by Joseph Fasano | Apr 21, 2023 | 2023 Reviews, Poetry
When you find yourself alone
without a winter coat,
when mourning holds you open
with its fierce grace,
when you find out that every life
is a ghost story,
you can wade out through the garden
of the darkness
and lie down and look up
at the wild stars,
the silent flames that cradled you
in childhood
and which, because their dying light
survives them, tell you that the distances
are infinite, that the ghosts that hold you
are hands that vanished long ago,
and that no one, no one close is on their way.
Only you can reach your life in time.
Joseph Fasano is an American poet, novelist, and songwriter. His novels include The Swallows of Lunetto (Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the “Best Small Press Books of 2020.” His books of poetry include The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013), which was nominated for the Poets’ Prize. His honors include the Rattle Poetry Prize, the Cider Press Review Book Award, and seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His work has been widely translated and anthologized, most recently in The Forward Book of Poetry 2022 (Faber and Faber). He is the host of the Daily Poetry Thread on Twitter at @Joseph_Fasano_.
Kerry Lush is a photographer, designer, and stylist living in Queensland, Australia. Her work can be viewed on Facebook at Lush Creations https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066787272286 and on Instagram at hybrid_queen_photography.
by Zama Madinana | Apr 21, 2023 | 2023 Reviews, Poetry
Lullaby for Anokuhle
sweet child of the moon
resurrect the flames
of hope with your divine smiles
when diabetes
creates despair
paint me love
with your pure eyes
in this city
that knows
no peace
where tattered dreams
of black youth
are forgotten
your voice is a melody
that drowns out
sounds of gunshots
in our streets
Blues for an Illegal Miner
it is darkness
that knows the rhythm
of your fear
it is dust
that knows the landscape
of your skin
when you face
death
straight in the eye
it is the bowels
of the earth
that know your hunger
Illing Road
the air
wears
the assorted scents
of umuthi
battle with fruits
& vegetables
on the pavement
and a tavern
coughs out
drunks
with wet gullets
but dried pockets
isiphithiphithi
buses swallowing up
black men
& women
from various
places
of exploitation
Notes:
Umuthi may be translated from the Zulu, in this context, as herbs used in traditional medicine. Isiphithiphithi may be translated as chaos or tumult.
Zama Madinana is a South African poet, based in Johannesburg. His work has appeared in The Shallow Tales Review, Stanzas, Africanwriter, Poetry Potion and other literary publications. His poems have been published in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and the USA. Zama’s work focuses mainly on love, politics and social issues. In 2021, he won the third prize of Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award. His poetry chapbook, Water & Lights was published in June 2021. He has performed his poetry in various places including Botswana, Mozambique, and Lesotho.
Mongezi Ncombo was born in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. He studied Visual Art and Design at Central Johannesburg College. In 2010 he enrolled at the Artist Proof Studio, completing his studies in 2012. He works in mixed media and his work is composed of acrylic drawing ink, paint, and old postage stamp collage. Using abstract impressionism and realistic cubism, he recomposes patterns to project scenarios of urban and rural life. Since 2010, Mongezi has taken part in many prestigious exhibitions He is a participant in the Spier Arts Trust Mentorship Programme, and he is currently artist-in-residence at the Modern Art Project, South Africa. He also manages the Richmond Bookbinding Project.
by Jane Burn | Apr 21, 2023 | Feature 2023, Poetry
something of unbearable consequence something massive, like
the abscission of daffodils (in a green glass vase on a windowsill)
and the way they embody a matter of great importance possibly
the sadness of the ageing process beauty’s brief skin or
our inevitable deaths otherwise
it runs the risk of being just another poem about flowers Just
another poem about their overwhelming scent their dust
spent for no reason impotent on the sill’s embroidered cloth
The water’s false hope of life everlasting The unquenchable thirst
that their poor yellow heads will never understand This must not be
just another poem about wilting or confusion at the absence
of rain that they somehow still sense their petals slanted
toward the day, politely asking for light My mother
hated me, I tell them They answer yes, my dear. We know
Jane Burn is a working class, pansexual, autistic person, poet, artist and essayist, who lives with her family in an off-grid rural community for eight months of the year. Places in which her essays have appeared include the Rebecca Swift Foundation, Persona Journal, The Friday Poem and The Alchemy Spoon. Since 2014, Jane’s poems have won, been placed, shortlisted, or longlisted in seventy competitions. Her poems are widely published, in magazines such as The Rialto, Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog and Poetry London, as well as being anthologised by presses including Seren, Arachne Press, Broken Sleep and Macmillan. Jane has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University, where she was awarded the 2022 academic prize for best overall performance. In 2022, Jane explored her neurodivergent writer’s thoughts and theories, funded by Arts Council England, and is currently putting these ideas into a book. In 2023 she was awarded a grant by the Royal Literary Fund. Jane is currently part of the Wonky Animals Poetry Collective. Her pamphlets and collections have been published by Indigo Dreams, Wyrd Harvest, KFS Press, Talking Pen and BLERoom Press. Her latest collection, Be Feared, is available from Nine Arches. She hosts workshops both in person and online.
Richard Thomson is a South African multi-disciplinary artist who composes different art forms together, depicting different versions of the same story. It’s always the story of humanity yearning for peace, love, and unity. What it means to be in this dualistic world. How to encode the light shining from Source and anchor it here and now through creativity. He has shown work at the Aardklop Festival and at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival. Experience some more of his creations here: www.themondayclub.net.
by Joseph Hope | Apr 21, 2023 | 2023 Reviews, Poetry
You’ve lived so long inside the empty house, you go nuts: light beams ricochet off the wall,
becoming something from your past—maybe a younger you, innocent and stubborn, writing
wishes with your milk tooth. A glowing girl walks in through the wall, you cry with your face buried deep inside her flawless palm. Your father drops in through the aluminium roof.
You show him your bruised heels, telling him you are trying your best to become a man. Before he evaporates, you see him opening your letter of regrets. You see dust arrange
miraculously into the images of some old acquittance—someone is chasing you with a flower, another with a knife. Something rattles like a chain, but then you look again
and see your mother’s scarf around your wrist. Isolated long enough, you start seeing the empty house getting filled with people, some come without a face or address.
Some are well dressed like a mannequin on display, some come through the door, and some sprout through the cemented floor like grass. Isolated long enough, you start to notice the dry
veins in your wooden table, and that water follows when the table was still a tree. The gap between the door and the floor through which some insects made it into your room.
That family of spiders that have taken abode under your mahogany chair. You walk around the empty spaces pretending you’re the leader
of an invisible pack of wolves. Waking every day just to haunt yourself.
Joseph Hope is an essayist and poet. He writes from Nigeria, West Africa. His works are forthcoming or already published in Christian Science Monitor, Augur, Stormbird, SolarPunk, Riddlebird, Reckoning, The Sun Press, Wizard In Space, Speculative City, Timber Ghost Press, IBUA, SprinNG, Evening Street Press, Zoetic Press, New Verse News, and more. His poem was shortlisted for the IBUA: bold continental call 2022. He’s a reader for Reckoning Press. He was a fellow in the 2021 SprinNG Writing Fellowship. Author’s page: https://mssg.me/3j5ka. He tweets @ItzJoe9, IG: _hope_joseph_writingpoetry.
Richard Thomson is a South African multi-disciplinary artist who composes different art forms together, depicting different versions of the same story. It’s always the story of humanity yearning for peace, love, and unity. What it means to be in this dualistic world. How to encode the light shining from Source and anchor it here and now through creativity. He has shown work at the Aardklop Festival and at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival. Experience some more of his creations here: www.themondayclub.net.
by Jenna Le | Apr 21, 2023 | 2023 Reviews, Poetry
I crumple marriage offers made by fishermen,
masons, bakers of brioche, for I know
my consecration is to marry the
great Van Gogh. Look at history and see
men of genius wrecked before there is
the chance for one brave girl to swoop down, dangerous
to his enemies and doubters, the
critics and hecklers, and save him from that storm.
My love shall be his shield, prevent the terrible.
No shy virgin, I’ve seen four decades; they
have handled me the way some clumsy half-
cocked violin restorer does a never-
again-same harp. I know the score. I found
Vincent living with his mother in these
snake-filled backwoods, where gossips embroider the dangers
of his past romancing of a whore. Sufficient
to say I’m not scared off. Inside me, too,
there is a prostitute and a barkeep,
a seamstress and a siren and a shore.
Notes:
In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote about Margot Begemann, briefly his fiancée, “It’s a pity I didn’t meet her earlier—say 10 years ago or so. Now she gives me the impression of a Cremona violin that’s been spoiled in the past by bad bunglers of restorers.” He ended their relationship the same year it began. Margot drank poison but recovered.
This poem, first published in SWIMM, also appears in Jenna’s collection Manatee Lagoon; it is included here by permission of the author.
Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), an Elgin Awards Second Place winner, voted on by the international membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022). Her poems appear in AGNI, Verse Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. A daughter of Vietnamese refugees, she has a B.A. in mathematics and an M.D. and works as a physician and educator in New York City.
Kerry Lush is a photographer, designer, and stylist living in Queensland, Australia. Her work can be viewed on Facebook at Lush Creations https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066787272286 and on Instagram at hybrid_queen_photography.
by Sarah Frost | Apr 21, 2023 | 2023 Reviews, Poetry
Absence
I taught myself to live without him,
an orphan sorting through rubbish for scraps.
Crippled, I fashioned crutches from
my own insights, hobbling forlorn through
shameful streets, begging for change.
I was a gecko wriggling away from a cat’s sharp claws.
Stump-tailed, I waited, knowing it would grow back.
I mouthed words in the dreadful silence:
‘I need help’, ‘I love’, my voice a late-night phone
ringing unanswered in a home a world away.
Honeymoon (Mirabilis)
After the wedding vows –
sweet as lilies in our mouths,
the speeches having been made
from behind the long table,
and a ring made of lapis and gold
tight around my finger –
we drove two provinces,
switching coastal green for Namibia’s sand.
We pitched a tent under wintry quiver trees,
its sides fluttering flimsy in the desert air.
That first night, I couldn’t sleep,
lay there listening to my husband’s breath,
raspy as the branches moving against each other outside.
A million stars above us spilled their light
across black ink, our fire’s coals hissing as they cooled.
So old this place, and us so new
joining each other in an arduous journey,
the end of which we could not know.
‘For as long as our love shall last,’
my bridegroom promised.
I must have slept, waking as the dawn
turned the dunes the colour of skin;
a little wind buffeting our shelter,
and us wrapped together, dry dusty blankets,
a Welwitschia plant, two leaves only its whole life –
morning dew quenching its hot endless thirst.
The wilderness inside her
She lay at the lagoon all night with the heroin addict,
sky tangling dark as his hair around them.
Her father and her sister found her at dawn.
A friend asked her if she was on the pill yet;
hours spent under blankets with students at house parties,
her numbness inchoate as breasts bared to strangers.
Driving with him, streetlights strafing her mini-skirted legs,
she felt less a daughter
than a girl without a name, an amputee,
her hands missing, or perhaps her tongue.
Through the rubber reek of condom,
her first lover smelt of cherry tobacco.
His black sheets crumpled into a vortex.
Every time she fell in love, she wept,
raging at a world gone wrong.
She stood in the desert under the quiver tree,
the wintry stars’ eyes refusing to see.
Sarah Frost is 49 years old and mother to an 18-year-old boy, and a nine-year-old girl. She lives in Durban, South Africa. She has completed an MA in English Literature at UKZN and achieved a first class pass in a module in Online Poetry at Wits University. She won the Temenos prize for mystical poetry in the McGregor Poetry Competition in 2021. Her debut collection, Conduit, was published by Modjaji in 2011.
Bretten-Anne Moolman lives in Gqeberha, South Africa. You can read more about her work here: http://www.bamoolman.co.za/index.php.
