2022

 

 

SEPTEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Satya Bosman, Despy Boutris, Xiaoly Li, Todd Mercer, Bert Molsom, Sarath Reddy, Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah, Hilary Sideris, Fiona Sinclair, Catherine Webster.

 

 

 

 

 

SATYA BOSMAN

 

Made up party

 

The year was 1994

and you are glorious

it’s the year you made that home run

the crowd went wild.

 

You were so popular

you mouthed ‘elephant shoe’

to me through the window

after you put out a cigarette

 

in that girl’s top,

she didn’t know.

Invited her to a made-up party

She would never go to. 

 

She visits me sometimes

in the quiet of falling snow.

She wears a black bonnet

and a matching black silk bow.

 

Satya Bosman is a poet originally from South Africa, now living in Kent.  She draws on inspiration from her travels and daily life. She is Editor of the Black Cat Poetry Press and some of her poems were included in their debut nature anthology A Bin Night in November. Her poetry has been featured in Dreich 6 Season 5 Magazine, the Soorploom Press, Green Ink Poetry, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, The Kent and Sussex Poetry Society’s Folio for 2022, Duckhead Journal, BBC Radio Kent and Paddler Press.

 

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DESPY BOUTRIS

 

Ars Poetica

 

My tongue on your neck, familiar taste of salt.

 

Just googled how to say a prayer

 

After a long day I texted my mother: I am awaiting death.

            Her: Ok. I am awaiting death too & am a lot closer.

 

Just googled how to perform a séance

 

Apparently, an Australian kiss is like a French kiss but down under.

 

You make an animal of me. Something untamed.

 

Killed a cockroach with the flyswatter

& now there’s exoskeleton everywhere.

 

Just googled how to become a Canadian citizen

 

Just learned that the Kelloggs invented Corn Flakes as an anaphrodisiac,

wanting to make a cereal boring enough to curb masturbation.

 

Don’t we all deserve a little pleasure we can’t exhaust?

 

I want to ask God for forgiveness.

 

Dreamed again last night of my arm catching on the barbed wire,

the shock of pain, the blood pebbling…

 

No one ever taught me how to pray.

 

Today we watched the sky fill with smoke,

the brushfire spreading along the highway.

  

Someone just messaged me, So when will I have a piece of you

 

They say God built Eve’s body around Adam’s rib.

 

There’s a snake on this trail & now I’m going to die.

 

Just googled brown snake with white diamonds on its back

 

Just googled is it venomous

 

Just googled if you hit one with a stick will its family come after you

 

Just googled signs I’m having an aneurysm

 

Once, my nose bled so much eagles started circling overhead.

 

Strange, the idea that swallowing the dead sustains life. 

 

If only there were a way to undo death,

describe the taste of ash on the tongue.

 

Despy Boutris's writing has been published in Copper Nickel, Guernica, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review. “Ars Poetica” was first published in Ploughshares, 2021

 

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XIAOLY LI

 

I See No Animals Anymore

 

Look, a frog.

No, it’s a rabbit.

Two little girls, across our street

wearing the same pink dress

point at the sky.

 

I only glance at the sky when

sapphire blue is too vivid to miss

& the sun is dazzling.

The clouds line up with

the contrail of a jet.

 

I used to stare at the sky

let time go, next to

a country road, where

grasshoppers skipped my touch.

A horse drifted,

& turned into a phoenix.

My book, Song of Youth,

left open on the bamboo mat.

 

I think of Stephen Hawking watching clouds

without moving, not even his eyes,

speaking by slightest twitches in his cheek

& his mind roaming the cosmos.

 

 

Xiaoly Li is a poet and photographer who lives in Massachusetts. She is a 2022 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant in Poetry. Prior to writing poetry, she published stories in a selection of Chinese newspapers. Her photography, which has been shown and sold in galleries in Boston, often accompanies her poems. Her poetry has recently appeared in Spillway, American Journal of Poetry, PANK, Atlanta Review, Chautauqua, Rhino, Cold Mountain Review, J Journal and elsewhere; and in several anthologies. She has been nominated for Best of the Net twice, Best New Poets, and a Pushcart Prize. Xiaoly received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and her Masters in computer science and engineering from Tsinghua University in China.

 

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TODD MERCER

 

What We Know from How Newborns are Dressed

 

The folks in charge of the laws of Physics

won’t allow an individual to carry items with them

out of this life. Emptyhanded departures only.

So what’s with the scrum, undeclared contest

to pull substantial piles of stuff into larger mounds?

My hill of beans versus your mountain

of consumer products. An odd topic of obsession.

Right, Friend? It doesn’t matter later

who assembled the most items. The time arrives.

How much evidence is needed to convince

the human beings that meaning springs from

the bonds between us? Isn’t it intrinsically clear?

Value’s generated by voluntary action taken

in service of someone else. It comes from

the choice to help. That’s the root of civilization.

That’s the species’ indelible point in our favor.

We would be wise to better remember that.

Since we leave here naked, without suitcases,

without bags or steamer trunks, no sense

in fighting for control of belongings.

Best to focus on the basics of shelter

and sustenance and effort for other people.

The way we arrive unburdened—

that’s meant as a clue.

 

Todd Mercer won a Dyer-Ives Poetry Prize for “Overextended” and had “The Drive to Experience Weightlessness” long-listed for this year’s Micro Madness Awards at Flash Frontier. Recent work appears in Best of Plum Tree Tavern, Friday Flash Fiction, and Spartan.

 

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BERT MOLSOM

 

Lighting candles in Quimper Cathedral

(14^th June 2004)

 

We are here just

for a short while,

pulled in from the heat

by the ancient cool.

 

We walk in silence,

undisturbed,

admire the intricate beauty

in the half-dark.

 

We find the shadows lifted

by a mint of candles,

there to provide comfort

without words.

 

This we now dismiss,

yet it‘s still the way

grief is marked here,

peace with hope.

 

These flames are not for us

we read the names -

those for whom

lightness is needed.

 

Time may heal a wound

that is deeper

than we want to believe,

or can comprehend.

 

We light two candles.

We are without faith,

or understanding,

but comforted.

 

Bert Molsom retired early to become an apprentice poet, understanding such apprenticeships never end! His work has appeared in Acumen, Anthropocene, Dust Poetry, Fenland Poetry Journal, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Prole, Sarasvati and The Ekphrastic Review (USA)

 

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SARATH REDDY

 

Da Vinci Sketches the Human Machine

 

Dappled in candlelight

the painter leans over a corpse plundered

from Milan’s unsettled loam,

grips firmly a freshly honed blade,

with measured force breaks beneath the dermal,

probes apart gristle, racing against liquefaction

 

he catalogues by tint and texture- 

cartilage, chalky bone, boggy sponge,

contemplates function, the imperfect symmetry,

uses charcoal and ink, fine lines and smudged shades

to bring life to this divine invention, the same precision

that freed from his imagination gun turret, armoured tank, or catapult

 

A ballet of the dead appears on cracked parchment

limbs drawn gracefully, skin stripped away

to unveil inner workings-

hinged joints, entwined cords of muscle,

tendons like marionette strings,

the human scaffold, yielding, unyielding.

 

He studies what pulses and quivers beneath the surface,

and with subtle strokes imbues human form with emotion

Perhaps he divined the invisible chemistry that ignites

a blush or unleashes grief, spark at the synapse

that ripples like an earthquake

through the brain’s unexplored continents.

 

Sarath Reddy enjoys writing poetry which explores the world beneath the superficial layers of experience, searching for deeper meaning in his experiences as an Indian-American, as a physician, and as a father. Sarath's poetry has been published in JAMA, Off the Coast, and Please see Me. His work is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Poetry East, Hunger Mountain, and Cold Mountain Review. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

 

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JACQUELYN “JACSUN” SHAH

 

Stray Cats

 

I always picture him now with the stray in his lap,

  cat-orange colored, a scotch in his hand, singing

with Sinatra from his patio chair, watching the sun drop.

  My father. No animal lover but he’s taken to feeding

the cat, calls him Wendell, after a local bar musician

  he listens to the nights

                             he drinks himself into morning.

 

My father’s second wife died five years ago today,

  same day his father was born––Veteran’s Day,

a time to honor casualties of old wars. My father’s

  a casualty of war he wages on himself, sturdy veteran

of one-too-many years. Tried to drown last night

  his memories, smashed his jaw in a crash

a mile from home. A mile from home, seems he’s always

                             a mile from home.

 

Wendell comes and goes, showing up for food like all strays.

  A coming-and-going woman friend checks mail,

picks up pajamas, takes them to the hospital where my father lies,

  waiting for her, the doctor, lawyer, judge. And jail cell––

that niche for my-way guys with too many DUI’s,

  no license, no sense, no insurance.

                             Wendell will find someone

 

to feed him again, I say on the phone, don’t worry.

  A charming rover, I don’t say, is an old hand at scrambling

for hand-outs, wriggling out of tight spots, chasing

  the rat-sun, mouse-moon, lapping the milky

ways that stream through nine lives. An old black magic

  seems to spell survival for strays who go on

                               winning-losing night-after-night.

 

 

Making Life Sweet

    The life, the life, O my God,

                will life never be sweet?

                            Robert Lowell

 

Take the sword    remove

                       the  S

Take the world    remove

                       the  L  

and go   very gently   very slow

move

      into a strange

 

                   remove

 

From life draw off

              the F

then take the lie inside your eyes

     pull it through a honeydew

          of strange and slow

lie lazy-crazy   hammock-wise

  

Pry Y & U from you

   but don’t let go

of O

      go whisper  

              whisper O

 

Your words, the lie and O!

      will be so sweet

         almost as sweet

             as nullity

 

Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah: A.B., English; M.A., English; M.F.A., Ph.D., creative writing–poetry. Grants: University of Houston, Houston Arts Alliance, Puffin Foundation. Publications: chapbook––small fry; full-length book––What to Do with Red; poems in various journals. Winner: Literal Latté’s 2018 Food Verse Contest.

 

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HILARY SIDERIS

 

Asia (Minor)

 

Turkey meant anything Eastern.

To Brits, the bird looked like a Guinea Hen.

Googling Izmit atrocities, I find Virginia’s hunting laws.

Pages of legal muzzles, permitted decoys.

Smyrna burned & turned into Izmir.

An English sloop rescued my grandfather.

I’m 8% West Asian according to Ancestry.com.

Schliemann’s face on Agamemnon’s mask.

Who’ll send Lord Elgin’s marbles back?

In the wild, only males gobble.

 

Junior

 

What were Desi & Lucy

thinking when they

chose Desi & Lucie?

It borders on abuse,

my little sister says.

 

Our father bore the anger

of a smothered child,

an only son, carried

his Homer like a load,

dropped Jr., added

 

PhD. We’re watching

Javier Bardem, soulless

killer Chigurh in No

Country for Old Men

half-joke Don’t fuck

 

with the Cuban! Nicole

Kidman backtalks in

Ball’s nasal Montana

accent. On my cell fake

news claims Jay-Z (real

 

name Shawn) & Beyoncé

call their twins Bea & Shawn.

Outrage ensues. I prefer

Blue Velvet, Purple Rain,

parental haters tweet.

 

My Roman husband

says it would be worse

to be baptized di Angelis—

from the angels,

which means orphan.

 

Hilary Sideris’s poems have appeared recently in The American Journal of Poetry, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, OneArt, Poetry Daily, Right Hand Pointing, Salamander, Sixth Finch, and Verse Daily. She is the author of Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay Books 2019), The Silent B (Dos Madres Press 2019), and Animals in English, poems after Temple Grandin (Dos Madres Press 2020). Her new book of pandemic poems, Liberty Laundry (Dos Madres 2022), was recommended by Small Press Distribution. She lives in Brooklyn and works as a professional developer for the CUNY Start Program at The City University of New York.

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR

 

Undertaking

 

Ahead a dead ‘Mr Badger’

dropped where struck on the road’s crown.

Winced ‘poor thing’ imagining the suffering

which levels all animals.

Motorist’s carefully skirt

not wanting wheels to crush the creature

despite being beyond pain’s catchment now.

I think of fetching a spade to stretcher

the body to the verge, for foxes

and buzzards to undertake the rest.

 

With humans, it’s death’s theft

of personality that’s the difference,

what’s left behind is a body

so uncannily empty,

we sign with relief as the doors slam on

the private ambulance,

allowing the funeral director

like a capable butler

to smoothly usher

our squeamish thoughts away.  

Happy enough later, 

to cast ashes upon the wind.

 

Fiona Sinclair lived in Kent. Her new collection Second Wind is published by Dempsey and Windle press

 

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CATHERINE WEBSTER

 

One Day I’ll Teach You How To Arrange The Flowers

 

One day I’ll teach you how to arrange flowers

but not today, it’s too dark.

You need good light to tell the Larkspur

from the Monkshood,

and gloves for handling the latter, thin enough,

so that you do not bruise the petals.

Flowers for all occasions, a wedding or a funeral,

a baby or some unspoken malaise.

Some flowers may form a misty haze around a person,

more usually a man; one who is guilty.

Flowers live for longer in a dark place, they are reserved

without their favourite star.

 

A flower will never see itself or know how beautiful it is,

and therefore it is used.

One day I’ll teach you how to arrange flowers

but not today, you are too dark.

Your fingers will only ache with the pain of restraint for you long

to tear those blooms from slender stems.

 

Those voiceless flowers, cannot protest their destiny,

although a bell-like symphony

can be traced from somewhere deep within their scent.

Occasionally a scream may fill a room 

where Hyacinths stand sluggishly aligned in shallow bowls,

trying so hard not to bow.

 

One day I’ll teach you how to arrange flowers

But not today, I am too dark.

 

Catherine Webster is a horticulture worker and writer of poetry and fiction. She has been publishing work on the writing website ABC Tales for over a decade, under the name Jane Hyphen.

 

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