Poetry from Slava Konoval

By order of the commissar

The war with Russia

has been going on for almost 10 years,

there are battles big and small

the land suffers from raids,

the hands of bloody deeds –

those cursed Muscovites.


The Ukrainians fight for their land,

their serving in an army style,

on the graves flags and various flowers,

nothing will awaken patriotism in the gray mass.
 

War as a sacred duty,

everyone will pick up a machine gun,

once by order of the commissioner

the Military Commissariat will call all to the front.
 

Lightning courted Grom

Faded, tarnished, blackened,

where the sun parted from the sky

thunderstruck and it brightened,

and the wind follows the steppe.
 

Demonstrating the power of muscles Thunder,

he noticed the female gender,

hit the neighbor's house,

the owner goes to patch the antenna.
 

Blue-haired Lightning laughs,

attract’s Thunder by eyes,

Grom’s heart is beating wildly

kisses are not wasted in a coma.
 

Thunder approaches the Lightning,

he doesn't know how to start a conversation

he doubts his strength, love is life,

and words are half of it.
 

Taking the king forward with his feet

Taking the king forward with his feet

the boyars wanted to do this the last time,

military headquarters in Rostov

met with the first ray.


Among the rebels, in Panama hat

the Bald Leader drags his feet,

collection of prison customs

he has a reliable rear.


The Bald called after him and to the weapons,

looters, prisoners, murderers,

thousands of rapists, folk bloodsuckers.

 
Columns of criminality army

were went to Voronezh

Roshvardiski's defense units

crushed and demolished.


The Wagnerites shot down 8 birds on the road,

set fire to the oil depot and trucks,

Prigozhin longs for Moscow,

using the weapon of the Ptura’s air systems.
 

The «descendant of Pugachev»

was walking, taking the capital Moscow,

he lacked courage,

the Leader of the rebels should tell the truth

to himself and to people

Vyacheslav Konoval is a Ukrainian poet whose work is devoted to the most pressing social problems of our time, such as poverty, ecology, relations between the people and the government, and war.

His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Anarchy Anthology Archive, International Poetry Anthology, Literary Waves Publishing, Sparks of Kaliopa, Reach of the Song 2022, Diogenes for Culture Journal, «Scars of my heart from the war», «Poetry for Ukraine», «Rhyming», «La page Blanche», «Impacted», «Military Review», «The Lit», «Allegro», «Innisfree poetry journal», «Antunes Galaxy Poetry», «Ekscentrika», «Mere Inkling», «EgoPhobia», «Fulcrum», «Omnibus», «Lothlorien Poetry Journal», Revista Literaria «Taller Igitur», «Tarot Poetry Journal», «Tiny Seed Literature Journal», «Best American Poetry Blog», «Quilled Ink Review», «Chronograph Poetry Journal», the Appalachian Journal «Dark Horse», «Agape», «Mascara Literary Review», «Gray Sparrow», «ArLJo», «Ekstasis», «The Bloom Litarery Journal», «Novus Litarery Journal», «Lyrical Somerville», «Charleston Poets», «Briefly Zine», «Varied Spirit», «Taos Poetry Journal», «The Skinny Poetry Journal», «Academy of the Heart and Mind» Journal, «ARIEL CHART» International Literary Journal, «Poesia Ultracontemporanea», «New Ulster 124», «Revista Cronopio», «Gotic Nature», «WordCityLit», «TSaunders Pubs», «London Grip New Poetry», «Mill Valley Literary Review», «Zeitglass»,  «The Coin»,  «Coal Literary Journal», Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal. 

Vyacheslav’s poems were translated into Spanish, French, Scottish, Italian, and Polish languages.

His poems also have been read at meetings of various poetry groups, including Newman Poetry Group, Never Talk Innocence, Voicing Art Poetry Reading for Ukraine, Worcester County Poetry, Brussels Writer’s Circle, and Poets Anonymous May Middle-Met, Brett Show by Andrea, the Manx Bard group, Allinghman Art Festival, Versopolis Poetry Expo 2023, poetry readings «Poetry of Struggle and Solidarity», «Poetic Voices», Coal Literary Journal’s Eve, presentation at Albert van Abbehuis Fling. 

Vyacheslav’s poems were presented at War Art Project.

He is a member of the Federation of Scottish Writers.

Poetry from Richard LeDue

“What Has Passed”


An empty wine bottle

(reincarnated as a vase

for a dead rose)

tries its damnedest

to believe in ghosts,

but regardless

if that flower is loved enough

to let rot,

it's best to let what has passed

haunt or rest (both a leap

of faith that leaves one

grounded) in our yesterdays.



“Love Shaped Death”


It's there like an urban legend

spider crawling down your throat as you sleep,

or is it a mosquito one kills

with a dramatic clap,

only to be revulsed at realizing

the blood on your hands

is your own?


Perhaps this is the reason for guns

under pillows, or long looks

at grocery store bouquets

that force you to remember a name

you forgot you forgot,

but giving you something to talk about

with yourself when you get home.

Poetry from Jonathan Butcher

Relatively Relative

In those gardens, tucked away from the city,
one of the main attractions when visiting you;
the affluence that laced this air with distorted tendrils,
a world away from my usual backdrop, and somewhat
strangely more exciting.

After we left that council funded attempt at tranquility,
we crossed the tree lined roads, that living room 
now just a fragmented memory, brandy snaps and whiskey 
in decorated glasses, your grin just slightly terrifying, overseeing 
everything.

Those stairs to steep for comfort, complimenting
the vertigo that was often caused by your presence, 
which left us all way too early, your wisdom expanded 
over three decades, only spoken in half drunk
conversation, your echo only ever intended to be 
a memory. 


No Chance of Rest

Together we gather, encapsulated in this web,
that hangs heavy with grit smeared rain drops
between broken branches of yew, 
still not ripe enough yet to carve into arrows.

This snare trap of time, with inheritance 
we never wished to accept. 
Our recreation once again cut short;
only the higher echelons have parks 
that remain open all evening. 

We retain strength in thimble sized vails,
the same tasks repeating like decreasing
circles in puddles of oil. 
The same days, weeks and hours 
shuffled like wine-stained playing cards. 

This handed down grind, which somehow
evolved into gratefulness, 
embraced with broken arms, 
which we still manage to retain a grip
on for long enough, and to eventually 
suggest a change. 


Failed Excuse

It doesn't seem so quaint and fine,
once it's crawling across your doorstep,
interfering with the breakfast tables;
residing in cupboards and meterboxes,
rifling through handbags and trouser pockets.

Eyes, however, suddenly begin to remove their glaze,
once fabrics and prescriptions beguin 
to burn at the edges and crumble 
at the slightest touch. 
The excuses now run painfully thin, 
like water pouring through crumbling dam cracks.

And now they claim protest,
but only with trepidation, 
a spare hour amongst hypocrisy, 
that still fails to convince them.
they now stir tea in broken cups,
"it will soon pass", they all promise.


The Same Plan

In this equal space, the clash of church
bells and car speakers, screams and barks
entwined like daisy chains around 
the neck of this city,

Washing hung with decomposing pegs,
casting secrets over ancient brick walls
smudged with soot like ash stained tables,
steam from gutters creating a convenient 
fog.

The buildings scraped empty and regenerated,
a crude taxidermy, as cracks widen within 
windows, telephone wires like buntin,
decorated with flags of this disposition. 

Another promised plan, a plaster
over gangrenous wounds, dangles
mid-air but never reaches the ground;
our mouths remain open, but it never
passes our throat. 

-

Jonathan Butcher has had poetry appear in various publications including The Morning Star, Popshot, Picaroon Poetry, The Transnational, Cajun Mutt Press, Mad Swirl, and others. His fourth chapbook 'Turpentine' was published by Alien Buddha Press.

Poetry from Alan Catlin

730-

Jesus Lizard
Jesus Wept
Jesus’ Son
Judas Hole
Judas Tree
Jesus H Christ Attorney at Law
Judas Priest
Judas Door
Jesus Saves
Jesus Christ Foretopman
Jesus Christ and Jerry Cruncher Resurrection Man at Large
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Camp
Jesus of Montreal
Judas Kiss
 

				732-

100 word review challenge to Howie Good’s
Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems.


Imagine word salads made of image
clusters leaking from holes in a canvas
by Dali. And one by Cocteau. With a
side of Bacon. Or shotgun art made by
someone like Burroughs at ten paces
with a pump action, shooting five-gallon 
paint cans, resulting impact something like
forensic evidence. Like blood splatters.
With a side of fileted Pollock. Like Dada
at the MAMA. I mean the MOMA.
Opening night Patrons of the arts dancing 
a Lobster Quadrille to a Resurrection Jazz 
Band. Dressed in top hats with pink boas
and Robante gowns. That’s a Stick
Figure Opera: 100 words exactly.


733-

The Eggplant That Ate Chicago or
The Ham Sandwich That Killed Mama 
Cass. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or
It Came from Schenectady. The Grilled
Cheese Sandwich with the Profile of
Jesus Christ or The Block That God Forgot.
The Thigh Bone Connected to the Hip
Bone or Zen Bones, Zen Bones.
 

734-

Exploding Trees
Frost Quakes
Arctic Sea Smoke
Fog Freeze
109 below
Climate Change
Weather events
or rock groups


740-

“When I make a film, it is a sleep.
I am dreaming.”

“Realism in unreality is a constant
pitfall.”

“He or she exists only if introduced
with events in a dream.”

“I have always liked the no man’s land
of twilight.”

“What are you trying to say?
I was trying to say what I said.”

Jean Cocteau, “On Orpheus
 

743-

Memory is what happens next.
“a memory is nothing/nothing is
a memory.” Bernadette Mayer.
“Just because something has never
happened before doesn’t mean it
can’t happen again.” (unknown)
(Sports Center? ESPN?) “I seem
to remember my future works although
I don’t even know what they will be.”
V. Nabokov, The Gift. 
“Shove a slogan down the throat
enough times I becomes an acquired taste.”
Jenny Xie. “I confess I don’t believe
in time.” V.N. “an image of the dead or
the fingernail/ of a new born child.” 
John Berryman


748-

You don’t know Jack(s)

Jack(ie) Kennedy
Jack(ie) Robinson
Jack(ie) Jensen
Jack Shit (e)
Jack Off
Jack Rabbit
Jack Tar
Jack Johnson
Jack Spicer
Jack beanstalk
Jack Kerouac

Jack Giant Killer
Jack(son) Polloc
Jack(b) Nimble
Jack (b) Quick
Jack Dempsey
Jack Micheline
Jack (a) Lope

Stories from Mark Young

The bats in blackness

I like to find
what’s not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.

I have always liked those lines from Denise Levertov’s "Pleasures." Have used them before as an epigraph, to an essay written around an exhibition of works by the great New Zealand painter Ralph Hotere, an exhibition that I remember as consisting of a number of black paintings, but within the black were shades, & shapes.

Am reminded of the lines tonight. & the context in which I used them. There is a rugby game being played on the park below the house. The floodlights are on, but because they’re angled downwards, onto the field, the light is focused inwards, not outwardly diffused. Six banks of lights, one at each corner & at the mid-point of the two longer sides. There is a blanket of light beneath the top of the stanchions, but above them, on this moonless night, the black rests. Stars can be seen.

The lights attract moths. They show like sparks, but moving towards the source, a movie of a fire run backwards, the broken vase made whole again. Large moths, have to be to be seen at this distance. In the line of the lights they are all you can see.

But, step aside a bit, hold up your hand or use a branch to conceal that concentrated bright-light patch. Let your eyes adjust. & at the edges of the seepage you see the bats, shapes within the blackness, come to feast on the moths, to pick them off as their arc goes beyond the lights’ arc. An overlap, a Venn diagram, a feeding zone.
 
Because

of my Anglophile education in New Zealand, there are vast chunks of U.S. writing that I have never explored. Unlike Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones, I don't think I have read any of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books; Faulkner I cannot read — which aligns him with Australia's Patrick White & Greece's Nikos Kazantzakis; Thomas Wolfe I tried after reading Kerouac's The Town & The City but couldn't get (in to) him. I have never read — which might make me unique on the planet — To Kill a Mockingbird.

Perhaps it has to do with the absence of prescribed cultural antecedents (though much of it has been shown to me as Hollywood movie) & so I have no reference points. There are exceptions, most of them self-subscribed. Moby Dick led me to Melville. Poe & Hawthorne I came to through a liking for fantasy. I've read all the great U.S. crime writers & still love the genre. Whitman's two great poems to Lincoln opened up the marvellous Leaves of Grass. The New American Poetry led me backwards to Williams & Rexroth as well as forwards.

So, confessional time. In my seventh decade I am reading Thoreau for the first time, Cape Cod, picked up — along with a number of other books — at the recent second-hand proceeds-to-charity Bookfest.

& I'm liking it.

Poetry from Steven Bruce

Bottled Laughter

It has been almost seven years
since that forgotten day
in the hobby shop.

Browsing paint brushes
to blush a miniature
dragon’s scales.

Overhearing the cashier’s
gripe about the height
of his new chair,

I approached the counter.

He sat there, spectacles, rosy smile,
weighing over three hundred pounds.

When I gave him the brushes,
he said something humorous.

For the life of me,
I can’t recall what it was.

As he chuckled at his own joke,
he tilted back, and the stool gave
out from underneath him.

By some divine miracle,
I held a straight face
while saying the only thing
you can say in a situation
such as this,

Are you alright, mate?

He clambered to his feet,
cursed and scowled at the stool
with his hands on his hips.

I purchased the brushes, fled the shop,
and continued to hold in laughter.

On the way home,
I recalled the time I tripped
in the rain, slapped my chin and hands
off the road.

How I shot up like some kind
of lightning bolt in reverse.

And it is tonight,
while stargazing,
while trying to find the words,
while accepting absurdity,
that this memory
chooses to flash
my mind’s eye.

I swear, my lips almost tear
as I laugh so hard tears
roll from my eyes.

And it’s not at his misfortune,
the inelegant tumble or the wild,
goat-like cry he gave.

It is the memory
of his little black boots
punting air
as he flailed on his back
like an overturned beetle.

Steven Bruce is a poet, writer, and award-winning author. His poetry and short stories have appeared in magazines, webzines, and anthologies worldwide. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Literary Titan Golden Book Award, the Firebird Book Award, and the Indies Today Five-star Recommendation Badge. Born in the North of England, he now lives and writes full-time out of an apartment in Barcelona.

Poetry from Yike Zhang

Unsung Serenade

In realms ethereal, we ascend the stair,
Our fleeting gazes intertwined in air,
Transcendent and evanescent, this tender plight,
Yet within our hearts, an ineffable knowing takes flight.

Butterflies pirouette, seraphic and amorphous,
Whispering esoteric secrets, shrouded in a luminal chorus,
Oh, how I yearn for them to linger, their presence sublime,
In this ephemeral expanse, where fear finds no place and time.

Through the verdant meadow, our path unfurls,
A gentle zephyr carries your essence, as I behold,
Transient is the nature, whispering in the breeze,
Yet I'm aware, your soul's truth it does seize.

Palpitations, unspoken, within us stir,
An uncharted symphony, our souls concur,
In this poetic silence, a tale unfolds,
With nuances untamed, where desire molds.

Unsaid infatuation, profound and elusive,
Within this labyrinth, our bond tightly fused,
With artistry and grace, our souls serendipitously entwined,
In this unuttered sanctuary, love's testament transcends.

Yike is a 16-year-old sophomore from China with a passion for international relations, creative writing, and debating. Her work can be found in Blue Marble Review, The Trailblazer Review, The Teen Magazine, among others. She edits for multiple academic journals and literary magazines, and she genuinely loves it.