Title: The Wild Essential
Writer: Claudine Nash
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Publishing Date: 2017
Language: English
Price: USD 14.00
Reviewed by: Melissa A. Chappell
The Wild Essential is Claudine Nash’s second full-length poetry collection. It is preceded by her poetry collection, Parts per Trillion (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a poetry chapbook, The Problem with Loving Ghosts...
The Work of Art
It is just another day
To be proud
Happy with who I am
With high self
Esteem
And the old broom and
Mop at hand.
At the Doctor
Trust, to care about
Who I am
As if to let me have
My say
Pad and pen the end
Or give me a couple
Words as a pathway.
Shikhandin
Poetry has been with humans since the beginning of time. And will remain with humanity until the last human breath is stilled. Throughout the millennia of poetry’s existence, it has always reflected upon and mirrored the world in which it was birthed.
Poetry, like all the other arts, reveals society’s...
Midsummer
i
I was inside a labyrinth: A flood in front of me. The endless surge and fall of water. The deep ocean surface wavered before turned in white waves. When the waves receded, they left a little shimmer in my little eyes. At a distance, something washed ashore. A blue...
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
even the violence
seems germane.
same old Wichita,
ain’t it?
bomb every
last life boat,
make the bird
on the bill
soar free above
that ancient tomb.
a camera’s just one eye
but damn
if we don’t know
how to whisk a crowd
after wrongful
frenzy.
the NRA pays less taxes than me
you won’t
find
that shrapnel
wound
in their
tax ID #.
the business
end
of muzzle
is only prelude
of holy
creation.
“be...
Kushal Poddar
Hiss
Illias sat for hours on a bench that looked dusty but the cleaning stuff did his job as per his daily schedule. When he finally met the authority, the officer took his application, written like a summer river, and said nothing.
Illias went to the forest department. Went to...
Tongues
I don't care if Jesus died for my sins
I tell my Sunday School teacher after
class, He'll have to do better than that to
get me to come back next week and then I
leave her without saying goodbye atop
the two-by-four-and-plywood porch of our
trailer-classroom, or is that our classroom
-trailer, whatever it is it has...
On the Crossroads
O’ father,
hold my fingers in your firm grip
and help me cross the road.
Suspicion
I’ve burnt myself half, fortuitously.
And deliberately, left the rest unburned.
Bike Accident
Helmet transforms into a skull.
The road runs as usual.
Insomnia
Night burns into an ashtray.
I fly to you with the wings of ashes.
hand washing
apples are crimson
like the faces of children
who exit their births
breathing as fire, raptured by still tears.
she was a silence of horror
the venom of encroachment
tearing up
like wind
a tunnel of thought
I am only left to this fanatical
flaw
centuries of madness, tearing at the curtains.
like Shakespeare’s army ants
actors in drag, frightened wraiths
isolated...
Title: Burrito Deluxe
Writer: Joe Ridgwell
Format: Paperback
Book Length: 234
Publisher: Leamington Books
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0993227201
ISBN-13: 978-0993227202
Price: £ 9.99
Reviewed by: Koushik Sen
The Metaphysical Rebels: Burrito Deluxe as the final Road Novel
“What the fuck are these monsters?” I said.
Ronnie attempted to put one end of the leviathan into his mouth.
--Burrito Deluxe. (Ridgwell, 88)
Joe Ridgwell’s...
Word…
Word is Brahman
It emerges from
Hiranyagarbh
And wanders in the ether
Man’s heart vibrates
He hears its rapturous melody
And sways in ecstasy
And is lost in the sacred silence.
The other day…
The predator pounces upon the word
And preserves the kill
A dictionary is compiled
It hardly objects
But, is it at ease?
Lexicons continue multiplying
And then, words…words…words…
Words sans soul
Across...
A Fever of Living
Some nights step lightly,
like lily-shadows in blue water-
apparitions in transit, between dreams.
She awakens in a translucent purgatory-
a tread from an incipient dream
to a feverish slumber, to a body -
a map of nocturnal metamorphosis,
lacerated fish belly sewn with orange seams,
eyes like butterflies in rivulets of pee,
unmade and...