Debashish is a machine learning scientist, who has been published in literary magazines several
times across the globe, including Poetry Life & Times, where he was interviewed twice.
He is currently contending with a severe writer’s block spanning a decade, when he has hardly
produced any publishable content. He is also losing emotional connection with his own work
gradually, and spends more time to edit/tighten his old poems than creating any new content.
The Kingdom of Chaos Poems by Scott Thomas Outlar
Silver Primroses & Golden Strigiformes Planted by the Curb Carrying your own dead body back to its grave in a dream then happening upon an expired owl stricken & smashed in the street Ominous signs along Five Forks Trickum birth into patterns of indigo & scarlet wildflowers Spirit animals taking a dive before rush hour fevers commence learn to sip from the parched throat of roadkill brunch eating the organs of our own totem Stomach Lining I came to eat the lies you coin and serve them back half bitter across the divide of tables turned I didn’t ask for this evil eye it was forced down my throat from the jump been begging for a bulimic leap ever since Spells of the Stoic Pewter & I will set you (free) here to be made safe by the wizard / window (fly, birdie) black obsidian gray of mind & beard wise & dangerous streaked/laced down the middle balanced of accord (harmony & likewise rhythm) you are the melody of a soft glow Lament of Prey Hello to all the hawks who have yet to have their fill, & the vultures, too, waiting for what’s left over. Spoiled minds & spoiled hearts lead to spoiled guts, but it seems to be that’s what nature intended in this twisted realm of divided time & space. Dog eat dog isn’t even the worst part; it’s flesh unto flesh in the fire. Goodbye to all the dreams that forgot how to conquer, & the visions still yet to crystallize in cancer. Rotten bones & rotten marrow flow in rotten rivers, but that’s the taste acidic blood delivers when signs of sickness flash neon & electric in the night. Tail chase tail isn’t the end of the story; it’s a snake that never sheds the fade to black. Kingdom of Chaos We don’t want your money, just your soul on a silver platter served to order for our warm feast while we spit out your raw famine. We don’t want your respect, just your energy and time, just your mind numbed to the frequency of propagandized pestilence. We don’t want your love, just your heart bled dry as every vein withers in the winter wind while our chalice remains ever full to the point of overflowing. We don’t want your vote, just your faith that such a course of action can actually influence the order in which our puppets dance to a song of chaos upon the public stage. We don’t want your salute, just your obedience, just your hands kept where we can see them while your feet continue marching to the drumbeat of our wars. We don’t want your laws, just your land, just your culture, just your customs, just your heritage, just your traditions snuffed out beneath the global kingdom collectivized at our command.
Scott Thomas Outlar is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. He now lives and writes in Frederick, Maryland. His work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He guest-edited the Hope Anthology of Poetry from CultureCult Press as well as the 2019-2023 Western Voices editions of Setu Mag. He is the author of seven books, including Songs of a Dissident (2015), Abstract Visions of Light (2018), Of Sand and Sugar (2019), and Evermore (2021 – written with co-author Mihaela Melnic). Selections of his poetry have been translated and published in 14 languages. He has been a weekly contributor at Dissident Voice for the past nine years. More about Outlar’s work can be found at 17numa.com
Earth Puzzle,St. Petersburg in January,You Celebrate Your Birthday While I Have a Religious Experience, 3 Poems by James Croal Jackson
Earth Puzzle We think completing the jigsaw depicting Earth will complete us, but 4 AM we float in half-consciousness, hoping to realign our orbit, still aimed into vastness, a jumbled mess on the floor. Even the dog snores. Earlier, Disco ran across our tarot cards, shuffling a wrangled meaning into fate. The Hermit. The Star. The Hanged Man. I try to string together half-correlations. I want to drink more. I open the window and inhale. I look into the dark and wonder how we can piece it all together. St. Petersburg in January maybe it is not seeing-eye dogs training in the grass I pass or the street vendors selling sunglasses tamales and watercolors or the waves that touch a difficult nerve which snap me into a more relaxed reality or the toaster-oven croissant at the French bakery on Ocean Avenue but the cranes that lift off skyscrapers in the heavy wind that make me want to punch real estate developers in the jaw or somesuch non sensical violence bear trap tourist trap somewhat Floridaesque my happy life on blast it is dynamite at a luxury construction site this weekend You Celebrate Your Birthday While I Have a Religious Experience Learning how to swim– can’t say I haven’t counted hours stars float in the night infinite darkness I cannot claim sanctity within us. You point to Orion like a familiar neighbor like I would point to a passing thought or ripple believing it significant as the moment passes.
James Croal Jackson works in film production. His most recent chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, White Wall Review, and Vilas Avenue. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)
Mapplethorpe, Lethe, via crucis, Poems by Krystle Eilen
Mapplethorpe after Robert Mapplethorpe’s Self Portrait, 1980 half youthful, half emaciated, he reflects the epicene and the languishing. his head is all shock and flurry; his mouth a toothless brevity. half Madonna, half Antinous, he reflects a decadent flower both wilting and transcendent. his eyes suggest a having seen, two eternally startled interims. a princely pauper whose aspect reflects that of a parched orchid culled too soon. published in Hive Avenue Literary Journal Lethe i am a winged thing flailing, driven into my bovine body, and back into my savage infant soul. in the beginning, nature conceived another deadweight, and i find myself stillborn. i am forever waiting to open my welkin eyes and outwit the brute. i want the earth wrested from me; i want no longer to acquiesce to the stranglehold of gravity. i am forever looking forward to eclipsing the round seared by fantasy. published in Hive Avenue Literary Journal via crucis i. to behold paradise god must be heaved up,— for to become seraph is to gouge the eye out. ii. always at one remove is to be found divinity, otherwise effaced by twin identity. iii. riven apart by mimetic sparagmos, man is condemned to die on the cross. iv. to shed the serpent’s skin is but to reiterate its meander, for conquest precedes the bind of surrender.
Krystle Eilen is a 22-year-old poet who is currently attending university. Her works have been featured in Dipity Literary Magazine, BlazeVOX, and Hive Avenue Literary Journal, and are soon to be published in The Orchards Poetry Journal and Young Ravens Literary Review. During her spare time, she enjoys reading and making art.
Poetry. Five Sonnets from Richard Vallance
Image: Keats on his Deathbed. Artist Joseph Severn.
I saw a sparrow for Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) I saw a sparrow in the snow, who hovered by a boy nearby; It swayed a little to and fro, small wonders they, small wonder why. The boy, the flautist all alone amidst the misty spruce around where snow was so serenely sown, played tremolo the fairest sound. The little sparrow lingered there, the boy, the flautist of her soul; Iʾll never tell wherever where they warbled to attentive snow. If anyone found a place so rare would there have been anyone there? I found a soldier all too fair for all the fallen in the war in the Ukraine I found a soldier oh so fair, an apparition in the vale; oh there were reasons for despair to see a face so ghastly pale. I listened for the faintest breath, a hint of colour on his lips, but was confronted with a death the setting sun could not eclipse. I lingered there and wept a while; the poppies seemed to mourn him too. I heard a thunder from a mile, where clouds assumed an ashen hew. A wounded straggler passed me by; oh how I feared he too would die! Listen oh listen! Listen oh listen! ... the tanager trills! ... he arrays the blue spruce with feathers as light as gossamer fronds the forest just thrills to veil in his voice lost in the moonlight! However whoever alights on this place may find my tanagerʾs warbled refrains leave en passant over teal leaves the trace of whose emotions? ... whose tremolo strains? Is this the rare moment April declares the seasonʾs rife for my chanson, the song the sunrise with cirrus so silently shares? ... only I, tanager, knew all along. Were I the sole tanager of your desmesne, well, Iʾd be voiced in your glass of champagne! The poetry of KeatsJohn Keats on his death bed, by Joseph Severn For W.T. The poetry of Keats is replete with death: an owl more ominous than a blue moon had hooted sans merci til his final breath, as he passed away in a fitful swoon before the sky was flush with fading blue, before ambrosial roses withered, strewn before the autumn breeze all too wanly blew to the long-lost score of some mournful tune. As if the nightingale could warble love might I implore you if her song recalls as quietly as would a cooing dove our barren prayers before the wailing walls; I too recall my all too cherished friend, who wasted away to an ill-timed end. Huskies Mush! I'll slide my sled from the frozen-in stream towards the lake where snow rolls down me, blind; me sled is all wedged in by me husky team, whose hunger drives em wild with single mind. They lunge, they'll lunge in vain. What? Can't break out. Me lungs could bust with frost I'se just gulped in. Me lips all blue, I'se stiff with icy doubt. Me dogs, all panicked, tangled, yelp chagrin; I grits me teeth, jerk hard the sled, and hear that cursed ice cave! “Come on! Bust loose!”, I yell, “Mush!”, snaps the whip! Aw, we'se gotta break clear! “We'se broken out!” Them huskies dash like hell. Did we break loose? Those snapped up rapids yawn behind us as we vanish, good as gone.
Richard Vallance was a frequent contributor to the earlier issues of Poetry Life & Times, from 2001-2008, where several of his sonnets and rhymed poems appeared, and where he was the resident poetry critic of the Vallance Review, which featured reviews of sonnets and rhymed verse by some of the world’s most famous historical sonneteers and poets.
Richard Vallance has also been featured from time to time in more recent issues of Poetry Life & Times, Poetry Life and Times (artvilla.com), from 2012-2018.
He has also been published in several other international venues, among others: Decanto Poetry Magazine/Anthology (Sara Russell, ed.) – no longer in publication The Deronda Review, Neo/Victorian Cochlea, The Deronda Review – Home, Sonnetto Poesia ISSN 1705-4524 (25 quarterly issues) SEE: Sonnetto poesia. | Bibliothèque et Archives Canada / Library and Archives Canada (worldcat.org)
Richard Vallance is also the Editor of a multilingual anthology of sonnets. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phenix Renaissant de Ses Cendres – Anthology of Sonnets of the Early Third Millennium = Anthologie de Sonnets a: Vallance, Editor-In-Chief Richard: 9781460217016: Books – Amazon.ca
Where Have all the Fishes Gone?& Further Poems by Fabrice B. Poussin
Where Have all the Fishes Gone? Sitting atop the cliff overlooking the ocean vast we hold one another in awe of its innumerable mysteries. The sun sets calmly for us rises with deft determination on the other side of a blue horizon. Not a sound emerges from the deep waters clean of all lives that once were ancestors some say to our kin. Where have they all gone why extinct so soon into fossils imprints per chance left in the stone that tell of so distant an evolution. Welcome to the World of Nice The world nearly came to an absolute stop when the wizard suddenly halted his incantations the fires he had set ablaze reflecting upon his pale brow. For centuries he had roamed the planet a weathered wand in his mummified grip his face oozing with the harm he could cause. Another in a glorious evening grace ambled like royalty among the populace sizing each one of her kin as a victim. Tall above armies of humble servants she made them dependent of every whim she might have dreamed up in her solitary chambers. She too paused when the child cried for this Amazon who had never known pain her frame near collapse she let go of her aim. The thousands assembled for what they expected was to be yet a list of grievances and threats looked in amazement at these meek creatures. Never had a soul caught a glimpse of pain in the eyes of those unforgiving executioners until the tear of a child fell upon their feet. The giants stepped down from the pedestal greeted by embraces never imagined of those who still bore the scars of their millennial tortures. While the poor wake in a pool of chagrin no one knew the few in satin and pearl could weep and fall to the yoke of a babe. Suffering to Rest She can tell the throb will persist Into a night of pleasant slumber feeling a tug at her secret fibers. Contemplating the past hours when glee echoed through the halls attempts to calm still fail. Into a slanted mirror an image seeks to smile at this solemn reflection subdued by the numbing liquid of her pain. Docile as with every passing dawn something has changed in the blood shed again upon the dusk of a precious hour. Soon again she will share her pleasure when the day’s memories turn to dust and her flesh finds rest in the thin night. Hard to Be Merely standing hands upon the wooden rails staring into a background of dense forest he might find rest on a Sunday’s morn’ when his thoughts quickly move to the millions like him who contemplate the world considering how little they can see he holds a cup of a dark brew in hand, early smoke in the other his desperation grows as he longs for the visions others cannot share and he imagines so many there with him gazing into the same surroundings their perception so different from his he considers the one who inspires him if only he could be within her as she takes all in become an intimate part of who she is for he feels so much missing from his being lost smaller than a speck of minute dust while an infinity of interpretations exists yet only this microcosm of the infinite belongs to him so insignificant as he must remain until at last he might be freed from this temporary prison and become like all those before him a piece of the universal puzzle the matter of all that is the cosmos. Feeling the sounds. Upon a saunter as is his common dominion he pushes through the brush of a dense forest after the storm left its gentle coat on every living thing like a shroud of life. Nothing speaks, everything rests yet awaiting reassurance that it is safe again to be and he continues, puzzled by the uncanny silence looking for a sign that all is well still. And there it is, a murmur brushes against his flesh an eerie sensation of sound, of sight of scent, touch and even taste from whence it is born he cannot tell. It must be her at last in the late hour since darkness will soon prevail and she always visits him in his sleep when his dreams become real as the present. She surrounds him with an infinite coat made with all a soul can endure he hears the voice of her wholeness speak without a word, but it is to be eternal.
Fabrice B. Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications. Most recently, his collection “In Absentia,” was published in August 2021 with Silver Bow Publishing.
Beyond the Limit & Tyne Cot. Ekphrastic Poems by Jan Theuninck
The Willow Tree Poems by Michael Lee Johnson
I Age (V2) Arthritis and aging make it hard, I walk gingerly, with a cane, and walk slow, bent forward, fear threats, falls, fear denouement─ I turn pages, my family albums become a task. But I can still bake and shake, sugar cookies, sweet potato, lemon meringue pies. Alone, most of my time, but never on Sundays, friends and communion, United Church of Canada. I chug a few down, love my Blonde Canadian Pale Ale, Copenhagen long cut a pinch of snuff. I can still dance the Boogie-woogie, Lindy Hop in my living room, with my nursing care home partner. Aging has left me with youthful dimples, but few long-term promises.
Crypt in the Sky (V2) Order me up, no one knows where this crypt in the sky like a condo on the 5th floor suite don’t sell me out over the years; please don’t bury me beneath this ground, don’t let me decay inside my time pine casket. Don’t let me burn to cremate skull last to turn to ashes. Treasure me high where no one goes, no arms reach, stretch. Building for the Centuries then just let it fall. These few precious dry bones preserved for you, sealed in the cloud no relocation is necessary, no flowers need to be planted, no dusting off that dust each year, no sinners can reach this high. Jesus’ heaven, Jesus’ sky. Note: Dedicated to the passing of beloved Katie Balaskas.
Priscilla, Let’s Dance (V2) Priscilla, Puerto Rican songbird, an island jungle dancer, Cuban heritage, rare parrot, a singer survivor near extinction. She sounds off on notes, music her vocals hearing background bongos, piano keys, Cuban horns. Quote the verse patterns, quilt the pieces skirt bleeds, then blend colors to light a tropical prism. Steamy Salsa, a little twist, cha-cha-cha dancing rhythms of passions, sacred these islands. Everything she has is movement tucked nice and tight but explosive. She mimics these ancient sounds showing her ribs, her naked body. Her ex-lovers remain nightmares pointed daggers, so criminal, so stereotyped. Priscilla purifies her dreams with repentance. She pours her heart out, everything condensed to the bone, petite boobies, cheap bras, flamboyant G-strings. Her vocabulary is that of sin and Catholicism. Island hurricanes form her own Jesus slants of hail, detonate thunder, the collapse of hell in her hands after midnight. Priscilla remains a background rabble-rouser, almost remorseful, no apologies to the counsel of Judas wherever he hangs.
Willow Tree Poem (V2) Wind dancers dancing to the willow wind, lance-shaped leaves swaying right to left all day long. I’m depressed. Birds hanging on- bleaching feathers out into the sun.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 283 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/