light
it holds! The birds
are sweet
and sticky.

A twitter and moan
and the locusts
are gone

there is steam
on the ground and
nothing is fun
anymore.

Jenne Kaivo was raised in Northern California among the redwoods and wild poets. She learned to speak poetry, but eventually had to join human society.

Half-life

Nowadays, you’re
so busy,
it takes a
life and a half
to keep you running.

All of yours
and half of mine.

That leaves,
like a radioactive substance
with decaying atoms,
a half-life
for me.

Doug Sylver’s recent work can be found in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Contemporary Haibun Online, failed haiku and Fixator Press. He is a retired public high school teacher and lives in Seattle with his love, Monica.

RESURRECTION

You’ve never asked what broke me —
instead, you show up with quiet hands
and a tool kit tucked behind your heart.

Under moonlight, you kneel beside my shattered ribs,
tighten the bolts behind my breath, the catch in my throat,
change the bulbs in each eye every time they flicker.

You call it routine maintenance.
I call it my resurrection.

 

May Garner is a poet and author based outside of Dayton, Ohio. She has been dedicated to crafting and sharing her work online for over a decade now. She is the author of two poetry collections, “Withered Rising” and “Melancholic Muse”. Her work has also been featured by several presses, including Querencia, Cozy Ink, and the Ohio Bards. You can find more of her work on Instagram (@crimson.hands).

Private Ward

Purple lilacs perfume
this clinical purity
with a syrupy air
brown leather straps,
prisoner in a white sea
silver bed pan, ready for escape.

Purple, brown
silver and white
pretenders to reality
clamps of life
and now the Oedipal jolt
of electric love

searing all superfluous
spasming to focus
riveting spinal fluid
to its niche
infinite caps of white sea
constrict anew as room.

Craig Kirchner lives in Jacksonville, Florida and loves storytelling. He has been nominated for the Pushcart three times, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He’s been published in Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, One Art, Glacial Hill, Writer’s Journal, Abraxas,  Abstract and dozens of other journals.

The Screen

Comes the hour of morning
When alpen glue binds gilded
Sunlight to the metallic matrix
That is my screen. The glass
Between me and it reflects
What I daily see. But when light
Is just right there appear palm
And nose prints where skin oil
Has transferred body to pane
Much like lemon-juice ink is
On paper made visible by flame.
Looking through it the world is
Imprinted with secret pictographs.
Someone has looked here before.

Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Mort (2024) and Simple Arithmetic & Other Artifices (2014). A chapbook, Olive-drab Khaki Blues, is forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.

Polarity

Our circuits are wired even before we can unravel them.
Cognizant of its temporality, we seek permanence of
sorts. Self-absorption is a constituent of the human
condition. To dismiss the other when it appeases us is 
another of its nuance. Tie-ins that never unfold some-
times run hardy sequences in the mind’s kip. Paucity
in my innermore tableau invites me to a tryst with myself.
Sky wears an unusual robe; it urges me to recast earlier
treatises.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry. His poems have been published in over thirty-five countries and have appeared in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press in the UK. He lives in Mumbai, India.

CONCLUSION

Living beings lying prone, in sleep, or in life’s full stop,
foxes sprawled in body-bent arcs, only splattered in parts,
in the centre of roads,
pet dogs stunning the rest of the family furniture
by their sudden demise,
laid out on tarmac on a convenient plastic sheet,
even a wasp back-broken into a slippered stillness,
children back-turned on you in unmoving slumber
jabbing a finger of fear at you,
belong to a common species:
the curtailment of a hope,
a return to ashes,
the end of the boundless scamper of a pup,
and those gasps of air snatching at life,
which would never draw to a close,
and suddenly did.

Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school. As well as Fixator, published in Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Littoral, Orbis, South, Pulsar, Lothlorien and others. Poetry pamphlets Wasted Leaves (1996) and I Went With Her (2007). 

At Seven

I rose early each day
Crossed the hayfield
To the pasture creek

Where twenty-nine cows
Were dreaming
Who knows what

I joined them
And dreamt baseball fame
Painting the new Mona Lisa

Some mornings discovering the cure
For cancer, starvation, and war
Topped by a vaccine to fend off greed

While out-Whitmaning Walt.
Just before success, the sun
Peaked round the bluff.

Time to poke
These thirty dreamers
Home to their red barn.

Michael Pedretti is the author of eleven books, including Twenty Poems Written in 2020, Time to Journey Home, and The Inside Story of Movement Theatre International’s Mime and Clown Festivals, the longest running international theater festival in America. He has contributed articles to American Theater, Swiss Journal, and Mime Journal

Eliminating Shadow Cavities

Remaining… ‘Thermostat’
… whilst fluid not static,
takes both practice
and patience… not even
an “Eek!”… ‘Grace’
cannot be counterfeited.
Underneath your
self-control and balance
thrones even more ‘Calm’
… that’s completely
‘Tamperproof’… and,
causes envious saboteurs
far more annoyance,
pain and mental anguish…
than any petty squabbling
or weaponry could ever do.

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry books “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration” and “It Is Big And It Is Clever: Book 1 Of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” are all now available by Close To The Bone Publishing.