Three Poems by Sanjeev Sethi

Quiescence

Bleep from catenation of calls is for errand boys.

Water of Pierian Spring wets when silence prevails.

Nurse of nothingness sustains and splays dispatches

from concealed wellsprings by cleansing pulverulent 

knobs as blueprints mount up. Corybantic music takes 

me away from myself. I solicit notions of nihility 

to scrive. In textures of my palm eidetic storms lose

their way, soldiers begin to sing, calm gets a new text.

Pros

Honeyed words take you nowhere.

You allow them to enter and they

eat you up. I am well-versed with

pretty speeches and snow jobs. This

time I didn’t truckle to exaggerated

arcs and eyewash: foreboding is my

default position. That is the good

thing about experience. It guards

your gyre.

Wishes and Wants

I wish to hold you in my hand.

Will happiness reintroduce itself?

Let the power in your palm lull me.

Will the acuteness of your breath

sanctify my unbeliefs?

I’m tired of togs. In our atelier

let nakedness be the new dress.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). He is published in more than 25 countries. Recent credits: Talking Writing, Packingtown Review, Abstract Magazine, PCC Inscape Magazine, The Sandy River Review, The Piker Press,  The Sunday Tribune, Fixator Press, The Poetry Village, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India. 

Two Pieces by Marian Kaplun Shapiro

Equation: A Conversation

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*Editor's note: 'Equation: a Conversation' will appear in the forthcoming Maximum Tilt anthology.

Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988),  a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and  two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). A Quaker and a psychologist, her poetry often embeds the  topics of peace and violence by addressing one within the context of the other. A resident of Lexington, she is a five-time Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2012.

Three Poems by Philip Kobylarz

Strike Here

Home-coming. Leave taking. That place, again to and from, where lights scintillate,

                                                                                                et cetera, with no

where like the smell of baked bread. How predictable traffic is, obeying false stars.

                                                                                                Money, brightly colored;

stain left by lawns too much watered. Time resists its table, whereas wind knows

                                                                                                what to do with matches.

Mercurial

Scribe. With a name known only to himself. Waits to pen letters to friends in Tunisia

                                                                                                Algiers, Morocco, or

Amsterdam. Writing to family, we scribble thumbnail sketches of ourselves, or who

                                                                                                we remember startled us

this morning in the mirror. Hindsight is 20/20, and rearviews are reserved for blurs.

Tome

Forever and the time it took to return. Walking a plank, weather underneath is the same. Smells of salt,

                                                                                                            mermaid foam. Call it

a day with teaspoons of regret and honey. As detritus is detrimental to one's health, hillocks

                                                                                                            fade into sea. Placidity

twirls its thumbs. Flowers begin to flower, not knowing the month. Sundays, all in a row. To

                                                                                                            speak is to beach comb

words.

Philip Kobylarz is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and essays. He has worked as a

journalist and film critic for newspapers in Memphis, TN. His work appears in such publications as 

Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. He is the author of a book of poems 

concerning life in the south of France and a short story collection titled Now Leaving Nowheresville. 

His creative non-fiction collection All Roads Lead from Massilia is forthcoming from Everytime Press 

of Adelaide, Australia and he has a collection forthcoming from Brooklyn’s Lit Riot Press titled 

A Miscellany of Diverse Things. More at: kobylarzauthor.wix.com/pkoby.

Three Pieces by Mark Young

geographies: Gladstone

Eponymous

Concerto

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry since 1959. He is the author of around fifty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on chessboard grids, published by Luna Bisonte Prods; The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of Finland; The Perfume of The Abyss from Moria Books; & A Vicarious Life — the backing tracks from otata.

He is the editor of Otoliths.

Two Poems by Paul Robert Mullen

supposition

the final act of parting

is not so different to how it started

anticipation                 waiting for intervention

the first / last contact              eyes

            smile               touch

first / last consummation of something

parting                         escape or desecration

                        or both

absent

the sea spreading out

distant olive silk

            but it took him           

and so it is the beast

home is not a poster with your face

            your age          your height & weight

missing since  . . .

volunteers crunching razor shells

backdrops of grey-blue

pennines                      like God      

               

distant / massive

incomprehensible

high-viz theories         roadside cafes

                        must be gay

loner perhaps              stressed at college

            bullied by the fuckers       

      

crazy /  irrational                   accident?

toast arriving              runny egg

slurping bitter coffee with dishcloth tang

Paul Robert Mullen is a poet, musician and sociable loner from Liverpool, U.K. He has three published poetry collections: curse this blue raincoat (2017), testimony (2018), and 35 (2018). He has been widely published in magazines, journals and anthologies worldwide. Paul also enjoys paperbacks with broken spines, and all things minimalist.