Robin Ouzman Hislop – Page 6

MEDICATING AT HOME. A Poem by Bradford Middleton

September 18, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

From now on if anyone asks I’ll just say No,
Fuck that I ain’t going to the pub no more. If
You want to get drunk with me call me, say
Hi and beg and maybe I’ll invite you around.
Only on the proviso that you’ll bring the drink
And not moan when I drink most of it down
Before I throw you out.

This change of heart has come from my last
Few visits to that place down the road, the
Place that has inflicted so much pain of late,
The place that has felt like home more than
Any other place in an awful long time but
Which now I can’t handle without that desire
To just drown myself in an ocean of booze,
Killing myself slowly.

It’s all a case of timing as the nights are now
Ruled by work and full-time hours are difficult
When there’s a lot of writing and drinking to
Get done. The novel remains stuck in progress
But the poetry keeps on coming in those rare
Times when there is any and the drinking is now
More deranged as it happens so very rarely
Causing all my damn accidents.

I finally collapsed at work earlier today, pure
And utter total exhaustion as the pains make it
Difficult to sleep and now Monday night
After the Wednesday before I come home at five
Rolled one, smoked it and dropped some legal
Medication. It took me off to my warm
Beautiful cocoon of bed and, with no work now
Until Wednesday, hopefully at last my healing
Process has began.

BIOGRAPHY

Bradford Middleton was born in south-east London during the summer of 1971 and won his first poetry prize at the age of nine. He then gave up writing poems for nearly twenty-five years and it wasn’t until he landed in Brighton, knowing no one and having no money, that he began again. Ten years later and he’s been lucky enough to have had a few chapbooks published including a new one from Analog Submission Press entitled ‘Flying through this Life like a Bottle Battling Gravity’, his debut from Crisis Chronicles Press (Ohio, USA) and his second effort for Holy & Intoxicated Press (Hastings, UK). He has read around the UK at various bars, venues and festivals and is always keen to get out and read to new crowds. His poetry has also been or will be published shortly in the Chiron Review, Zygote in my Coffee, Section 8, Razur Cuts, Paper & Ink, Grandma Moses ‘Poet to Notice’, Empty Mirror, Midnight Lane Gallery, Bareback Lit and is a Contributing Poet over at the wonderful Mad Swirl. If you like what you’ve read go send a friend request on facebook to bradfordmiddleton1.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

HOMELAND. A Poem by Deborah Sfez.

September 4, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

In my mother’s womb
I arrived at my Homeland.
From the side wall
of her uterus, I heard the waves
crashing.
I, who was nothing
but a five months old fetus,
floated in my private sea, enjoying
the waves’ movement
inside and out,
while she
stood on the deck
her belly, going up and down
underneath her lightweight dress.
When I came into being
I understood
that
I had arrived
at a foreign country
and that its language,
was not
my mother-tongue.

Deborah Sfez is a multidisciplinary Israeli artist, born in 1964, working in Côte-D’Ivoire and
Israel.
She is a recognized Artist in Israel and internationally and has won several photography and
art awards.
Her work can also be found in the archives of several Museums.
Her tools are photography, moving image, filmed performance accompanied by texts and
music and sound composition.
Her path, atypical, begins with studies of literature and languages and then by learning the
trades of Fashion and Theater Costume.

Today her work mainly talks about the ups and downs of human existence, she talks about
the experience of existence, partnership, how to overcome an illness, the fear of life, the
beauty of to be a woman and the impossibility of being perfect.

Photography, for her, means a creative research.
She started her work with a series of hundreds of self-portraits by transforming her
appearance into many different characters using costumes, make-up and wigs. Later, she
began using these various self-portraits in a more complex way creating photographic
installations or in more constructed videos, including texts that she wrote, and soundtracks
composed exclusively for each work.
Coming from a country like Israel, where cohabit multiple cultures, the main objective
would be to find equality for all human beings, regardless of their cultural background,
because we are all born one day and therefore must die, man or a woman.

https://www.deborah-s-artist.com

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Imitations in the Windows. A Poem by Samuel Strathman

August 12, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Several childlike artworks
line the windows
of a bungalow.

The drawing that
stands out the most
is the one
of a dog eyed
octopus in a state
of repose.

Swimming in the deep
dark ocean must be
onerous for the little chum.

It’s a wonder
you don’t see more
of those tired heaps
tamped together.

*

My favourite shop
removes all the fish
from its counters, relocates
them to the frozen isle.

Display counters
make the transition
to imitation seafood.

There is a sudden
itch for me
to paint these replicants
right here, right now
before my hands
turn to hooks.

Perhaps these models
inspire some artists
more than others.

Author Bio

Samuel Strathman is a poet, author, educator, and co-editor at Cypress: A Poetry Journal. Some of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rejection Letters, The Honey Mag, Ice Floe Press, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, “In Flocks of Three to Five” was published by Anstruther Press (2020). His second chapbook, “The Incubus” will be in print this fall (Roaring Junior Press, 2020).

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

When The Big Man Blows. A Poem by Phillip Henry Christopher

July 26, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

(for Ed)

When the Big Man blows,
relive those glory days
rockin’ and rollin’ in the back seat of
a beat up old Buick,
an Asbury Park tune,
a hemi-head
double-barrel bass guitar,
wild and innocent
shufflin’ down E Street,
when Adam first raised a Caine
dancin’ in the moonlight Rosie
low tide summer,
and the tilt-a-wheel
caught us by the collar
and we hung on
and went around and around,
when the Promised Land was
clandestine alleyways,
heavy breath moist
air-fogged window
gasp of a woman child
back street September sixteen,
rockin’ back beat crashin’
fifty ton plates,
furious splooshing
ladles plunging into
liquid steel,
skinny silky skin
long-haired boy
trying to flee
the future,
the mill waiting
to turn velvet hands
to sand paper,
skin to leather,
the quick nervous
wrapping of limbs,
bumping of bellies,
then a house filled with silence
and forty years
of punching in and punching out,
of hot molten slag
like hell fire.
No Jersey Shore fantasy,
just the short ride
down Main Street
to the flats.
No sandy beach ocean,
just the Brandywine Creek.
No neon spinning carnival rides,
or stroll down summer boardwalks.
Just plod along under
smoke stack steeples,
clock in and out forever,
but never forget summers
of desperate fumbling
on back street back seats,
of alleyway heat,
of the Big Man blowin’ righteous
saxophone songs of
Sandy, and Rosie
and Crazy Davey,
while you sang a
song of yourself.

“When the Big Man Blows” appeared in PiF Magazine, No. 188 (January, 2013)

https://www.facebook.com/philliphenrychristopher/

Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America.Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Hazmat Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man’s Rainbow and New York Quarterly

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Floating. A Poem by Fabrice B. Poussin

July 15, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Strolling at noon on a precious day
when ghosts hover to a favorite dive
he bumped elbows with a girl in white.

The zenith stood guard above misery
throwing flames into his indecent gaze
for he must not dare to confront the heavens.

Black souls danced arm in arm
walking in a deathly cadence
until the bell again rang for order.

She did not belong in this ghastly crowd
her body smiling with the aura of ideals
a promise she vanished in a private realm.

The absent-minded saunterer attempted to follow her
beyond the glaring windows
a bright world in this indecent nightmare.

Her vision invited the stranger one last time
but he could only remain by the gate of horror
to see her disappear within the world she saved.

Fabrice B. Poussin is the advisor for The Chimes, the Shorter University award winning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in print in the United States and abroad. He teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, La Pensee Universelle, Paris, and other art and literature magazines, where he has also featured here at Poetry Life and Times & Artvilla.com. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)