THE KNOCK ON MY DOOR

Much time passes and I wonder why
My door is never darkened with a shadow,
My walkway never clattered with footsteps
And after more time passes I’ll go to my door,
Finding notes written there, nailed pieces of paper
That are now flaked and yellowed with weather and age.

Don’t mistake my aloofness for rudeness.

You may be tapping or even pounding right now
And it’s possible I can’t ever hear

The knock on my door –
I’m too occupied
Listening to me.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

voices
make their choices
in the game-
to remain
loyal, or abstain
and stunt reputation
for self gratification.

get real
profits of career soon heal
the sacrifice of bold ideal-
when the grey suits in the system
say: preserving status quo, is the wisdom
in this play. other tunes, are moments of fame-
memorable then forgotten in the main
stagnating stream of politics,
where embedded institutions share the same
out of tune,

out of reach hot air balloon
playing unmusical licks
treading us down in the gravity
of tribal tricks
with ghost notes
wearing uniforms of halved normality
in the foreground
and background
with loaded guns inside
and outside
their tunic coats-
ready to suppress any massed intention
of Bastille insurrection.

you don’t have the right to repeal my name,
or make me think and do the same
as you.
your way, is extinction-
only seconds
as time reckons,
a philosophy founded on myths,
twisted in technological trysts
tuned to suit you.

THAT BLACKSMITH FELLOW

crumpling
crumbling
heart

war thump
peace pump
stall start

cave hunting
and gathering
in groups

to farms with crops
and hoofed livestocks
drink beer, eat meat and soups.

that blacksmith fellow,
with fire and forge, hammer and bellow,
is still the alchemist-

malleolus like his mettles
when everybody settles
into civil lists.

in us now,
the subliminal plough
sets our furrows footsteps-

so summer’s run and winter’s plod,
with, or without god
in and out of upsets.

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

His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine  Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.

Feebleness

Every whipstitch, it is essential to be exposed
to lifehacks cached in inner chiffoniers. Better
still to exhibit them on primal vitrines: easy
to access, easy to annex.

On my way to the solemnities of your last rites
the one hosted in my mind, I resolved never
to be reminded of you, but I neither possess nor
have I penned a grimoire?

Vision

When you unself
from a situation or skein:
you deliver lavish
dividends for yourself.

Opportune distancing
mends the ache:
of the eventualities
of our exploits.

Propinquity bedims
the perspective:
leaving us to lust
after our parakeet or pelt.

(‘Feebleness’ was originally published in Peacock Journal. ‘Vision’ was originally published by The Fictional Café)

Sanjeev Sethi is published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 350 journals, anthologies, or online literary venues. Bleb a Wee Book from Dreich in Scotland is his latest release. It is his fourth volume. He is joint-winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux organized by The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK. He is in the top 10 of the erbacce prize 2021. He lives in Mumbai, India.

The Rope’s End

The doctors told us to strip to our underwear.
Mine – out at the waistband – long past white –
barely hung on my emaciated body.

They ordered us to stride long and fast
in circles around the carpet to make a quick
assessment of our healthiness.
A lung infection forced me to cough and wheeze.

They poked and grabbed us one after the other –
making further assessments –
and finally I put my threadbare and smelly
clothing back on.

They let me in – I was judged fit enough
to go to Navy boot camp.

But of course my sick and malnourished body wasn’t fit.
They’d let me in out of pity.

Even the most detached observer could see
I’d run out of alternatives and ended up in that
Military Enlistment Processing Center
because I had no where else to go.

I hated every minute of
the pitching and rolling arduousness
on that gray-hulled destroyer –
and it all began with an act of
sympathetic kindness
from a doctor who saw
that last inch of rope my life was dangling by.

Hugh Blanton combs poems out of his hair during those moments he can steal away from his employer’s loading dock. He has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, and other places. He lives in San Diego, California.

Some Other Thing

Putting aside for the
moment that all things
were at some other time
some other thing, I set
out on a dance that may
or may not have been
Ray Charles singing
When your lover has
gone, a poem spread across
two pages, the glaze on
a Japanese bowl, water
caught by sunlight, snow
on low mountains, or
a crow croaking its anger
from the next door
mango tree which has
not yet come into flower.

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. He has been publishing poetry for over sixty years, & is the author of around sixty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, creative non-fiction, & art history. Books published so far this year are from 1750 words, from SOd Press; sorties, from Sandy Press; & The Toast, from Luna Bisonte Prods.

Brian Jones Died in Winnie the Pooh’s Swimming Pool

A.A. Milne was the home’s previous owner, 
best known as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, 
and then Brain moved in soon after his split from the Stones, 
started drinking heavily and fighting with the builders 
he had hired so that Brian Jones died in Winnie-the-Pooh’s 
swimming pool after the job foreman held him underwater 
just long enough that there was no longer any argument 
over shoddy construction or monies owed 
to Mick or Keith or Piglet  
or anyone else. 

Munitions

Half a dozen ratty kids in tatters  
tossing off-coloured bricks at one another.  

Old faces, even for the kiddies.  
Scarred with slanderous tongues.  

The bigger ones atop pyramids of rubble  
while the smaller ones duck  
and throw a few bricks back feebly.  

A derelict munitions factory    
with much of the old line work   
still in place.  

The children all at war  
as they wait their turn.  

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, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Somewhere Else

I live more than one life.
I know I am just one person.
It is a proven fact I can be
in more than one place at
once or do you think I am mad?

I have traveling souls and
I know so do you. I want you
to believe that we exist, you
and I, and them, our souls.

The traveling souls make
their way north and south. I
do not dispute this. Try to
ignore them, but there is
nothing you can say to change
my mind. I am somewhere else.

The Wild Side 

Take a walk,
the wild side
will follow

in these streets
where shadows
become real.

Take a walk.
Be happy
when you are

home in one
piece because
some people

do not make
it back home
like they should.

Born in Mexico, Luis lives in California and works in Los Angeles. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, Pygmy Forest Press, and Unlikely Stones.

latchy king boat (a hand in the water)

brain in the box to go
the kingship watkins

the young mustard
the croaking lemur

in the salad eye
let me be the world

when you do, you don’t
a series of wet napkins

the night of the walking nothing

the spider waits for the spider-man to run thru the sandwich hall

a concord of the smith to share a sainted hello
that meatloaf is the pen of the pocket

            that languishing frost
            that lemon squint

the clay of the mortal robe
the pucker of the small earth

language is the paper of the wolf in the tree

Godot

In the wrong station
that bleeds away
the railway profits,

on an iron bench
painted dim,
and although its
colourants have been
peeling away
you can tell it is green,

sits Mr Godot,
and the time frozen in
one John Smith & Sons Midland
grieves for the late sun.

I have a sign breathing his name
in my molten hands
in the mirror-station to his,
and I yawn, it is quite late.

The Behaviour Pattern of The Illusions

Midnight shakes me awake
just before I fall asleep,
and I move the window’s curtain a bit,
see five of our neighbours
sitting in our front yard looking at my house.

I have a gun by my imagination.
I keep it locked in my conscience.
The summer whistles as the dark
reaches the boiling point.

And then, in the same night
I open the curtain with all my might;
my muscles ache and ring;
I find nothing but the darkness outside.
No one faces me when I feel
the strength to face them.

An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine – ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’. His works have been translated in ten languages.  

Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoetAuthor Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

the old butchery 

my father and i waited on a red light when i noticed 

a building being demolished 

“i bet lots of hobos slept there” i said 

“that’s the old butchery” he said 

“i never knew that. what happened to it?” 

“they found severed dog heads in their barrels” 

“no shit” 

“it was all over the news. dog heads mixed with pig heads” 

“so that means…” 

“yeah, they used dog and pig meat to make their sausages” 

i glanced at the building again and heard him laugh. i turned. 

“your nonno bought sausages there” he said 

“no way. he liked that shit?” 

“well, he didn’t know. we didn’t know” 

“you ate them too?” 

“yeah. no idea how many dogs we must have eaten those days” 

the lights turned green and we left the building behind. 

i turned my head to see it one final time. 

i said a silent prayer for all the stray dogs butchered in there. 

many of them had owners waiting to no avail for them to return. 

hell, and why not a prayer for the damn pigs? 

i said one for them too. 

the building was now long gone from my view, 

and the next one i saw had a big sign that read 

“CARE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. DO NOT LITTER” 

i pulled my phone out and opened the notepad 

“dear god” i wrote “i don’t know what the fuck to tell you” 

and slipped it down my pocket again. 

Giovanni Mangiante is a poet from Lima, Peru. His work appears in various journals such as Three Rooms Press, As It Ought to Be, FEARLESS, Synchronized Chaos, and more. He has upcoming poems in The Piker Press and Studi Irlandesi. He lives with his dog, Lucy. In writing, he found a way to cope with BPD.