Music

At fifty-plus, up-close, I meet my putto.
Edicts of a higher order sequester
me from such exposure until Lachy
chooses to spend three days.
 
He is born with an invisible hook.
Orchestration of his needs
and actualization merge
without a maestro’s baton.
 
His musical interludes
don’t incense me. In the folds
of his frown lie my failings,
in his chuckle my cerate.
 
His jousts require me to wear
no jambeau. In the immediacy
of his wants, I mortgage myself,
content as a chorus to his melody.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. He has been published in over thirty-five countries. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He was recently conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.

A leopard left overnight

This rug is one-of-a-kind,
reminiscent of juicy grape-
fruit or freshly brewed
Ceylon tea. Has undergone
a rigorous selection process
which, although not valid

on its own, can still replace
a scientific approach to ta-
lent identification. Dealers
in diamonds & breeders of
German Shepherds swear
by it; though there is still

much discussion as to whet-
her the ancillary behavioral
interviews should have been
left unstructured in order to
provide outcomes of more
honesty & greater insight.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional
Juru land in North Queensland, Australia. He is the author of nearly seventy books, primarily
text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, memoir, and art history. His most
recent books are un saut de chat published by Otoliths Books (Australia) in February 2024;
Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry Prize winner, published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in
March 2024; & two very recent free downloadable pdfs, eNumerations from Sandy Press &
to your scattered bodies go from Scud Editions.

The cuckoo

we joke about it –
my brother and sister. our mother
loves the cuckoo so much.
in the country in spring we occasionally
get sent a text with the words:
“it’s spring. heard the cuckoo”

she feels home in the mountains
on the west coasts of ireland;
leaves and ferns growing,
the steady propelling of turbines
like shells churning tides:

the occasional sound, like a flower overhead
would make if a petal could echo.
like a lilypad ringing in brass;
like a cymbal. I think
that they’re really nasty birds.

Please consider the attached poems; “The cuckoo”, “Transport”, “I come in”, “The romantic” and “Babe, I’m trying” for possible inclusion in a future edition of Fixator. Knowing your work (indeed, my writing appeared in some previous issues), I flatter myself that these will make a good fit for the magazine. All the works are original, insofar as anything is in modern poetry. 

The Evading Meaning

within the umbra searching
for answers, peregrinating withered forests
and destitute deserts, failing to find
an oasis or meaning. pointless gallivanting, meaningless
meanderings, not even barstools offer the same
comfort they once did. looking for things that
don’t exist, for comfort in frigid places, for
love in joints that sell everything but love. always the
same, wrong place right time, or the other way
around, or something, it never
matters; always something gotten wrong, it’s the drink
that keeps the futile search going, it’s why
bars exist, why barstools feel like home.

Currently residing in Greece, George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and is the author of Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds(Adelaide Books), Of the Riverside(Anxiety Press) and Reeling Off the Barstool (Dumpster Fire Press). His words have also appeared, amongst other places, in Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.

Post-truth

Out of the busker’s union
with that bristling smoker’s cough.

It happens that fast.
A birth into life.

I never understood what
post-truth was supposed to mean,
but I think I do now:

all the people, news, mechanisms
lying in one long birdsong.

Altogether.  In concert.
Like a collective conspiracy of
personal advancements.

That is as close as I can get,
want to get.

Distance is my saviour.
My very own preservation hall.

 

 

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Fixator Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Escritoire

I pick my nibs with confraternity in full frontal view, nodding away groupthink to
bring justice cleanly into clearer view. Preferring the easy, utile, clear-barreled Bic
over a choice Mont Blanc. Simplicity offers wealth in mind as monk-dom wholly
showing through. The body’s soul keeps on the down low. An adagio honoring the
baton tap of a prodigy claiming never to be lost. Hosting frost with farthings tossed
above ensembles held apart from lace and shoulder pads to trace.

 

Sheila E. Murphy’s most recent book is Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023) She received the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy’s book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018)won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press.

Feedback Loop

Spring the dark shade
to ray in 2pm light.
Trying to feel better,
put perspective on things.
The dark thoughts
coming down again,
putting the body
in supine form.
Scribble down dark thoughts,
the lack of hope,
the why exist
when pieces ache, missing
in the world’s scaffolding.
Sketch reality,
grim under a patch of light.

Heather Sager lives in Illinois where she writes poetry and fiction. Most recently, she has contributed poetry to Wilderness House Literary Review, Bending Genres, Does It Have Pockets?, New Feathers Anthology, The Nature of Things (Lone Mountain Literary Society), and more journals.

The New Saints

Go Forth!
Armed with humor
holy mischief
humble
sauciness
depleting
complexity
slaying AI
with humanity
and a simple
child’s questioning.

Randall Rogers is a US poet currently residing in Denver, Colorado.

Keep The Power To Yourself

Healing the Dissection
… ‘Open Book’…
your fault (shakes
spectating head
unsympathetically)…
STOP… No, Continue.
‘Coattailing’ is not
Group-Effort…
sharing anything with
selfish/greedy/self
-centred people is daft.
I need only one pair
of hands for this Raft
I’ve built from scratch.
We are only going
in the same Direction
because you’re follow
-ing… just one of us
knows the Destination
and I’m out in… Front.

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’ is now available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

TAKING OFF MY COAT

each evening
is like taking off my coat.
i sit down
apart from the day
and nothing happens.
i let silence sing
her supernatural note-
in the air, i drown
in how the lonely play
as reality slackens.
curdling in a chair
with arms of broken branches
that used to be
and went somewhere
in circumstance and chances-
now greying, like wild hair
at the end of all its dances
with the gravity
gone from its romances-
i feel time's weight
compress the emptiness of fate,
into some sort of nothing
that held my hand,
and left me something-
to understand.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford,
England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of
Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of
The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.