The Game by Matthew Ussia

The Game

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Late spring day at the friar’s cemetery

I walked down to see old friends

from my college days buried

in rows of identical graves

brothers in Christ who all failed

to get me to follow them in faith

.

Perhaps I was their token nontheist

friend for keeping piety honest or

thought they were playing a long game

confident of my long walk towards salvation

Father Tom always told me

doubt is just a natural phase

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These bodies who never knew

the sanctuary of other bodies

lay under my feet, victory uncertain

what final thoughts at the end

of lives dedicated to opening a door

that turned out to be a wall

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An ending of absolute despair

before the relief of dreamless sleep

the rest of my life knowing

it’s only a matter of time before

the big reveal of which one of us was wrong

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Matthew Ussia is a professor, editor, podcaster, thereminist, writer, softcore punk, social media burnout, and all-around sentient organic matter.  His first book of poetry The Red Glass Cat, was published in 2021.   His writings have appeared in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Future Humans in Fiction and Film, North of Oxford, Trailer Park Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Open Mic of the Air Podcast among others. He lives in Pittsburgh.   More info can be found at www.matthewussia.com

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Happy Hour at the All-Souls Lounge by Dennis Daly

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Happy Hour at the All-Souls Lounge 

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Vivid sparks shoot out everywhere,

The ethereal smithy slams

Down his fundamental hammer

As I sip my jar of whiskey

And nod to that sweat-veiled forger

Of well-oiled Damascus steel,

A quickening sword telecast.

Moving toward me, the barkeep smirks

Then smiles his all-knowing welcome.

I’m early and unrepentant.

.

From spatial mist others drift in,

Fired metal moved aside with tongs.

A hilt with pommel now fashioned

While draft beers or iced drinks are poured,

Pockets sapped of greenbacks and coins.

Some talk on tomorrow’s subjects,

Some keep their peace, their weighted hearts

Self-contained, losing harsh detail.

The fine file and whetstone applied

To blade’s edge, creation’s prelude.

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Dennis Daly has published nine books of poetry and poetic translations. He has written reviews for literary journals and newspapers. A new book entitled Odd Man Out has been accepted by Madhat Press and is due out by fall 2023. Please see his blogsite at http://www.dennisfdaly.blogspot.com

What You Want by David Kozinski

What You Want

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To not wish for much

in the decorating days of October

is to receive even less

than what fits in a coke spoon

and little remains for the gleaning

when December steps down into darkness.

.

Raised expectation is a processional;

a strand of children two by two

red-robed and matched by height

marching in hesitation step;

and along the way

more rises and falls – a ball tossed

one foot ahead and caught

on the bounce.

.

Fail and fall better the prophet scribed

on the side of a barrel. Pages are littered

with junkyard wealth –

a tire slung over the creek

that gleaming mornings glanced past,

chipped gems of Chambord and Crown Royal,

rusted runners that brought Rosebud to thirsting lips,

a spade that dug for loot in punishing soil

and struck something cold and smooth as a bullet

but brings up the wisdom of worms.

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.David P. Kozinski was a finalist for the Inlandia Institute’s Hillary Gravendyke Prize. I Hear It the Way I Want It to Be was published this year by Kelsay Books. He is Rockwood Park and Museum’s Resident Poet. Kozinski was the 2018 Delaware Division of the Arts Established Professional Poetry Fellow. Publications include Tripping Over Memorial Day (Kelsay Books) and Loopholes (Broadkill Press) which won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. He serves on the boards of the Eastern Shore Writers Association, the Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center and the Editorial Board of Philadelphia Stories magazine, and is Art Editor for Schuylkill Valley Journal.

The Abalone Hunt by Emily Bilman

The Abalone Hunt

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The full moon ormering tide swayed the kelp

Forests on the Coral Sea. On the drop-down

From the neritic limn, I measured the limestone

Shells with their breathing pores in the selenizone

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And cut them off from their rock-hosts with

A plastic knife to prevent them from bleeding.

The shells that survived the dinosaurs, clung

To their rock-hosts as if they were rocks themselves.

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A shock on the coiled Cretaceous spiral and

The snail-flesh would secrete a ceramic fluid between

Sliding bricks to form a body-armour and a pearl.

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On the ground above the aquifer and the water-table,

The convex shell, rough in the hand, yielded to iridescent

Green-purple-silver swathes of refracted light.

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Emily Bilman, PhD is London’s Poetry Society Stanza representative in Geneva. Her thesis, The Psychodynamics of Poetry: Poetic Virtuality and Oedipal Sublimation in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot and Paul Valéry, was published by Lambert Academic in 2010 and Modern Ekphrasis in 2013 by Peter Lang. Her poetry books, A Woman By A Well (2015), Resilience (2015), The Threshold of Broken Waters (2018), and Apperception (2020) were published by Matador, UK. http://www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman

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from Decarceration by Charline Lambert, translated from the French by John Taylor

Michael Bollino

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You are a countable solitude.

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You are a light shattered

into beams.

.

You are

a barely recognized

fire.

.

*

You want to decarcerate the language from you,

decar—

.

cerate these words from your plexus

and every day

you elucidate a knot.

.

*

.

In a single movement

you don’t know if you’re taking part

.

in the pursuit

or

the reiteration.

.

*

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You are full to the brim

with coagulated matter.

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Ever since, you counter

the slow work

of exsanguination.

.

*

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Your great fervor to forget:

too great

this tumor where

can it be cut out, where

are the healthy tissues

.

*

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Joy and the other

joy you hold out

.

drunk with it,

a latent

blow to the forehead

.

of the sky.

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—from Désincarcération (©Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2017)

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French originals:

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Tu es une solitude à dénombrer.

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Tu es une lumière éclatée

en faisceaux.

.

Tu es

un feu

à peine reconnu.

.

*

Tu veux désincarcérer le langage de toi,

désincar-

.

cérer ces mots de ton plexus

et chaque jour

tu élucides un nœud.

.

*

.

D’un seul mouvement

tu ne sais si tu en es

.

la poursuite

ou

la réitération.

.

*

.

Tu es une matière coagulée

parvenue à satiété.

.

Depuis tu contres

un lent travail

d’exsanguination.

.

*

.

Ton ardeur à l’oubli trop

grande

.

trop grande

tumeur où découper

où sont les tissus sains

.

*

.

La joie et l’autre

joie que tu tends,

.

de tout ton soûl

latente

frappe à la tempe

.

du ciel.

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Charline Lambert was born in 1989 in Liège, Belgium. She is the author of four books of poetry: Chanvre et lierre (“Hemp and Ivy,” Éditions Le Taillis Pré, 2016), Sous dialyses (“Dialyzing,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2016), Désincarcération (“Decarceration,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2017), and Une salve (“A Salvo,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2020). She is currently finishing her Ph.D. thesis on the relation between poetry and deafness.

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John Taylor’s most recent translations are, from the French, José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (The MadHat Press) and Philippe Jaccottet’s Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions), as well as, from the Italian, Franca Mancinelli’s The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008-2021 (The Bitter Oleander Press). His most recent books of poetry are Transizioni, a bilingual volume published in Italy by LYRIKS Editore and illustrated by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos, and Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press), illustrated by the French artist Caroline François-Rubino. He lives in France.

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The Harpist by Jonel Abellanosa

The Harpist

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Hymn to his prayer, reverence.

His music’s lines constellate,

moon a boat in a black sea.

.

Virtuoso fingers pluck the sonata,

portal taking shape like egg-shaped

mirror. Yearn deepens, her ghost

.

slips through. His heart echoes,

peaks like a mountain, clouds

touched. She hears his longing,

.

appears with her dance

by which he measures grief.

He anticipates her moves,

.

his fingers breezing through strings,

his love for her an abstract bird.

Her absence will again become the tree.

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Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Dwarf Stars and Best of the Net Awards. His poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies, including North of Oxford, The Cape Rock, Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Invisible City, The Lyric, The McNeese Review, and The Anglican Theological Review. His poetry collections include, “Songs from My Mind’s Tree”

Layers of Blankets by Doug Holder

Layers of Blankets

… For my late wife Dianne

.

In a dream she came to me.

She had to peel

off layers of blankets.

Hot towels

were wrapped

tightly around

my face.

I could

barely breathe.

She struggled

as she always did

but like

some force of nature

she ripped them

off me

I could feel

the sudden rush

of air

the brush

of her luxuriant hair…

.

” I will always

be with you,

I will always be

there… “

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Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. He is a lecturer of creative writing at Endicott College outside of Boston. Holder’s own work has been published in Molecule, Lillipoh, Lips, Constellations and elsewhere. The ” Doug Holder Papers” are at the University at Buffalo Libraries. Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

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If you harbor in my safe house by P.E. Sloan

If you harbor in my safe house

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You will cut a page from the book of life

You will walk along a highway that belches ozone

You will ignore the cars and focus on stymied lives of bare branches

.

You will stop mid-page

And examine a petal of memory

You will wonder where you meandered

.

You will turn to her as she sleeps peacefully

You will stroke her bare flank

You will inhabit her exhalation

.

She will throw an arm around you

Her breast will breach the coverture

You will embrace as you have for ten thousand nights

.

As snow falls in deformed pellets

You will remember your father

Up before dawn to shovel a path

.

You will toss and turn

You will remember that you miss your father

That he always seemed to know the way

.

The early dawn birdsong will remind you

That you did not sleep well

You will be anxious for the day that will unfold

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You will consider what to write on this page that you have cut

You may question what a book of life might be

You will long for soft snow that has no need for clearing

.

You will think that you have crushed

The afterimage but you will remember

Too late, perhaps, that the palimpsest remains

.

Like your baby son’s face that holds

The emotion after it passes

You will harbor an unstruck image

.

You will cosset in your chimera of dreams.

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P.E. Sloan is a writer who lives in Northern Virginia and Brooklyn with his wife, Donna Cameron.  Originally from Chicago, P.E. attended college on the East Coast and then worked as a reporter and photographer and, occasionally, clueless deckhand in New England and the Florida Keys before getting some additional schooling and settling in for the pleasures of the long haul. His poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Poetica, Cathexis Northwest Press and District Lines.

Mirror by Robert Beveridge

Mirror

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Black

under ice

complete

.

choked

chain studded inward

.

brainpan boils

heaves black rot

strike

strike

fist sinks into flesh

finds first

organs

then bone

.

bile burns black

in black light

fingernails tear

scars in yielding flesh

.

blood

melts

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Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Ricochet Review, Poetry Pea, and Cattails, among others.

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