Elephant Slide in the Exclusion Zone
After David McMillan’s photograph, Pripyat, Ukraine, October 2002.
To forgive
can sometimes mean to think
of them as a child: a wisped head
turned in a wheaten basket. Soft fists.
A bumblebee in a foxglove flower.
Contrapuntal: In Which We Swallow Insects While Contemplating Environmental Apocalypse
Continue reading “Two Poems by Beth Gordon”
Escapes
I remember
the rocks hot under
my skin, black sun-glistened
flecks in sugar-almond stone,
rush of foam-tinged
sparkling water, the pull back
of waves fizzing sand.
Traces
As slow as the breathing
of the ancient giant
long said to sleep beneath
our town’s tallest hill,
snow piled up that week
against the edge
of pine needled forest floor,
then fell back like a cold ocean tide.
The Questions
accumulated with missing relations
in photographs of his grandad’s family,
his Nana’s dropped dark hints.
Glorify
I learned to call on details that come unnoticed
brush strokes that hide in-between.
1. HE WHO IS NOW CALLED LAZARUS
was born a plain boy we
christened STUART
and thus it went
first his brain yellowed then grew
claws and we
were sore afraid
Our Photo artist for the month, Amanda Ollinik, supplied almost all the featured photos used(except for two or three). She is as prolific as our poetry/fiction contributors, and very well take her talent seriously. We are grateful to her and her partner, Lydia, for making the month as photogenic as it can be. Continue reading “Featured Photo Artist – Amanda Ollinik”
A woman out jogging in a park at dawn saw a smoke drift rising from a patch of blackened earth. Lying on the ground in the middle of it was what looked to be a mannequin with its legs half bent and arms raised in a peculiar, pugilistic pose.
There was a shopping trolley at the scene, adding another layer of curiosity to what must have seemed a strange tableau. The smell of fuel hung heavy in the air and, it being too early in the day for barbecues, the woman’s first thought was that somebody had been burning garbage. Continue reading “An Honourable Death – Victoria Briggs”
God walks through us on lonely nights — Nome Patrick
before i name myself an island in bed,
far from shore, i carve my life inside a poem.
a letter in a bottle is how i commune with God,
walk him round the ruins of my heart,
have him wear this skin that has contained screams.
most times, i am a roadsign cars ignore, Continue reading ““You Are The One God Forgot” by Michael Akuchie, and “Of Perception” by Casimir Wojciech”
asake, pray for me.
i am your father’s grandfather,
you do not know me,
but you are the lines on my palms.
pray for me! pray for me!
those on earth pray for those in heaven
so those in heaven could set their passage.
pray for me, asake;
pray for my peace! Continue reading “Irapada(redemption) – Aremu Adams Adebisi”
During your Palm Springs summer,
your off-white apartment walls curved
around you like an elegant shell
pulled together tight by the bit of meat inside.
Eventually any distraction seemed a blessing.
Sometimes you appeared able to conjure
up some sound or other outside,
but never the one you wanted. Continue reading “The Ocean’s Only Word, Getting Light, and Near Disaster – Lee Potts”
This is not a violin, it is a doorway. I know this, because I read a lot. My notes and references are usually very detailed breadcrumb paths. But, as Brion Gysin said, the mice can get into the larder of language (and I add to his point, memory). And, well… I have no control over legions of mice.
“This is is not a violin, it is a doorway.”
Continue reading “ReVerse Butcher: This is not a violin, it is a doorway”
I was thinking about Brutalism, cattle and passage tombs. Form, currency and death.
Walking the fields of North Cork and the headlands of Galway, casting cow-sheds as signs.
Homes for people, now homes for animals. Cycled forward by occupation, migration and forecasts. Radio broadcasts. Concrete and local stone piled into walls, supporting cold tin rooves. Corrugated steel. Cheap and functional, galvanised wave forms. Tin, iron and zinc combined and beaten thin. Weather resistant not weather proof.
on being broken / like shards of withered glass / my body
repels every music its soul makes / i close every door i
can’t walk back through / by this i mean i keep memories
in a box of cigar / god tells me i am a chapel Continue reading “Adedayo Agarau: 3 poems”
The door opens to a married man, a single bed.
You’re not here, but your presence is everywhere. The bed is meticulous, signs you’ve been here are subtle, imagined, your outline dimpling the duvet, just a trace; Continue reading “Ben Gedaliah: Room 168, the Hotel S-“
Four photographs by Jefferson J.W. Wayne
These four photos were taken while Jefferson was working along the Houston, Texas ship channel and are apart of a collection he’s building to present along with prose under the title As Dawn Breaks Over the Cancer Factory. As an industrial firefighter and process operator he is privy to these sights every day. They are an attempt to showcase the current future of industry as it moves forward to its slow death in the world.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 