Bio:

Allan Lake, originally from Canada, has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton, Ibiza, Tasmania, W.Australia and Melbourne. Lake has won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp, Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Festival & publication in NewPhilosopher. Latest poetry chapbook (Ginninderra Press) ‘My Photos of Sicily’. Literary journals in 17 countries have now published his poems.

St Joni Works St Kilda

In an age of aging orphans, pandemic, wars and disillusion, I tune into news on beleaguered national broadcaster or what’s left of it after cruel cuts. Some mornings – clouds unleashing on several fronts – nothing specific goes wrong but you're poised for a poisoning. Might’ve stayed in saggy bed but that can do your head so I hazard fried egg, which has been known to fix everything. It fixes nothing. Slinking away from days of dirty dishes, I venture to Galleon for coffee, queue at oh-so-hip cafe where I forgot dogeared notebook…

M F Drummy is the author of numerous articles, essays, reviews, haiku, poetry, and a monograph (Being and Earth). His work has appeared or will appear in 3 Sisters, Mayfly, The Mainichi Daily Express, Worldviews, Connecticut Review, Shamrock, Sciences Religieuses, Eunoia Review, Sacred Heart University Review,Frogpond, and Allium. He and his wife of nearly 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. He can be found at: Twitter @mdrummy56 Instagram @miguelito.drummalino Website https://bespoke-poet.com

Memoir I noticed the book on the coffee table: a paperback with an intriguing title. But it was just one of those many recent memoirs, written by a woman raised by a pair of abusive alcoholics who had somehow endured it all, more or less intact. There was a piece of paper lodged in the middle of the book with some scribbled notes on…

Eggplant Strategy is Clive’s collection of new poems and reworked former poems, some of which were first published in the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Eggplant Strategy is his strategy for the UK running counter to that put forward by Liz Truss and later Rishi Sunak. He realises though the PM’s still hard at work on the five pledges.

Statues (from New Note Poetry) https://www.newnotepoetry.com/autumn-2022 (from August last year)

Statutes

 fractured howls
delayed warnings
(brass coppers)
left on beaches
slight hint of trumpets distil the air
 
across deserts of seas
dislodging sandcastles
discontented rabid capitalists
collect forms from the autopsies
 
 
rewinding giant spheres
mere calligraphy
another monument grazed

Clive Gresswell is a 64-year-old innovative writer and poet who has appeared in many mags from BlazeVOX to Poetry Wars and Tears in the Fence. He is the author of five poetry books…

Blasphemous Sins (in Leeds)

She's dressed in black, but there is a reason she is called a Snow White The flirt, frills to the dark rooms, the candles, the spells a Reflection in a mirror of seeing her instead of yourself. She's got the sleaze standing over your head like a banshee. Questions in Leeds, a tragic love did it bloom? A passion fierce, was it a tale worth told. Is there silence to resting over the tea and the dead eyed stares. A love burned from the behaviors of flowers to dead soldiers. I feel like I'm a wire on a last spark, and you trivial yourself back from a woman to the seashore of a child's eyes. It ends in sorrow, don't you know. She was a wild one, with bright red hair. A bewitching glance, a dress, a feast. a friend a foe, a song for you…

Mineral Wells

As she sat on the porch of the old country cabin in Mineral Wells, Texas, she couldn't help but feel haunted by memories of her sister. The sound of Patsy Cline's voice playing on the radio in the background only added to the melancholy atmosphere. She wasn't sure why she had come back to this place, the place where she and her sister had spent so many summers together as children. But as she sat there listening to the gentle rustling of the pine needles in the breeze, she began to remember the good times. She remembered how her sister used to recite poetry to her from her leather-bound journal, and how they would spend hours exploring the woods behind the cabin, collecting rocks and wildflowers. It was bittersweet to think about those days now, but she was grateful for the memories. And as she sat there, she…