Selected Works, Tamiko Dooley

 Eros

are you here

again you love

can I see you

SHOWER TIME.

There are things you learn

From doing the same job every day

Tasks you repeat OVER and over

Like, aren’t we all the same?

Plugging in the hose 

The brushes out for meticulous scrubbing

Pulling the hazmat on MY legs

Elasticated cap, gloves, rubber boots

Nothing to be afraid of

They’re already DEAD

Pressure-wash them down

Blast that Stravinsky, something dramatic 

Vaseline in the nostrils

Doesn’t help with the smell

You leave, throw away the suit

The smell penetrates through

When you take a shower that night

You sniff it on your skin

So you scour your naked BODY clean

I mean, 

Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all day, anyway?

Helios

On a bright autumnal afternoon

When the sun’s behind me

And my back begins to warm

I think of you

That shaft of afternoon light

That used to reach the middle of your bedsheets

College house, single dorm

Your desk lumbered with

Tacitus and Virgil, Sallust and Homer

On a Friday after double Greek was done

I’d find you there

Eyes closed, smiling

Your skin glowing

When I leaned in towards you

The heat would hit the nape of my neck

With the strength of blazing rays

That scorched Icarus’ wings

To slowly melt the wax.

Tokeru (Melting)

you watched me catch with my tongue

the drips that threatened to

slither down the cone onto my hand

and laughed, kimi ga waratta

ahead kite surfers and jet skis roared across the Okinawa skyline

the Pacific tide was creeping towards our toes

waves pounding the shore louder and closer

and when you leaned towards me and

licked a drop of my matcha ice-cream 

to save it falling

the icy fingers of the umi gripped my legs

Tempest

I glimpsed you from the shore

Footprints leading to the water

Blurred sand and gritty salt

I had been stumbling through 

The thicket for hours

Losing my sense of direction

Aiming for the open sea

I kept thinking I saw you

In disguise, hidden behind palm leaves

When the branches finally parted

You appeared

Waving from your broken boat

A battered shipwreck

It started to rain 

As the drops began to lash down on me

It became harder to see

The wind seemed to take you away

I thought I saw you

Blurred and gritty drops

Began to sting my eyes

I was losing my sense of direction

I glimpsed you from the shore

A shipwreck

Aiming for the open sea

Tamiko reads Latin and French at New College, Oxford. She was the winner of the BBC Radio 3 carol competition 2021.

Excerpt from THE DIRECTOR'S CUT, John Yamrus

he was 

drunk 

and more 

than a little bit crazy 

and 

made the mistake 

of leaving the live video feed 

on 

his computer open 

and when 

he was done reading his poems 

all that 

was left was this sad 

drunk 

old man 

and the sound 

of him walking from room to room 

trying 

to see where 

the magic had gone.

i

made

the mistake

of 

complimenting him 

on 

his poetry.

on

the strength

of 

one poem,

he wanted me

to introduce him to

my 

publisher.

when 

i refused,

when i said

i’m sorry, but

i just don’t do that,

he went crazy on me.

instantly,

i 

went from

hit 

to shit.

more

than anything

he so desperately

wanted 

his fifteen minutes

of 

fame.

well...

here you go, buddy...

here 

you go.

puke-green

was 

his favorite color.  

it 

was also 

his favorite word 

(or, 

words, if

you wanted to 

get technical about it). 

anyway, 

it was kinda sorta fitting

that he had already turned his

favorite color that Sunday morning 

when 

they found him

face down under the Penn Street Bridge.

Tony The Lip

was 

older than he looked,

was 

impressed 

by the smell of his own farts,

lied 

about everything,

never 

held a job for long,

ate 

everything,

drank 

anything,

and 

changed his shorts

no

more 

than once a week.

Tony had

3 bad marriages,

4 shack-ups,

and 

that one month he

never cared to talk about.

i 

always 

liked Tony.

you lay in bed and

there’s a train whistle somewhere

off in the distance and

it takes you back 

to a place and 

a time you 

don’t

even care to remember 

where it was or

when. 

back to a place with dirty sheets 

and dust in the corners and 

under the bed and you 

start thinking about 

why and who and 

where and 

how 

and you know it doesn’t really matter 

because there will always be trains 

and beds and sheets and the sun 

coming up as you wait 

for another day 

that’ll bring you that much closer to

whatever it is that’s out there, 

waiting to

finally 

do you 

in.

in dog obedience class…

for once, 

my little Abby

did everything right.

for 

once, 

she didn’t 

bite, jump or pull.

this time

she paid attention

and sat 

and stayed

and came

and listened…

just like all the other dogs.

i can’t tell you how much

i hated 

that.

he was 

drawn 

to this bit 

of graffiti he saw 

written in white paint

on the side of a building. 

it was 

in an alley, 

and it read: 

“fuck the world – 

and fuck you if you don’t love it.” 

later that week, 

looking to get the words just right, 

he 

went back, 

and 

when he 

got there, it was gone – 

not 

just the words

and 

the wall, 

but 

the whole 

damn building. 

torn down. 

gone. 

and, fuck you if you don’t love that.

These poems can be found in John Yamrus’ recent collection: SELECTED POEMS, THE DIRECTOR’S CUT (Concrete Mist Press, 2022), available for purchase here.

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction and a children’s book). He has also had nearly 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A book of his SELECTED POEMS was just released in Albania, translated into that language by Fadil Bajraj, who is best known for his translations of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Pound and others. 

A number of Yamrus’s books and poems are taught in college and university courses. His most recent book is SELECTED POEMS: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT (Concrete Mist Press, 542pp).

Selected Works, Howie Good

Rumored Whereabouts

There was nothing I could do. I was under a car, sheltering from the debris raining down, bricks and glass and chunks of concrete. Until that moment, the state ideological apparatus had obscured the real conditions of our existence. I resolved to henceforth be like the unruly drunks you read about who are unaffected when tasered by a cop – even when tasered again and again. In the meantime, the boat in the nearby slip was on fire. Smoke engulfed my head. I swear I could hear the phone bot saying, “All our representatives are resisting other customers at this time.”

The Little Voice in My Head

People with a history of using LSD are more likely to see faces where there are none. The EMT in the ambulance with me had mint green hair. She was trying frantically to undo some knots in the IV tubing. A little voice in my head said, “What have you learned, and whom have you helped?” The acid I’d taken earlier had lasted longer than expected. It was as if I’d stepped through my eyelids. But the potato chip really did look like Elvis. 

Street Song

A skateboarder in a black T-shirt and holey jeans and backwards baseball cap rolls down the sidewalk under tall leafy trees, and with his arms extended like wings, clutches the top of a brown lunch bag in one hand and, for a kind of counterbalance, a cup of pink strawberry ice cream in the other, and on his face as he passes through splashes of sunshine and shadow not a smug smile precisely or a frown of intense concentration, but a little of both, like something seen in the only ever photograph of a dream.

Death by Emoji

I receive a postcard in the mail guaranteeing me a chance to win one of 1,000 prizes. Me! A man who thinks clouds look like things! Meanwhile, a new study has found frequent emoji users “Wear civilian clothes, pass messages, kill.” It’s not unlike what happened at the world premiere of the Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven played the piano with such violence that the strings snapped and became entangled in the hammers. There have been nights I’ve been woken up by sirens and screams and thought, “You’re in the middle of history now.” Even the worst weather cannot stop it or prevent a personal Jesus from selling counterfeit tickets to heaven behind the KFC. 

Me Being Me

There’s bad shit going on. An unexploded rocket sticking out of a field. Wildfires capable of creating their own weather. Supply chain problems. Often one has to make things oneself in order to have or see them. Just ask meth cooks what that means. Meanwhile, the ground is wet with rain, and yet a book is lying there dry. I pick it up. It’s called Closer to the Light, about the near-death experiences of children. The universe instantly seems smaller, almost claustrophobic. I would construct a bigger universe if I could and insist that there be an “e” in lightning.

American Century

A van drove up with 20 of them, all armed. The police couldn’t – or wouldn’t – do anything. Somehow you slept right through it, the end of the American Century, dead bodies strewn in the road, a few already bloated. 

&

The air is colorless but charged with virus. “Imagine you’re lying in the shade of beautiful trees,” the meditation instructor on Zoom encourages. The coffins keep arriving. 

&

Now I understand what Jeremiah, aka the “Weeping Prophet,” father of orphans and the inventor of mental funk, was saying. He was saying, foreswear this world, if only to not disturb the birds nesting in its empty eye sockets.

Follower 

A man in Warrenton, Missouri, posted a video of himself licking deodorant sticks at the Walmart and asking, “Who’s a coward now?” I was like yes, yes, yes, I want to do that. In those days I would frequently experience such sudden enthusiasms. It was a furious time, with popular pundits preaching that you must kill what is in order to bring about what is not. I didn’t stop to consider that others might be as important to themselves as we are to ourselves. And so the wind rushed in, and the forest swayed, and an army dump truck packed with corpses backed up to the burial trench. 

The Infernal Machine

People would just repeat the same phrases – “Thank you,” “I love you,” “Awesome!” – over and over in the mindless manner of talking dolls. Then the war started there. They took your passport, phone, and money, and locked you up in a room. Now it’s also started here. “Name,” the stern older woman behind the glass commands, hands poised over the keyboard. She doesn’t look at me but focuses her severe gaze on the computer screen. Most of what she says I can’t or don’t want to understand, and they beat me for that. Everything goes dark. The infernal machine has its own internal illumination.

Howie Good's latest poetry book is The Horse Were Beautiful (2022),  available from Grey Book Press. Redhawk Publications is publishing his collection, Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems, later this year.

Three Poems, Heller Levinson

 ASTRAY

reared oblong

obliquity scatter

                                                corner table

                                                tether fray

                                                loin wobble

 

an iridescence at the foot of plunder

 

caged colloquy flirt transmissible, high-

strung hollows gape, astir with

unblemished ritual,

sweetening the backside of archaic resemblance patterns born of infidel grow contagious

 

throats glow

agitate

SENTINEL

heed

rail thin

                    vapour from a past idle

                    air as contraband

 

unseemly deposits dwarf the earnest

 

                    looking for clues   an

                    early tide

 

washaways

change heart

 

Note: SENTINEL Hinges to Richard Capobianco’s masterful Heidegger commentary, Heidegger’s Way of Being.

Richard writes: “Sentinel” in its root meaning is one who is open to and receives and takes in what is; one who “senses” all that is…. The “sentinel” as “herald” makes manifest what is manifest.

& Richard’s English translation of Heidegger’s translation of the Heraclitus fragment 93 is also pertinent:

The high one, whose place of the pointing-saying is in Delphi, neither uncovers (only) nor conceals (only); rather he gives signs.

Poet Will Alexander says this about SENTINEL:

Thanks for sharing this wayward musical drift, this wayward ensemble of splinters, this daring motific of blankness, the seeming thrill of in-action. Somehow blizzards burn and trace themselves by randomity, by a curious sanction of spells.

SOUJOURN

pass-through                     alight

          heft flex hammock burl

                              flounce

                    flop

          ply

bell overleaf

trill embark

 

the anchor

sinks back

 

into its own

recalcitrance

Heller Levinson is the author of LURE (Black Widow Press, 2022), and lives in New York where he studies animal behavior.

Excerpt from A Spontaneous Prayer, David Hay

Hands broken from blacksmithing the stars, Eltri took a sip of blood falling in perfect tear shaped droplets to stain Gologtha – another god another death he decanted to the young boys’ empty eyes still fascinated by the movement of leaves – he brought no suffering in his time, but his name shall map innumerable atrocities – so deep in sin has man slumped, you can’t even see his arse.

A beggar old, wizened not so much by time but his lifestyle choices – you know being poor, kissed the Messiah’s feet, with each lip touched to his holy dirt he felt his soul anointed by the everlasting spring of heaven.

He went back to his cave and took up a tree branch and in the sand he drew shapes he thought were letters and words until he described with perfection these feelings of sublimation gave him – he sat down with an ox-bladder of wine and drank until his bones were untethered from gravity –  when he woke the wind had erased all his all his transcribed wonders, he then proceeded to throw up on the section written concerning prayer, staggered forward, slipped on his own vomit, fell over, cracked his skull head on a rock he’d never noticed and died.

Down the road a priest was writing a book in a language none of the people understood, laying down in convoluted but poetically stabbed psalms, how to use god’s son to make money and molest children. Either one was desirable.

Jesus spoke to the child through the hole in the tree trunk, ‘never trust men who dress in robes and wear funny hats’ – that should be obvious but it somehow isn’t. 

*

I sprinkled holy water on my syphilitic wounds that crawled away from the light, I expected Jesus’ hand to reach through the clouds and heal my sores

but nothing happened, oh lord only a fool would think it would end differently.

*

In the night, slowly swallowed by the oak tree, a woman and a man are drunk, shouting slag at one another as they stumble from pavement to road, to pavement again. A hedgehog trapped in the shadows by the light of the moon cries and the boy in his fortress of damp wood cries with it. The couple look at each other, shut up and quietly stagger back to their house that contains three bathrooms but only one sink. 

*

You are alone, I am alone and that’s it his mother says while chopping onions. She nicks her thumb and the blood lumps out. This is all your father’s fault she snaps.

*

After much deliberations two teenagers in a friend’s living room drop acid. They look in to each others eyes far too earnestly. He sees himself wearing a wing-suit and jumps out the second floor. As he climbs out, he imagines his body cascading down mountainsides, weightless as light, his nose gently skimming rocks, before flying above a cliff side covered in pines to reveal a small Italian town. He sees another wing-suiter (?) release his parachute to glide him down to the postcard perfect grass. He appears onwards into the town to splat against a rich man’s car – a final fuck you, not to god or the world but to all the dickheads who look like they invest pork directly into their veins. His friend screams his name. The vision and real-life wobble into each other, touching in a sickening way, the kind of touch that brings back that uncle who left his hand too long upon your spine. His foot is at the wrong angle. He stares at it then everything goes black. When he wakes his dad calls him an idiot. If you think you can fly, try taking off from the ground next time. 

*

The sky is full of memories, much like clouds choiring with thunder, the past with its muscles and hammy moustache and black coffee breath forces the blue drowning days of youth to tap out and submit.

Welcome to life boy! He screams before seeing mustard all over his tiny shorts that repulse you more than bestiality. 

*

David Hay was inspired to write after discovering the Romantics, particularly Keats and Shelley, as well as the works of Woolf and Kerouac. His work has been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader,The Babel Tower Notice Board, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press, among others. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021. 

Four Poems, DS Maolalai

Everyone's generous

a park around 7. and sunset.

and march. sun bouncing up 

from the grass at all angles

and this soft falling hill

like a candleflame light 

and a saucer of warm liquid wax. 

some dogs playing chasing.

some people 

sitting out. my god – 

there are times in the world

you'd be generous

to offer a share of.

and everyone's generous,

passing out bottles 

of beer and their loose

of cigarettes. ten-year-olds 

bike riding, teenagers kissing,

a woman, some distance off

reading and smoking 

a joint. and that's 

spring air too, 

and the smell of it

wafting occasionally 

over: like cracked open

greenhouses, 

crowding with mushrooms

on wood. wet scents

and plants mulching. 

composts and 

burning weather.

The iron.

the street fires; flat

as an unironed shirt, and an iron

pressed down, raising steam

in an arrow. now 

it is 8am, morning 

and burning past buildings. 

I drive up clanbrassil st,

rolling like a hot marble

on tarmac and in

between slant beams of sunlight

which fall sideways in shafts

as light does in a church

through tall windows.

a coffee shop open, a newsagent.

a man on a bicycle.

an office block, open

in an hour or so. I push on a pedal;

the world streams behind me

and flat. the street fires – 

creasing in one 

long direction.

Garnish.

peace 

has come rolling 

from branches.

peace is out 

wagging 

the air. 

going to the park

or the countryside.

making some shade

upon avenues. 

a simple relaxation 

of leaves in the sun,

like a garnish

in a drink

and on a south-

facing patio. I roll 

up my sleeves

and walk 

for a while

underneath them.

the skin

on my forearm 

dapples flicked

blacks

like ripples

on a leopard's 

muscled hindleg.

On the seafront in portugal

(and I want to say lisbon,

but it might not have been)

where we saw our first statue 

there the whole trip

after such a long time hiking 

countryside; some poet or patriot – 

someone or other – 

in a market square 

facing some docks

there were boats coming in: 

a scene and an outflow pipe 

pumping continuous under. 

and the water was festering, the water 

was fishes, all crawling oil mackerel-

scale, guppies and something else

brown. the sea lapped like fishscales

with the wet necks of fish,

pressed against the shore

and devouring sewage and run-off. marvelous,

this nature, and hungover. 10 years

ago – 20 years old. like dirt in the pearl 

of a live opened oyster. 

and johanna said gross, and cian

said also; I said it was cool, 

but the wind overruled me 

by suddenly turning and throwing

the air in our mouths. in town

two blocks out from the seafront

we went to a cafe for lunch

and then to a bar. I shit only once

and pissed 4 times in succession,

thinking about fishes

as they chewed into my tide.

DS Maolalai has received ten nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).  

Two Poems, Nick Boyer

To whom it may concern:

I hope all is well. I am writing to follow up on my application for felicity. I spend my days counting the seconds between lightning and thunder, so feel free to contact me anytime.

I applied for the emotion 22 years ago and still have the paperwork (I can attach the certificate in a message if you’d like). See my attached resume for several examples of how bliss has escaped me throughout my tenure here.

Now, I am not a blind man; I see the efforts that were made. But I am still in the cycle, and recently, I have begun to feel less than a gear. And today, today is not a good day. 

I see you brought everything you have; tossing buckets on my window, dimming the day, and laying collared shirt pelts on the path to prosperity. I do not want to prosper, I want to be pacified. I am here, but that is all.

I think about the stale rain droplets all day; I feel for them. They are stagnant and waiting. Are they living in ecstasy? Can you at least answer me that? Are my fingernails in the crevices of my couch glad?

Again, I am writing to follow up on my application. Considering the reasons I listed above, I believe my request for felicity is due. I will follow up in another five years, but after that, who knows? You, probably.

Sincerely,

Nick Boyer

Questions I will ask later

Jogging gray gravel split by yellow paint

Do you feel my feet?

Thin gray cloud puffed and erased

Am I breathing?

Swirling liquid brown old leather couch aroma

Can you warm my insides?

Inked pages passing shreds of the message

Would you spill your secrets?

Honeycomb lungs

Why do I scar you?

Harmony of strings and percussion

Can you feel my beat?

Passing faces shrouded in the day’s mask

Is the mirror clean?

Good sense giggling and grazing legs

Why must I raise my voice?

Pentagon of limbs

Which direction is it now?

Howling city folk

Did you forget the forest?

Untrained steps

Why do I fear you in my sleep?

Black canvas

Why did I only bring ink?

Muse

Why do I feel uninspired?

Flaking ceiling 

Would you hold until I blink?

Bloodied lamb

Why do you look tasty?

Shriveled plant

Why do I pluck you?

Imperfect time

Why do I try to set an alarm?

Vibrant vision

What is your cost?

Mortician 

Can you open my eyes once more?

Nick Boyer is an emerging poet writing in Upstate New York. He recently self-published his debut novel, Steady Progress Home, and his poetry has been published in Taj Mahal Review. More of his writing can be found on the web at poetryforthegrave.com or @poetryforthegrave on Instagram.