by Jack Greer
Cauliflower tastes like a cave; a mouth like dry sex and the taste of soil like the taste of bad books on sex, and falling and polishing your knee cricket-ball red; wriggling, ring-teethed albinism which nibbles on your weak, desperate body; how the flashlight, just beyond reach, shines a collage of long paper shreds; the fitting of joints and bones in under-sized stone holsters like the wrongness of a crooked Rubik’s cube; waiting and hoping and listening to the tinkling ballet of drips; cherishing the last human notes: keep the change, want a sip, watch your head, we’ll come get you, don’t worry, I’ll be back; like a Sunday afternoon spent caving with acquaintances. Jack Greer (he/him) is a recent graduate of the University of Queensland where he completed his Bachelor of Arts majoring in Creative Writing and English Literature. He is interested in creating other worlds within the ones we already inhabit.
0 Comments
by Nicole Jacobsen
His living room is a vivarium full of filtered sunshine gasping through storm clouds, releasing rain that trembles puddles on cement, warping sky. Water circles clutch glass like suctioned starfish, we kiss as he passes. I scratch poetry between blue lines, deliberating the nucleus of a syllable. Menthol breeze ripples my arms and small hairs, raising bubble wrap skin. Synaesthesia insists his footsteps are pine. I’m fine here, while he works, watching peace lilies animate on the table, my body creaking like a new home beginning to settle. Nicole Jacobsen is a Brisbane artist, writer, poet, and aspiring editor who regularly finds herself re-befuddled by the difference between who and whom. Her background in Psychology emerges through character studies, obsessive bouts of self-reflection, and recurrent themes of mental health in her work. by Natalie Bühler
After the tradition of burning an effigy at the end of carnival to mark the beginning of spring in Central Switzerland. In afternoon dark, we gather around the crackling head, his papier-mâché crown glinting in the flames. Teasing us, he delays his broadcast of spring’s arrival, so the jesters put inflated pig bladders to rest, hold hands and dance tightening rings around the pyre. Carved smiles on turnip masks hide uncles, aunts, my brother who’s old enough to join them. Fire melts confetti-stained snow into wet socks; my hands in silent rosary prayer with the pink plastic beads on my princess dress, pulled over ski jacket and thermals, catching tiny yarn loops on sequin edges. This is the last dress my grandma will sew for me. Already, her finger joints are swollen, but I haven’t faded into a stranger yet. This morning, she was on her float, carnival queen of adopted home, adopted myth, adopted accent. Her consort is Lothar, who still knows exactly how to call her chérie. They stand there, waiting for spring to explode out of the king’s head. Natalie Bühler is an emerging writer and arts administrator living on unceded Gadigal land in Sydney. She works at the Sydney-based organisation Red Room Poetry and incorporates her native Swiss German, which does not have a standardised written form, into her English writing. by Ashley Chew
before i know it i am spinning, arms akimbo, dying a dizzy-dim death under neon-pink lights. i am wearing my grief coat tonight - i share it with a dark stranger. she finds shelter in it. the night breathes different without you. i still feel blindly for your face. a single glittery disco ball spins from the middle of the ceiling, like an uneven moon, spilling stardust all over us, our grief coats, grief smiles, over me, on my wobbly heels, holding me up, full weight of a human body, gingerly, lightly. my mouth is spangled with your stars. Ashley Chew lives on the sunny island city of Singapore. She holds a Master of Arts degree in English Literature and clearly could not keep away from books for long for she is at present an associate librarian at the National Library Board of Singapore. Ashley’s bursting email inbox is always open to you if your subject header is in all caps and contains at least 5 exclamation marks, no less: ashleycwq@gmail.com. by Dee Allen
There have been times-- Musical, foot-stomping, joyous times-- At strobe-lit spaces Goths and Rivetheads Were known to congregate When I was welcomed And felt accepted As one of their own. And at other times At such spaces-- Times I wish Were erased from my memory-- When I passed through The dancing, undulating, spiked & pierced Lot unnoticed, Double-black-- Black garments moving, Covering Black skin, Except for the face-- And a superpower I never counted on having Kicked in around the decorative, mostly Pale elitist ones Uniformed in the shade of midnight: Invisibility. African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California U.S.A. Active on creative writing & Spoken Word since the early 1990s. Author of 7 books--Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, Skeletal Black, Elohi Unitsi and his 2 newest, Rusty Gallows and Plans--and 66 anthology appearances. Currently seeking a new publisher. by Maree Reedman
My backyard is blanketed in lavender flowers, little trumpets, heralding memories of university days, exam time, the year ending, and my mother, who liked purple and blue, how she cut down the majestic jacaranda on her footpath because it was close to the power lines. There’s a family of frogmouths in the paperbarks at work. My niece and nephew are getting their licences, Dad’s going on another cruise. My mother died in the dead of winter, she wouldn’t wait for the frangipani to sprout green leaves at the end of its old fingers. Maree Reedman lives in Brisbane with one husband, two cockatiels, and five ukuleles. Her poetry has been published in the United States and Australia in Chiron Review, Naugatuck River Review, Unbroken, Stickman Review, Grieve, Hecate, StylusLit, and has won Ipswich Poetry Feast awards, including a mentorship with Carmen Leigh Keates. by Emily MacGriff
I saw water music whomping women women wearing leaves and their hair breathing in baritone stretches of precipitate I shook the waves – rubber and rudder pointed in from the surf wanting to call back in stomp, brush, slap scoop, smack gulp, spray, gasp wanting an answer swish, smash, sing sway, say something, just arms leaf head leaves breast bottom belly leaves the strings of music in the empty bits of me, my history and feet be silent, it’s all the engine drop, rain, my own chest’s cascade it’s all the chimes I cry, and cloud. Emily’s work pulls largely from her experience working aboard expedition ships as a marine biologist/wilderness guide in the polar regions, South Pacific and British Isles. She is mostly retired from shipbound work and focused on navigating life as a woman, artist and mother. She’s based in Detroit and received an MFAW from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. by B. J. Buckley
Moon splintered bone, each cloud a torn and dirty winding sheet, a shroud for stars. This is what the world is: killing to stay alive: wasp and caterpillar, fox and vole, the aging lynx in one last leap to the back of a panicked deer, clawing for its neck, for red, for warm, the beautiful simplicity of blood beyond which nothing has any meaning, bear chewing through flesh and sinew to free itself from a trap. There’s always a knife at the throat of love, some desperate hunger, wolf devouring its heart to save its heart. B. J. Buckley is a Montana poet and writer who has worked in Arts-in-Schools and Communities programs throughout the West and Midwest for more than four decades. Her recent work appears in Grub Street, Hole in the Head Review, About Place Journal, Dogwood, and Calyx. by Willow Kang
for Ishita Pandey On Coney Island listen, to the unquiet of the night rabbits turning nocturnal & wintery, China dolls hopping off their prairies Yet the carnival rides never stop rolling, nor the restless tides, pulled by a moonlit chariot Tonight is fit for space station escapades, stay watchful. May caffeinated owls concoct for you an insomniac’s poison in the silk worm’s nest What shenanigans loom around the alleyways, giggles atop the street lamps, skyscrapers like monuments to fireflies Scurry between midnight parties on High Street & peek into the shimmering rooflights, on this night filled with cratered, puzzling belongings Willow is a writer from Singapore. After school, you can find her reading thick history textbooks, aimlessly writing poems, and solving frustrating math problems, in a futile attempt to conquer boredom. Just make sure that her coffee bowl stays full. by Jas Saunders
Sometimes when I’m anxious I’ll write poems on the plateaus of my palms, blue waves of ink flowing within their gradients and ridges When I want to hide those feelings from the rest of the world like a hermit crab tucked inside itself, I’ll share an empty fist, displaying new and delicate fingernails like bleached white seashells washed ashore learning to grow in real time with the rest of me. Published in UWA’s Pelican and Peafowl magazines, as well as Perth’s youth magazine Pulch, Jas Saunders is an Honours (Creative Writing) student at UWA, with an undergrad in English Lit and Public Health. Her writing focuses on liminal spaces, nostalgia, or memory, with representation her younger self would have desired. |
Blue BottleSeeking words with sizzle, poetry that wraps us in burning ribbons and won't let go. Send us your best! Archives
January 2023
|
Photo used under Creative Commons from John Donges