Birthday Poem for Sylvie Garnham Born November 9th 1941 by Bruce Hodder

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If you knocked now, 23 years later,

what would I tell you over tea and biscuits?

I’d show you my book of poems, blushing, proud,

and my degree certificate. You missed them both.

I’d reminisce. I’d remind you of the fun we had.

I’d tell you I’ve learned to love trash telly since.

I’ve even read a few detective novels.

I’d tell you I have found real love at last;

she has seen me at my worst and still accepts me.

I’d say I think you’d love her; she’s my perfect match

and I’m happy, though not quite a grinning fool

with my illness. We’d have speak of that as well.

I wouldn’t have to tell you that your loss

was like an arm hacked off that never truly healed.

I wouldn’t have to say it. You would know.

Every hesitation, every facial tic I made

would tell you what my words concealed.
 
 

 
Bruce Hodder has had his poems appear in Crossroads, Medusa’s Kitchen, Best Poetry, The Rye Whisky Review and Duane’s Poet Tree, among others. This year he also published his collection The Journey Home with Whiskey City Press. He lives with his wife Michelle in Northampton, England.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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ESCAPE. A Poem by Priya Dolma Tamang

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If vanishing
into thin air
was
a possibility,
would the sky
consume
my substance;
and limbus
engulf my soul
and the Siberian birds
take me home,
setting sail
on wayward winds
to unknown heavens?
 
Would you notice
I am gone
and smile back
at me,
when I twinkle
at you
in star-studded nights
and make a wish
upon me
to see me
one last time?
 
An escape
into nothingness.
 
 
 

 
 
 
Bio
 
Priya Dolma Tamang is a doctor, a poet and an author. She comes from Sikkim, the second-smallest Indian state. Her debut poetry book, Ivory Gleam, was published in 2018. She shares her passion for poetics as @poetryandprosebyk on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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Unrequited. A Poem by Debashish Haar

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Wake up and seek
the way to the mind,
from the mind
to the remains and ashes
of what would one day
grow into a wildfire or wind-storm.
Like a gypsy, seek
every moment a new motherland
and spend the day
under the Martian tarpaulins
wearing flower blossom ornaments,
smelling like a Kasturi,
and then, like me,
understand nothing,
seek nothing,
and walk inside.
 
 
 

 
 
Debashish is a machine learning scientist, who has been published in literary magazines several times across the globe, including Poetry Life & Times, where he was interviewed twice. He is currently contending with a severe writer’s block spanning a decade, when he has hardly produced any publishable content. He is also losing emotional connection with his own work gradually, and spends more time to edit/tighten his old poems than creating any new content. Editor’s Note: Debashish Haar was interviewed twice in the old Poetry Life and Times, once by Sarah Russell then Editor & later by myself as a new Editor before it folded in 2008. The New Poetry Life & Times restarted in 2013 at Artvilla.com site, Admin David Jackson.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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Six Poems from Susan N Aassahde

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Untitled
 
frost clown drizzle
mice skate
honey tornado bloom
 
Untitled
 
scuttle brook
albino frog
raisin flame
 
Untitled
 
spinach musk
kangaroo plea
apple trot
 
Untitled
 
kayak donkey floss
javelin cup
tomato baseball store
 
Jest Cloister
 
ink slay choir,
whale violet soot,
chef fawn!
Knight cask lemon,
bale tweed.
 
Shackle Cask
 
neighbour shampoo!
stag faint loop!
stare whine –
falcon stake art?
rabbit telephone
sand dowry pike?
 
tea noble nest
sly candy.
alpaca stone closet!
candy rice!
accordion spice catch?
 
 

 
Bio:
 
Susan N Aassahde lives in the United Kingdom, she graduated from university in 2014, her work is experimental to expand her knowledge of the English language structure.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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SHOWER-CAP. A Poem by John Grey

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A shower-cap absolves the hair but the spirit dampens,
as droplets of water struggle to make melody on lips,
then fall, for no other purpose than to inhabit space,
like corpses, like the dead reaching for the towel;
between woman and water, there remains;
a grace of rubbing under the armpits,
stroking the back, almost a song in the throat
but no: sorrow would never yield to joy.
Not in a bathroom. Not in a face that
fears so hard, so willfully, the steamed-up mirror.
A shower-cap is not a hole in which a woman might hide.
It is not a shining circle where God makes his rounds.
And it’s neither peace, nor murder,
just something to fit neatly when nothing else will.
But body dry, towel hung on the rack, bathrobe
tightened around the waist, cap comes off,
hair falls down upon her shoulders.
She’s arthritic, seventy-five, widowed, wrinkled and gray.
So there you have it. The cap’s off.
Are you pleased with yourselves, voyeurs.
 
 

 
 
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review.
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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Memento Mori A Poem by Kushal Poddar

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The fee of the mortician, high yet negotiable,
reminds us of the priest – in both the cases
their soullessness owes to their knowledge,
‘no one occupies the temple’.
 
My friend offers me a consoling pint.
The road flows neon; people shoves people;
breaths crowd my interior, and the pub too
buzzes with more mobs.
 
We take our frustration back to the road;
the asphalt yawns and stretches loneliness
so sudden that we dither –
‘Where did all the people go?’
It must not be more than five minutes
and a few winks between two swings of the pub door.
 
We return to the pub; no one infests it any longer
except one bartender drinking his free whiskey
in the glassblower’s memento mori.
 
 
 

 
 
Edited the online magazine ‘Words Surfacing’. Authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’ (Spare Change Press, Ohio), A Place For Your Ghost Animals (Ripple Effect Publishing, Colorado Springs), Understanding The Neighborhood (BRP, Australia), Scratches Within (Barbara Maat, Florida), Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems (BRP, Australia) and Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems (Hawakal Publishers, India) and now Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel (Alien Buddha Press)
 
Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Author Page amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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THE REAL LIFE. A Poem by Brian Rihlmann

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A man wakes up,
climbs out of bed and
brushes his teeth.
He sees his face
in the mirror,
but in his mind
he’s already out there
stuck in morning traffic.
 
And while he sits
in the driver’s seat
and stares
at the taillights
ahead of him
on the freeway,
he’s already at the office.
 
And all day at the office,
as he squints into the glare
of his computer screen,
and glances at the clock,
while his fingers
tap at the keyboard,
he’s home on the couch,
television aglow,
glass of scotch in his hand.
 
Get through the day,
numb, forget,
and repeat.
 
There’s time yet,
for the real life
to begin…
maybe tomorrow.
 
Years,
whole lives
flow by
on rivers
of tomorrows.
 
Death comes for him
with a shrug and a sigh,
like a cat burglar
who got a bad tip
about a house
and was expecting
much,
much more.
 
 
 

 
Brian Rihlmann was born in NJ, and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi autobiographical, confessional free verse. Folk poetry…for folks. He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal Of Poetry
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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The Death Before. A Poem by Fabrice B. Poussin

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In absolute repose the aging child stands
Atop a landscape forbidden to his kin
Ethers hover, lost between lives.
 
The substance of what he may be, lost
Ghost of a self he may never encounter
Wandering in the midst of contradictory ecstasies.
 
Does he truly live in the cage of those bones
Is the pain in the fibers of this time
Perhaps consciousness has already fainted.
 
The valley slowly turns about his strange home
Assailed by the mockery of the piercing stars
Memories of centuries he never knew flash.
 
Contemplating the thickness of deep space above
Soon he will be devoured by the mystery below
Prisoner of eternities past and future.
 
Unable to anchor the languorous self he looses contact
He now knows the terror of measured eons
The reality of the death he can no longer recall.
 
 
Fabrice B. Poussin
 

 
 
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. 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 ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, 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)

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