Sarah Elizabeth Hall
Chris G. Vaillancourt
Daniel Wilcox
Sarah Elizabeth Hall
.
.
Pardon Me
I am an amnesty.
A type of propaganda
that would make old Tweed
proud-- a sebaceous gland oozing
the lies taught to me
by my forefathers.
I wear their sociopath,
unjudged.
They’ve left me
no company tonight
A nuclear light keeps hope
alive. Iridescent as Saddam
and Gomorrah.
I reside in the mesopotamic
promise that brought us all
together. A collaboration
of fists.
I am the legacy.
A gilded liver
full of your saloon–
collecting for punitive
damages.
Until I casually paw
at your broken door.
Wanting more.
Wanting more.
Bio:
I am currently an MA Literature student at the University of South Florida holding a BA in Creative Writing and an undergraduate certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I have traveled Northern America at length and have lived in Hawaii, Florida, and North Carolina.
(author retains copyright)
.
Pardon Me
I am an amnesty.
A type of propaganda
that would make old Tweed
proud-- a sebaceous gland oozing
the lies taught to me
by my forefathers.
I wear their sociopath,
unjudged.
They’ve left me
no company tonight
A nuclear light keeps hope
alive. Iridescent as Saddam
and Gomorrah.
I reside in the mesopotamic
promise that brought us all
together. A collaboration
of fists.
I am the legacy.
A gilded liver
full of your saloon–
collecting for punitive
damages.
Until I casually paw
at your broken door.
Wanting more.
Wanting more.
Bio:
I am currently an MA Literature student at the University of South Florida holding a BA in Creative Writing and an undergraduate certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. I have traveled Northern America at length and have lived in Hawaii, Florida, and North Carolina.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Chris G. Vaillancourt
.
.
Intellectual Space Tripper
If people were forced
to eat what they killed
there would be no more wars.
If we were compelled to
obey the words of Jesus
there would be
no starvation
no aggravation
no hatred
We would live in peace.
Our values are strange.
You are not real until
you have a piece of paper
declaring that you have been born.
As you grow older
the pile of paper increases
and indicates the control
that is exercised over us all.
We live in one large armed camp
that devours the idealism of youth
trapping us in credit and debts.
We have possessions, but we do
not have peace.
Violence on the streets
is blamed on the poor.
The rich man hides in his
fortress and complains about
the race problem; the drug problem;
the unemployment problem;
the homeless problem.
His answer to the 'problems' is
to increase his home security.
He lives in splendour but
he does not know peace.
The conservative element thinks
the movement amongst people
for peace comes from the enemy.
The ideology of change is foreign.
Instead it is preferred that chains
be increased over the minds
of the people under their feet.
Exploitation of resources is known
as economic security.
The answer to anarchy is to collect the
young men and send them off
to fight in a war.
They make speeches, but still
we do not have peace.
The moral code of the world
has deserted into a state of anarchy.
Chaos rules our cities and drugs
inhibit our will to be free.
Our universities have been
conditioned not to educate, instead
to turn out more drones for the hive
The mindset is that a degree is
only used to create employment.
There is fear in educating the masses
to their capability to be free.
The entire game is to create divisions
that set one group against another.
Fight in wars that are not ours
and dream of flags and medals
as something to be desired.
Preparations are underway to
implant methods to destroy
our collective will to breath.
It is a strange sort of world
that calls itself free
when death
stalks our cities.
If people were forced
to eat what they killed
there would be no more wars.
We would have peace.
Bio:
Chris G. Vaillancourt has been involved in the art of writing as long as he can remember. Chris is a Canadian poet who has enjoyed publication in numerous small poetry magazines and newsletters,such as Pagan Lady Poetry Journal, The Inkling; The Lance; Opussum Review; Red Dragon; Poesia International; Plum Ruby Review; Windsor Star; Quills, Poetry Sharings, Poesy, Poetry Stop, Detour Memphis,and a host of other print and ezine publications.. He has enjoyed the publication of several chapbooks of his poetry, such titles as "Doors And Windows" (4 Winds Press) and "teardrop of Coloured Soul" (PublishAmerica) Currently his new book, "I Walk Naked Into A Cloud" is set to be relased in the next few months. He has a BA in Psychology from the University of Windsor and a Diploma in Sacerdotal Ministry from the Saint Andrew Theological Institute. Chris lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
(author retains copyright)
.
Intellectual Space Tripper
If people were forced
to eat what they killed
there would be no more wars.
If we were compelled to
obey the words of Jesus
there would be
no starvation
no aggravation
no hatred
We would live in peace.
Our values are strange.
You are not real until
you have a piece of paper
declaring that you have been born.
As you grow older
the pile of paper increases
and indicates the control
that is exercised over us all.
We live in one large armed camp
that devours the idealism of youth
trapping us in credit and debts.
We have possessions, but we do
not have peace.
Violence on the streets
is blamed on the poor.
The rich man hides in his
fortress and complains about
the race problem; the drug problem;
the unemployment problem;
the homeless problem.
His answer to the 'problems' is
to increase his home security.
He lives in splendour but
he does not know peace.
The conservative element thinks
the movement amongst people
for peace comes from the enemy.
The ideology of change is foreign.
Instead it is preferred that chains
be increased over the minds
of the people under their feet.
Exploitation of resources is known
as economic security.
The answer to anarchy is to collect the
young men and send them off
to fight in a war.
They make speeches, but still
we do not have peace.
The moral code of the world
has deserted into a state of anarchy.
Chaos rules our cities and drugs
inhibit our will to be free.
Our universities have been
conditioned not to educate, instead
to turn out more drones for the hive
The mindset is that a degree is
only used to create employment.
There is fear in educating the masses
to their capability to be free.
The entire game is to create divisions
that set one group against another.
Fight in wars that are not ours
and dream of flags and medals
as something to be desired.
Preparations are underway to
implant methods to destroy
our collective will to breath.
It is a strange sort of world
that calls itself free
when death
stalks our cities.
If people were forced
to eat what they killed
there would be no more wars.
We would have peace.
Bio:
Chris G. Vaillancourt has been involved in the art of writing as long as he can remember. Chris is a Canadian poet who has enjoyed publication in numerous small poetry magazines and newsletters,such as Pagan Lady Poetry Journal, The Inkling; The Lance; Opussum Review; Red Dragon; Poesia International; Plum Ruby Review; Windsor Star; Quills, Poetry Sharings, Poesy, Poetry Stop, Detour Memphis,and a host of other print and ezine publications.. He has enjoyed the publication of several chapbooks of his poetry, such titles as "Doors And Windows" (4 Winds Press) and "teardrop of Coloured Soul" (PublishAmerica) Currently his new book, "I Walk Naked Into A Cloud" is set to be relased in the next few months. He has a BA in Psychology from the University of Windsor and a Diploma in Sacerdotal Ministry from the Saint Andrew Theological Institute. Chris lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Daniel Wilcox
.
.
To Whom It Does Not Concern:
Dear Monarch, Sovereign, etc.,
I hear that you pardoned
Another girl so troubled,
Raped; 'so it ever goes'
In your modern country;
What if I don't quite
Admire your travesty?
For her being in a vehicle
With a man not her kin,
She's only to be lashed
And imprisoned because
Of a gang rape by seven.
How generous of your lowness
Down from the basement
Below the fires of the burning.
So, if I don't bow to your Law,
Pardon me—surely you won't
Since I'm an infidel which in your script
Means hell to pay of the holocaust sort.
But when are you going to ever stop
Blaming innocent ones for the acts
Of religious men's defiling preys?
Sincerely not,
For your generosity to Miriam.
Bio:
Daniel Wilcox, a former activist, teacher, and wanderer--from Nebraska to the Middle East--casts his lines out upon the world's turbulent waters and wide shores in Counterexample Poetics, Moria, The November Third Club, Tipton Poetry Journal, Lunarosity, The New Verse News, The Recusant, etc. His book of poetry, Dark Energy, was published in 2009 by Diminuendo Press. "The Faces of Stone" based on his time in the Middle East, appeared in both The Danforth Review and Danse Macabre. Daniel lives with a speculative novel The Feeling of the Earth, poems of Psalms, Yawps, and Howls, and his mystery-loving wife, on the central coast of California. Website: http://seaquaker.com
(author retains copyright)
.
To Whom It Does Not Concern:
Dear Monarch, Sovereign, etc.,
I hear that you pardoned
Another girl so troubled,
Raped; 'so it ever goes'
In your modern country;
What if I don't quite
Admire your travesty?
For her being in a vehicle
With a man not her kin,
She's only to be lashed
And imprisoned because
Of a gang rape by seven.
How generous of your lowness
Down from the basement
Below the fires of the burning.
So, if I don't bow to your Law,
Pardon me—surely you won't
Since I'm an infidel which in your script
Means hell to pay of the holocaust sort.
But when are you going to ever stop
Blaming innocent ones for the acts
Of religious men's defiling preys?
Sincerely not,
For your generosity to Miriam.
Bio:
Daniel Wilcox, a former activist, teacher, and wanderer--from Nebraska to the Middle East--casts his lines out upon the world's turbulent waters and wide shores in Counterexample Poetics, Moria, The November Third Club, Tipton Poetry Journal, Lunarosity, The New Verse News, The Recusant, etc. His book of poetry, Dark Energy, was published in 2009 by Diminuendo Press. "The Faces of Stone" based on his time in the Middle East, appeared in both The Danforth Review and Danse Macabre. Daniel lives with a speculative novel The Feeling of the Earth, poems of Psalms, Yawps, and Howls, and his mystery-loving wife, on the central coast of California. Website: http://seaquaker.com
(author retains copyright)
Return
Carol Berg
.
.
Abu Ghraib
Some might say it is not polite to watch
the skin pull itself apart, or the red
wet wound, or for the body to interrogate
itself. But you must watch.
You are not permitted to help.
The preparations: select, pinch
fold and compress. The stretching
and the pulling down. Gravity
with its scraping teeth, with its
twirl & squish.
The slow control of the juice
hardening into crust. A technique
others cannot understand.
A technique with regard
to the bite. The chew.
Bio:
I have poems forthcoming or in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Rhino, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Tattoo Highway, and elsewhere. I have my MFA from Stonecoast and have an MA in English Literature. I also work part-time as a Writing Tutor at Pine Manor College.
(author retains copyright)
.
Abu Ghraib
Some might say it is not polite to watch
the skin pull itself apart, or the red
wet wound, or for the body to interrogate
itself. But you must watch.
You are not permitted to help.
The preparations: select, pinch
fold and compress. The stretching
and the pulling down. Gravity
with its scraping teeth, with its
twirl & squish.
The slow control of the juice
hardening into crust. A technique
others cannot understand.
A technique with regard
to the bite. The chew.
Bio:
I have poems forthcoming or in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Rhino, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Tattoo Highway, and elsewhere. I have my MFA from Stonecoast and have an MA in English Literature. I also work part-time as a Writing Tutor at Pine Manor College.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Rajasvini Bhansali
.
.
Beedi
as your fingers flaunt
this funnel-shaped fashion statement
slim one-hundred percent
exotic
organic
hand-rolled Indian
cigarette called beedi
I ask you to consider
a six-year old
paying back his father’s fourteen dollar loan
his sister’s dowry
his own freedom condemned to a one room industry
for the next four, five or maybe ten years
indigenous handicrafts?
well
he carried his father’s debt
beaten each day with the edge
of a sharp crooked stick
till he bleeds
to make one bonus beedi
over his quota of fifteen hundred
till he bleeds
to roll his childhood
in smoke
as your fingers flick into ashes
his twenty hour workday
Bio:
Rajasvini Bhansali is passionate about building the capacity of people and grassroots organizations to facilitate sustainable social change through transnational organizing, art, conversation and resources and has lived and worked in Kenya, India, United States and Canada. She currently works as a program officer for a social change funder called International Development Exchange based in San Francisco that supports grassroots organizations and social movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Born and raised in India, she immigrated to the United States in 1993 and became a student teacher poet with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley. This experience had her teaching poetry to prisoners, homeless people and youth. In Austin, Texas, she worked with Sharon Bridgforth’s Finding Voice project and started a workshop series for multiethnic youth organizers called Poets on the Frontlines at Resistencia Bookstore. She’s written, published and performed poetry since 1995. She is currently working on her book titled Impermanent Resident.
(author retains copyright)
.
Beedi
as your fingers flaunt
this funnel-shaped fashion statement
slim one-hundred percent
exotic
organic
hand-rolled Indian
cigarette called beedi
I ask you to consider
a six-year old
paying back his father’s fourteen dollar loan
his sister’s dowry
his own freedom condemned to a one room industry
for the next four, five or maybe ten years
indigenous handicrafts?
well
he carried his father’s debt
beaten each day with the edge
of a sharp crooked stick
till he bleeds
to make one bonus beedi
over his quota of fifteen hundred
till he bleeds
to roll his childhood
in smoke
as your fingers flick into ashes
his twenty hour workday
Bio:
Rajasvini Bhansali is passionate about building the capacity of people and grassroots organizations to facilitate sustainable social change through transnational organizing, art, conversation and resources and has lived and worked in Kenya, India, United States and Canada. She currently works as a program officer for a social change funder called International Development Exchange based in San Francisco that supports grassroots organizations and social movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Born and raised in India, she immigrated to the United States in 1993 and became a student teacher poet with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley. This experience had her teaching poetry to prisoners, homeless people and youth. In Austin, Texas, she worked with Sharon Bridgforth’s Finding Voice project and started a workshop series for multiethnic youth organizers called Poets on the Frontlines at Resistencia Bookstore. She’s written, published and performed poetry since 1995. She is currently working on her book titled Impermanent Resident.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Kathy Briccetti
.
.
Incongruity
You, the man in the darkened storefront doorway, spit the words, “Fuckin’ Lezzies,” and when she and I were a block away and my heart had settled, I thought, what do you know? You were gray with dirt and grease, and your words slipped out sloshy and you stunk of unwashed hair and exhaled hootch. She and I were walking home from the movies, walking at a clip because it was later than we liked to be out at night downtown, even though there were two of us, even though nothing had happened before.
You think you recognized in a glance who we were to each other when we passed your cardboard divan that night. We were not holding hands, we did not have boy haircuts, wear work boots. We did not walk bowlegged or with particular heaviness. Was it our purposeful strides? Our synchronized gaits? Did we walk a little too close to each other? Maybe you spit those words at all women parading by your boudoir. If the shoe fits.
Don’t you realize in what town you’re shacking up, dude? This is Berkeley, man, you know, Bezerkeley, and here in Berkeley you don’t spit out that word or the others. Fag. Queer. Butch. Dike. I don’t call you a fucking homeless squatter alky or call the cops to run you out of town. Who the hell are you calling me a Lezzie? Or anything. Anything at all.
Bio:
Kathy Briccetti’s memoir, BLOOD STRANGERS, is forthcoming from Heyday Books (spring 2010). Her essays, opinion pieces, poetry, and book reviews have been published in Sojourn; Under the Sun; Dos Passos Review; upstreet number three; So to Speak: A feminist journal of language and art; The Bark, Literary Mama, Chicago Tribune; The Writer; San Francisco Chronicle Magazine; hip Mama; Brain, Child; Teaching Tolerance and others. She has read her essays on public radio, and her work has appeared in several anthologies including The Maternal is Political (Seal Press, 2008); The Writing Group Book (Chicago Review Press, 2003); and The Essential Hip Mama (Seal Press, 2004). Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, and a residency at the Vermont Studio Center.
(author retains copyright)
.
Incongruity
You, the man in the darkened storefront doorway, spit the words, “Fuckin’ Lezzies,” and when she and I were a block away and my heart had settled, I thought, what do you know? You were gray with dirt and grease, and your words slipped out sloshy and you stunk of unwashed hair and exhaled hootch. She and I were walking home from the movies, walking at a clip because it was later than we liked to be out at night downtown, even though there were two of us, even though nothing had happened before.
You think you recognized in a glance who we were to each other when we passed your cardboard divan that night. We were not holding hands, we did not have boy haircuts, wear work boots. We did not walk bowlegged or with particular heaviness. Was it our purposeful strides? Our synchronized gaits? Did we walk a little too close to each other? Maybe you spit those words at all women parading by your boudoir. If the shoe fits.
Don’t you realize in what town you’re shacking up, dude? This is Berkeley, man, you know, Bezerkeley, and here in Berkeley you don’t spit out that word or the others. Fag. Queer. Butch. Dike. I don’t call you a fucking homeless squatter alky or call the cops to run you out of town. Who the hell are you calling me a Lezzie? Or anything. Anything at all.
Bio:
Kathy Briccetti’s memoir, BLOOD STRANGERS, is forthcoming from Heyday Books (spring 2010). Her essays, opinion pieces, poetry, and book reviews have been published in Sojourn; Under the Sun; Dos Passos Review; upstreet number three; So to Speak: A feminist journal of language and art; The Bark, Literary Mama, Chicago Tribune; The Writer; San Francisco Chronicle Magazine; hip Mama; Brain, Child; Teaching Tolerance and others. She has read her essays on public radio, and her work has appeared in several anthologies including The Maternal is Political (Seal Press, 2008); The Writing Group Book (Chicago Review Press, 2003); and The Essential Hip Mama (Seal Press, 2004). Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, and a residency at the Vermont Studio Center.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Lee Schwartz
.
.
Gay Sheep
There’s a lab off the Pacific Highway
where they snare gay sheep, turn them straight,
no more wooly love come dragging
by the top edge of the hill.
Injecting gay sheep with estrogen
to keep the natural order,:
replant fences and implant desire,
to plump them up for slaughter chops.
We play God in the garden
while most species in the wild are choked,
the salmon have lost their way,
snared in black tarry waters, the seal extinct.
The future is drawn in plastic buckets,
genes in savings deposit vaults,
tinkering with nature’s Gameboy,
creating dwarf melons, mating grapes.
What does man want to extol
that Thoreau has not celebrated,
while we go sheep shopping at the Gap,
admiring every hanger of iceberg lettuce.
Don’t tell me who to love,
Don’t legislate my heart to fall on blue or brown eyes,
I am not your coal mine or your cornfield,
I will choose whose lips to warm.
And the sheep with the coarse and wiry coat?
Wouldn’t we prefer sleek and glossy?
What about seeing eye cats? Faster turtles?
Deer that don’t stop in the headlights?
You go down that long Pacific highway
and build a Sparta to keep up with the trends,
see if you can weed out the gene that pulls the trigger,
rapes women, and votes Republican.
Bio:
Ms. Lee Schwartz likes to explore her world from the handlebars of her English racer. Her daughter just started Smith college and she's enjoying her second home with her husband in Great Barrington. She has published in several small journals and been a poet in residence at the 92nd St. Y. You can find her reading at the Bowery Poetry Club/ KGB Bar and Blue Stockings in downtown NYC. She is a winner of the Patterson Literary Review Allen Ginsberg Award 2008 and 2009.
(author retains copyright)
.
Gay Sheep
There’s a lab off the Pacific Highway
where they snare gay sheep, turn them straight,
no more wooly love come dragging
by the top edge of the hill.
Injecting gay sheep with estrogen
to keep the natural order,:
replant fences and implant desire,
to plump them up for slaughter chops.
We play God in the garden
while most species in the wild are choked,
the salmon have lost their way,
snared in black tarry waters, the seal extinct.
The future is drawn in plastic buckets,
genes in savings deposit vaults,
tinkering with nature’s Gameboy,
creating dwarf melons, mating grapes.
What does man want to extol
that Thoreau has not celebrated,
while we go sheep shopping at the Gap,
admiring every hanger of iceberg lettuce.
Don’t tell me who to love,
Don’t legislate my heart to fall on blue or brown eyes,
I am not your coal mine or your cornfield,
I will choose whose lips to warm.
And the sheep with the coarse and wiry coat?
Wouldn’t we prefer sleek and glossy?
What about seeing eye cats? Faster turtles?
Deer that don’t stop in the headlights?
You go down that long Pacific highway
and build a Sparta to keep up with the trends,
see if you can weed out the gene that pulls the trigger,
rapes women, and votes Republican.
Bio:
Ms. Lee Schwartz likes to explore her world from the handlebars of her English racer. Her daughter just started Smith college and she's enjoying her second home with her husband in Great Barrington. She has published in several small journals and been a poet in residence at the 92nd St. Y. You can find her reading at the Bowery Poetry Club/ KGB Bar and Blue Stockings in downtown NYC. She is a winner of the Patterson Literary Review Allen Ginsberg Award 2008 and 2009.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Peter Branson
.
.
Alien
Blatant of cleavage, belly, sleek soft thigh,
unwittingly full blast, young girls broadcast
‘available’. We’re cool with that yet don’t
like cover ups. Well under five per cent
wear burkas anyway. Why not men too?
You didn’t find the nuns who hounded you
through primary school bizarre, except, sky-high
on chastity, that cold sadistic look.
No need to fret about make up or hair.
Recall headscarf and rollers worn to work?
More subtle too: by wanton wind divined,
exotic lingerie, underexposed,
kissing that cool silk skin. Can’t see their eyes:
should we trust sculpted looks or what’s inside?
Enduring Freedom
August 2009
“Three children playing with a shell were blown
to bits in Helmand Province yesterday.”
Back home three others mourn a father’s death.
“Murder of innocence!” the headline shouts.
“Where is he now?” one asks. “In heaven, love,”
they say. “With freedom there’s a price to pay.”
Everything’s relative, God only knows.
Will it bear fruit, this cross of sacrifice?
The town is quietened while the piper plays
Amazing Grace. Along High Street, folk pause,
watch loved ones toss red roses at the hearse,
turn back into their lives. Graveside, Last Post
is sounding, drowns in silence at flood tide.
Six riflemen fire blanks. There’s no reply.
Bio:
Peter Branson lives in Rode Heath, a village in South Cheshire, England. A former teacher and lecturer, he now organises writing workshops. Until recently he was Writer-in-residence for “All Write” run by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries. Over the last four years he has had work published, or accepted for publication, by many mainstream poetry journals in Britain, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Magma, The London Magazine, Iota, 14, Fire, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar, Red Ink, the Recusant and Other Poetry. He has also had poems published in USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand. In the last two years he has had success in poetry competitions including, more recently, a first prize in The Envoi International, a second place in The Writing Magazine Open and highly-commendeds in The Petra Kenney and The Speakeasy. His first collection, “The Accidental Tourist”, was published in May 2008. He is about to have an E book published by ‘The Recusant’.
.
Alien
Blatant of cleavage, belly, sleek soft thigh,
unwittingly full blast, young girls broadcast
‘available’. We’re cool with that yet don’t
like cover ups. Well under five per cent
wear burkas anyway. Why not men too?
You didn’t find the nuns who hounded you
through primary school bizarre, except, sky-high
on chastity, that cold sadistic look.
No need to fret about make up or hair.
Recall headscarf and rollers worn to work?
More subtle too: by wanton wind divined,
exotic lingerie, underexposed,
kissing that cool silk skin. Can’t see their eyes:
should we trust sculpted looks or what’s inside?
Enduring Freedom
August 2009
“Three children playing with a shell were blown
to bits in Helmand Province yesterday.”
Back home three others mourn a father’s death.
“Murder of innocence!” the headline shouts.
“Where is he now?” one asks. “In heaven, love,”
they say. “With freedom there’s a price to pay.”
Everything’s relative, God only knows.
Will it bear fruit, this cross of sacrifice?
The town is quietened while the piper plays
Amazing Grace. Along High Street, folk pause,
watch loved ones toss red roses at the hearse,
turn back into their lives. Graveside, Last Post
is sounding, drowns in silence at flood tide.
Six riflemen fire blanks. There’s no reply.
Bio:
Peter Branson lives in Rode Heath, a village in South Cheshire, England. A former teacher and lecturer, he now organises writing workshops. Until recently he was Writer-in-residence for “All Write” run by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries. Over the last four years he has had work published, or accepted for publication, by many mainstream poetry journals in Britain, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Magma, The London Magazine, Iota, 14, Fire, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar, Red Ink, the Recusant and Other Poetry. He has also had poems published in USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand. In the last two years he has had success in poetry competitions including, more recently, a first prize in The Envoi International, a second place in The Writing Magazine Open and highly-commendeds in The Petra Kenney and The Speakeasy. His first collection, “The Accidental Tourist”, was published in May 2008. He is about to have an E book published by ‘The Recusant’.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Stephen Williams
.
.
No Man's Land
You're shaking,
mumbling on
barren plain of smoldering
stumps,
distant city
smoking ruins,
river full
boiling ash,
burnt boots,
hanging rags,
coughing hoarse,
chewing blood,
you survived the blast,
doomsday bomb,
searching mile after mile,
no woman to touch,
no holy house,
no sacred word.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared here and there and in-between...
.
No Man's Land
You're shaking,
mumbling on
barren plain of smoldering
stumps,
distant city
smoking ruins,
river full
boiling ash,
burnt boots,
hanging rags,
coughing hoarse,
chewing blood,
you survived the blast,
doomsday bomb,
searching mile after mile,
no woman to touch,
no holy house,
no sacred word.
Bio:
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared here and there and in-between...
(author retains copyright)
Return
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