A Brilliant Solution
Following the recent onset of awareness
on the part of major political figures
national and international
of the criticality of the current conditions
of planet Earth, home to a wealth of creatures
among which algae, human beings,
and beavers
mind-boggling and praiseworthy measures have been taken
grounded on the unshakable respect towards
polar bears, almighty lobbies,
and pictures and videos depicting
malnourished children
relentlessly
dying
being the above-mentioned strategy
— although already criticised by imbeciles and activists —
set out to address these all-encompassing issues
in an unprecedented manner
as everything points to the fact
that nothing else might be done
at the time being
that is,
hope everybody dies
before hunger and climate change
might be held responsible
for their deaths
Maurizio Brancaleoni has had poetry and prose featured in numerous journals and anthologies. In February 2023 he published his first short story collection “New Parables and Other Oddities”. He has a bilingual blog where he posts literary gems, interviews and translations. In 2016 the Italian version of “A Brilliant Solution” was among the poems selected for a poetry and photography contest organized by the cultural association Civico 32 and the journal Versante Ripido.
Monthly Archives: March 2023
Poetry from Corey Cook
small flame
atop a sturdy wick
yellow crocus
# # #
stuck at the top
of the seesaw
fledgling
# # #
Corey D. Cook’s sixth chapbook, Junk Drawer,was published by Finishing Line Press in 2022. His poems have recently appeared in *82 Review, Akitsu Quarterly, Black Poppy Review, Duck Head Journal, Muddy River Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, Nixes Mate Review, South Florida Poetry Review, and Spare Change News. New work is forthcoming in Freshwater Literary Review. Corey lives in East Thetford, Vermont.
Poetry from Vernon Frazer
No Loving Conversion Likely
the stuttered transaction
buff grows bright to give
more islet heating
a saturation foundation
matriarch occlusion
below
that loud enchilada
snoring earless to soot
vary a metier
surround the disease
classification trampling
( )
leotard peninsulas
warmly recumbent
honed caliper men
a monogram portent
their hierarchical tipster measured
loose bits dark
left to suffer a confused nodal portent
quaking derision
discharging the swipe
( )
then saturation thanks
before its brewers fin a winger
of cultural radish
bent appointment ventures
aching the succulent droop
perplexity encouraged grated theocracy
to
a reclusive vertigo
its intended folly
watching for histories deferred
Hard Water
intimidating laundry
the inimical peasants cast
of thousands pored
per square inch
raging
the shallow intimate
through
forced declamation
rum vagaries inept
at transfer flagons
no lantern
comes
too soon
*
for comfort
wonder
or
winter
allowed
a sneaky pastime
remembered cleanser scent
last, the shaded
horde of hinting
elation
eking
fast line gorges
along the marrow plane
*
the lines converge
it surges its bone-sucking orgy
on wandering
crescents wet yet divergent
as
any
angle
strike
bragging
empty pleasantries
soft
as the sand
in the river
wash
cackled
inimical tidings
to the current
Dropping the Ball
1.
a pelota
simulacrum for raffle
or rescue
included venom throttles
toned scraping
exploded uses
sycophantic
as the empty grip
baring shaken
before their metaphor blazer
a retrofit lunatic
steaming a fetal caddy rim
forking tunnels
alongside usage latrines
where distention refusals
prolonged postponing belligerents
dispose
thermal cacophony
educate
natal gaffe dragons
to their vocation
2.
before encrypted withdrawals
ferment the dubious underlings
their ballad affiliates will breed
forever
express bristles
barter the groping circuit
grimly
dissimilar to a wilding rant
the expectorant a missing
deuce voice
borne recumbent
to a confrontation statesman
3.
the nautical scaffold
turns finished landscape
firing
generation textile crises
before experienced play
pelota comes
horned in caramel
umber broaches
a scripted eventuality
puddle hippies
cow the slipping pineal
at will
weakened entity feels the hollow
tinted around
its invective mirage
missing suffer throttles
in the simulacrum cushion loop
no raffle no rescue
face
the collective punctuality
of tomorrow
Snake Oil Enforcers
legacy doctors
interrogate every mamba wrapper
labor no return
buttress knots missing gluten
wrapper heading
crosses murals at the pablum bar
no fortitude express
hooting a salami fortress
better left
for saying rather than
turn right
under the riot of interrogation
Railing Toward Shore
bugbear vignette
slowed the scoreboard snatching
corpulent railways
spine borders
a garbled eyelash plunging to color
dangle hazing
the bartenders
waged paramour encroachments
pillowcase doubling
vigor fountains
trip a yawning mound prosaic
the nitwits climb
defeatist vigor
strata antler whereabouts
gleam the past
no serpentine
linguist scratches effervescent
on moonlight
tattle regimen
near the summation unveiled
a feldspar lecture
essay finalist
a bicoastal maniac rose
flatly baffled
before waterline
plunges breed the convectional
foreground rise
BIO
Vernon Frazer’s most recent publications are Avenue Noir, a C22 Open Edition, and Gulf of the Purple Enigma, an Alien Buddha paperback.
Poetry from Mesfakus Salahin
Mystery of Love
Mesfakus Salahin
#####
The day is long
The night is endless
The dream is a mirror
A frame is imitated where
I hear a sound whispering
Mystery of love
That comes from the lap of Nature.
The fragrance of roses
Smiles with the shining morn
About an angel
Who walks in the stair of breath
Plays in the garden of heart
Sleeps in the field of silence.
I see and see
She lives in me
Is this love?
...............then
I am in love.
The fountains walk
In the heart of sea
Spreading a message supernaturally
Through waves
Love is strange to a stranger
I feel it
I sacrifice myself to love
And request to you.
Poetry from L. Wayne Russell
when all is said and done when all is said and done and our stories have been told fade with me into the ground once we were life and flourished flowers in spring a dance upon the checkered floor laughter in corridors of museums and gardens yes once we were once we acted upon this stage once intertwined within this ballet this grand facade of life turn pages once white and crisp now yellowed and stained with time dance with me in quiet dreams and in photos dance with me in stark contrast to realities of the dangerous world we once did dwell and while we rest while angels swirl and mortals may cry they hold us dear and candles flicker our memories live on our spirits sour forever Seasonal Song Season of rebirth, shadows in the trees, leaf's in hibernation Spring hovering in dagger breeze. Pessimist Winter, that old frozen fool, sliding away, clinging; losing his grip slowly, but soon the inevitable will happen. Everything turns, even seasons, old man Winter must relinquish and disperse giving dominion to life again. Mystery veil lifts, reveal intricate truth of mortal waves crashing. Compassion intermingling with muddy river, burst at the seams; flowers and dreams, transcend and fusing. Life and death, emotionless hand of Winter, and pollen-infused innocence of Spring. Show Me Mercy (forever a victim of the undertow) Death picks us, off one by one, like soldiers into the firing line, like another sunrise; or cloudy day. A loveless night, passed out on the beaches of Florida, a Niche book laying limp by my side. Karaoke and beer made me feel like feeling again, helped me climb back into the intellectual realms again, here we go again, college round 3. Just wanting to live life and yet so addicted to that psychological mumbo jumbo. Oh Jung! Oh Freud! Oh Janov! You always speak to me! You speak to me in riddles and rhymes, intermingling with interludes of Hesses' Glass Bead Game, and that Siddhartha; electronic music swirling always in my skull; ear candy from the early 80's; I am forever the New Romantic. I am forever a victim of the undertow.
L. Wayne Russell is or has been many things during his lifetime, he has been a creative writer, world traveler, graphic designer, former soldier, former sailor, amateur photographer, aspiring guitarist, singer, and creative writer. Wayne has been widely published in both online and hard-copy creative writing magazines. From 2016-17 he founded and edited the now-defunct online creative writing magazine, Degenerate Literature.
In late 2018, Wayne was nominated for his first Pushcart Prize, in addition, in 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net. In 2020, Wayne had his debut paperback book of poetry published by Guerrilla Genesis Press; Where Angels Fear is currently still available for purchase on Amazon.
Poetry from Grant Guy
Poem
my word
your word
my word
your word
the same different
the cat’s got our:your tongue
Poem
teat
teat
rush hour
TOOT
romance between 3:30 & 5:30 pm
Poem
?
for all/no
occasions
Poem
It hurt my mother
It made me laugh
Make the bed
Father broke wind
Poem
A horse a horse
my …….
Is that porridge i see before me
After about 5/6 years absence I have returned to writing. Before the five years I had many poems and short stories published online and as hard copy. I have had four books published: On The Bright Side Of Down (a collection of stories, prose poems and poems, Bus Stop Bus Stop (a collection of stories based on my experience of transcontinental bus travel), Blues For A Mustang (A collection of poems) and The Life And Lies Of Calamity Jane (a novella).
The poems submitted here do not reflect the previous work. The poems here a very reductive. They reflect more of the short (very) minimal theatre pieces I began during the time of COVID.You can view them on my Facebook page. In those works the object or the gesture was the event. In these poems the words are the event. Each word and/or line can be connected as pieces of shards by the reader or each line and/or word can be seen and interpreted as is.
Recently had 5 poems accepted for a Spring issue of a poetry journal. The editor wrote I had a unique perspective. I do not know about that. Recently I dicovered Vsevolod Nekrasov has a similar perspective. But the poems are the current me.
Poetry from John Grey
PANTS ON FIRE I'm not really this upset but despair reads better on the page. And no one dips into poetry so they'll know how good I have it. They're searching for the anguished cry of someone worse off than them. So lying on a beach, I give them dark and dismal. High up on a mountain, I spread the verse with depths. In love and loved becomes, with a click or two of the keyboard, unwanted and alone. Poetry is the great lie. There, you heard it from me. So it must be untrue. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Now I prize the reformed alcoholics- all throats are dry, all keep this to themselves. Instead of ripping at their own skin, they sit in chairs too tight for trembling and let the process work. A month, says one. Almost a year, says another. Over two years, says a third. Together in one room, they are a calendar of willpower and abstinence. I drink to them by crushing the glass. in my hand. HE PART ONE He drinks. He embraces me like an old friend. He finds his life works best when people have never seen the like before. He has developed a number outside the realm of 0 through 9. He has the inside track He hasn’t seen his ex in years. He can make things out of stone and wood. He leaves it to others to light his cigarettes. He nibbles on whatever’s within reach. He tosses trash at the feet of the guy sweeping the sidewalk. He returns nothing he borrows.. He says he wants her exclusively for himself He survives off a settlement for a car accident. He transmits pleas skyward. CARL SMOKES Ten chimneys worth of vapor had climbed his nose, his cheeks, drawn by the amber of his eyes. His is the satisfaction of expression. And the relief that it works so well. For he is an illustration from out of poetry’s flaming words of poetry Though just the scaffolding for he has yet to write anything down. He’s staving off the pressure with a cigarette, while he craves the presence of a sperm whale that writes, with its fluke dipped in ink, in some elemental alphabet with giant letters. Yet he’s really clipped wings on a bird. The Ring Cycle minus the ring. A dropout from modesty and self-advisement. A prisoner behind a tall wire fence. The last breath of a trout in a net. No one is hypnotized by the yellow of his sun. No one reads anything into an empty page. RUSSET CONES I ask morning, as someone who is never really here, just how secure is this room, these floorboards, the walls, my body…and my life. The light says something like, “That’s my little secret. In the meantime, why don’t I just shine in your face.” I wonder in whose novel I have awoken. And why the fierce dog below is staring up at me. His concentration and my lack of gusto are appalling me. But I agree with the beast that maybe we could rassle later. I spend twenty minutes talking to the mirror with my diffident face on. But glass doesn’t recognize humility. It only speaks in emojis anyhow. My downward mouth cannot be held back. The woman at the kitchen table looks up at me from her incorrigible remoteness. How many years has it been since we first thought we could anchor each other. Now, she takes me for the back cover of a book – one that she puts back down, says, no I won’t be reading you today. She could, at least, skim through the damn thing! I try to not to say things that are merely anger. That’s what pen and paper are for. The lady of my life has perfected the silence, the obdurance, of the hill. I look out the window. Day is out there having followed me from upstairs. It’s quite colorful, to be honest. And not so distant that I can’t step out into it. “Good question,” it says, when I haven’t even asked it anything. “If you’re looking for the russet cones of red spruce, focus on the top of the tree.” I had not intended to. And yet, maybe I just will.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.