Two poems, by Joshua Martin

 

Adjusted situational precariousness remains vivid

[implied]
…bloodiest histories reach decisions
          …imperial historiographies
              accepted discouraged
              framework…
[alcohol failed dissenters].

   Material stresses shift
   negotiated confessions 

leaping colleges streamed
into conspiracies behind
obvious grammar school
militancy on a mission
to extirpate diligence
          /          / Once
status reached influence
subjects reconciled a
form of surplus     / 

            reduced
long                     term
         population        victory
< 
     contracts
                   > economic
abilities to local
                          defiance. 

[vessels] [northwards]
        [maim]
                [reductive
          irrationality
                            ]. Colonial
in scope – three scoops
ranging circumventing
missionaries rampaging. 

[broadband crusade]
…critical surrender
    under the walls
    later surviving
    discarded uprising…
/
[combined but actual]
reinforcements manifested
as blockade
                   distressed
                           possessed
[summed up] 

entailing a degree of
general sedition 

                 operating out of
                 inevitable conflict.

 

 

 

To crypt explorers
 

waters build
experiences
[…]
coins as digital
as monthly
ventures increasing
focus on captives
[///]
the attention of
hybrid briefings                     ,

subtle infrared
regulatory lists
                     ,
challenges
          insights
perspective
          stigmata
[,,,]
hippo holding astute
wetlands
/
outdated
          impacted
                     aligned
/
masthead
foundational
          descriptive
crisis proposed
          motel
related shoes
          paced
notoriously
          allocated
transparent
          puncture
villainous
          milestones
[;;;]
across virtually
accelerating poverty
formless coverage
ready causation
[:::]
          going forward
no imminent
          potential
clear & present
          hardened
hacking fire
          warehouse
[???]
                     captive
          owners
wander                              pinnacle
                     alternative
          flesh
test               risk
          disillusion
                               [.] 

 

 

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is a member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books punctuated avalanche (Stone Corpse Press) and en=raptur=ed [riverrun] & mingle (Ranger Press) He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com

from PurgatorioXIX: Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, Oxford UP, 1911, by Andy Weaver

 

1.

in
chill

  

dawn in
long dusk
in dreams stuttering
in distorted
lack

 

 

 

 

to

 

inveigle 

a
song 

when
in
confusion

 

2. 

disdainful

 

rending

 

 

a
mountain 

 

laden with

here

 

wings of

granite
pinion us
to 

art
an
angel mounted
and misgiving

 

3. 

ancient saw

 

 

King orders
falcon
turns
desire 

to

freedom

 

 

with words

 

 

 

thus poet was

 

 

urned
where
desire was king

 

4. 

pleasure
that creature
whose 

return

 

 

 

plunges

its 

 

burdens seem a feather
ah
Roman 

art

of

 

 

purgation
a bitter penance

 

5. 

 

whelmed
tinguished 

stricted
captive

 

 

but
obeisance
bent
to 

an other

owner

 

discourse

disturbs weeping
with
yonder
its wicked
yonder

 

 

 

PurgatorioXIX is a book-length project that erases numerous translations of Canto 19 from Dante’s Purgatorio. Each section works through a different translation, erasing all but nineteen words from each page (taking each page of the translation as a separate numbered part of the section and preserving the line on which each word appears).

 

Andy Weaver is an Associate Professor of creative writing, contemporary poetry, and poetics at York University in Toronto, Canada. His fourth book of poetry, The Loom, was published in 2024 by the University of Calgary Press. His work has been nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award, and the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize.

 

Two poems, by Stephen Brockwell

 

Lost Tongues
for Pearl Pirie

It was as if our tongues
escaped the compound
and ran off by themselves
to the riverbank.

Words dropped like spit
into the river
never forming thoughts
that might save us from ourselves.

I could not tell you
I love you; the air
would not hold
the sound of the words.

I could not hear you;
I am no lip reader
and you were wading
downstream in the current.

We had never borne witness 
to such quiet—not silence:
it was as if the wind had chosen
to carry other sounds, not ours.

Our agreement with the air—
ephemeral glyphs
traced by a fingertip
on infant skin,

sung to a dozing child—
had been forgotten;
the pact expired
after generations

failed to remind us of it.
No one whispered, “Oh, Sam,
before I go, don’t forget
your obligation to the air.” 

It was as if the larynx,
loom of the voice,
had lost the warp
of the air.

Even in a storm
I could have brought
my mouth
close to your ear,

cupped my hands,
and spoken over the gusts.
I kneel on riverbed gravel.
I am a clay tablet

for the grief of the air
inscribed on my knees
in the cuneiform
of wind-scattered pebbles.

 

Shade Lakes


Late September sunsets
in the shade lakes in the valleys
of the Colorado Rockies
hold liquid depths of absent light.

Steel crustaceans glint
as they dine on sediment, soil,
stone, ore, and trees
the way a king crab

samples the seabed for barnacles
and sunlight from the surface
reflects from its opening
and closing mandibles.

As we fly toward Denver,
shadows evaporate
into a plain of late fall
sunlight. Boulder houses,

revealed by window
reflections, emerge
on a plateau that was once
an ancient seabed.

See the fossils
of our future remains:
earth-throats of rare
earth mineshafts,

sclerotic vasculature
of superhighways,
skeletal concrete towers,
human coral we

recolonize every morning.
What will future species
make of the pacemaker
they recover from the calcium

birdcage where my lungs
and heart coordinated
the supply chain
of my light-devouring eyes?

“Nothing, darling,”
a nearby passenger sighs,
responding to a question
asked by someone else,

words at least one of us
utters every moment,
somewhere, in a multitude
of tongues, answering

a private question a spouse
whispers because nothing
is what we make of it all
and will be made of all of this.

Stephen Brockwell is an Ottawa poet. His book All of Us Reticent Here Together won the Archibald Lampman award in 2017. He is a software development director at the Environmental Systems Research Institute.

Two poems, by John Levy

 

Through the Cemetery

I take this detour again.
It's in my mind. Again I find
the small boy in a dark suit
that fits him, chosen by his mother,
and he has wandered 

away from the speeches again
and taken the small red rubber ball
out of his pocket to bounce
against a headstone. He doesn't care
that a stranger, me, has also wandered 

away from the words. He throws
and catches, throws
with the measured force of a boy
who knows what he's doing
among the dead.  

 

 

Beginning with a Line from an Email from John Phillips (12/12/25)

 

“I’ve been doing a bit too much thinking in my head.”

 

All my life I’ve had this head, with visiting

thoughts

keeping me company

along with what vanishes, as do

sentences─

and then here are the people

when they stay.

 

John Levy lives in Tucson. He is married to the painter Leslie Buchanan. His most recent book is 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023). A chapbook, Vast Spaces, appeared in 2026 from above/ground press. He will have a book published soon by Yavanika Press and another book published in 2027 by Shearsman Books.

Two poems, by Mark Valentine

 

The Rhythm Machine

It calculates that I like
sunrise in a far galaxy
comet melodies
whistling stars
flying saucers
blue love, blue looks
lark rise as heard
by the third ear 

Good. It hasn’t
found out yet
about double syrup
the carnival apple
frozen orange juice
honey on the tongue
the ghost in the coffee cup
and the taste of winter 

 

 

Piccalilli Variations

cauliflower, carrot, courgette
red onion, cornflower, sugar, salt
cider vinegar, mustard, turmeric
fennel, coriander, cumin seeds 

cauliflower, cucumber, onions
green beans, vinegar, caster sugar
mustard powder, turmeric, garlic
flour, allspice, nutmeg, salt 

pickling onions, cauliflower, cucumber
french beans, malt vinegar, rock salt
muscovado sugar, cornflour, garlic
mustard seeds, ginger, turmeric 

cauliflower, cabbage, green beans
carrots, white vinegar, sugar
red chilli, green chilli, garlic
cumin, turmeric, mustard, salt 

cauliflower, courgette, shallots,
apple, caster sugar, cornflower
cider vinegar, root ginger, coriander
mustard seeds, turmeric, salt 

cider vinegar, cauliflower, marrow,
beans, onion, sugar, mustard,
cornflour, turmeric, coriander,
allspice, cinnamon, ginger, salt 

cauliflower, gherkins, silverskins
french beans, mustard seeds, salt
cider vinegar, honey, cinnamon
nutmeg, turmeric, ginger, cloves

Mark Valentine is from Northampton and now lives in Yorkshire. His short stories and essays are published by the independent presses Tartarus (UK), Swan River (Ireland), Sarob (France), Zagava (Germany) and others. His poetry has appeared in PN Review, Agenda, ink, sweat and tears, M58, dadakuku and elsewhere, and in chapbooks.

from Tone Poem: Starlight and Stardust, by Robert Sheppard

  

                                                                        for Jazz Ian Perry

Melissa Aldana, 12 Stars

ears
raised to the stars the
fastidious lead with its
jagged edges quick- 

            leaps its
            roiling arpeggio
            clutters 

and travels toward the ceiling –

Aldana’s stretching on her toe-tips
even as she dips
as low as
she can go side-stepping 

            the lure
            of Sonny Rollins
            by sliding into nervous flutters – 

                        signing off

she’s out, listening
to the piano rollicking in its not-quite-jazz
fracturedness: 

12 stars in tonal constellation
swimming above a turquoise eye

 

 

                                                                        Donny McCaslin, I Want More 

thrashing amid changes
not scared off the riff
skiddy bass stabby bass 

            the echoed sax
            belches and squeals
in total recognition as near to all
sounds at once as possible 

            now
            ‘Fly My Space Ship’
            totters off course on take off
synthethecised robotic drownings
caught across the drum’s slashed necessities – 

            extraterrestrial Bowie anthem rising into
            orbit – 

sky-high reverb trembles over the faces of the water
to summon mermen to
fishy annunciations 

                        before they dive
                        into the thickest
                        swell of noisome 

                        soundlessness

                       

                                                                        Miho Hazama’s m_unit, Beyond Orbit

light swirls at her fingertips
as she curls intervals
into elliptical orbit around her theme

but she releases capsules of spacewalking
            solo energy
            into fluidic sonic wave 

where we rest restlessly –

                                    pro-pulsed –

stellar patterning in the DNA
of Christian McBride’s bass 

            the building blocks
            of new musical life: 

a string section quivering –

soft-landing canons –

                                                multiple starlight –

 

 

Robert Sheppard lives in Liverpool, UK, and is the author of many books, including History or Sleep: Selected Poems (Shearsman), Elle - a verse novel (Broken Sleep), and Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes (Knives Forks and Spoons), with photographs by Trev Eales. The Robert Sheppard Companion is a book of essays on his work, from Shearsman, and The Meaning of Form is one of his critical works, from Palgrave. He blogs at  www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com

 

Two poems, by Kit Fryatt

 

air: maestoso

Freezing blockhouse. All the long night long. Sacking slapping in the squints. Whisht whisht says the wind. Never shuts the fuck up. Rain skivvers the yarrow ⁊ the purple loosestrife. Thrift. Hardy flowers. Don’t let’s compare them to the flush creeping up the naked gorge of Gabrielle d’Estrées. Or harebells to the blackrimmed downcast eyes of Rosamond Clifford. There were three of us in it. Bit crowded. Or crowfoot to the cup in which Floris stole into Blancheflor’s bower. Or sea campion to the grisaille breast of Agnès Sorel. Wouldn’t you think of the slaves who sang chwit chwit chwidogeith. The last llewyn queen sloping wounded into a craven den. The servants who carry druryes from cell to cell. Rolls reading my healing my honey the minding of thee is sweeter than manna in mouth. Hot cross buns. Holywhey. Wholewave. I am spurred through with thee. Queerfast.

Drouth causes leafdrop. False harvest. Haws before August ends. They seem to yearn towards us. Saying why. Why would you shit the nest like this. Sorrow congeals like the frost that’s later ⁊ later to come. This temperate zone worst on a fabric raddled with crime. Mean little crystals. Withheld tears of parted lovers. One buried in a barrow. A penny. Pendant moon. One crouched under a crag. Mickle mirk. Flowers ⁊ moon are metonyms for complacency. But those real oldtime craft wankers are going extinct. The Indo rang asking for comment on the president’s new spoken word album. That’s bait. Muted epiphany is a metonym for reactionary centrist. Two a penny. What you really care about is saving humans. The planet will be just fine. Well yeah. All the same. Give em to your sons. The yarrow ⁊  the purple loosestrife will be growing after us. Thrift. Even the struggling thirsty haws. From afar off (East Wall, Bull Island even) they seem to say

Wouldn’t you be well     No really wouldn’t you

 

 

 

air: rubicund

(i)

alighting with weight on the right foot, left turned out
arms cast separately, wings lost over
mm years ago at sea some cables off the nudist beach
the body chubby ⁊ unexceptional      the head (big) 

slightly turned, the eyes, once restoration cleared terrifying
deposits of black matter, silver-gilded, like
the ruddy face resembling polychromed stone
but blue, demure
topknot      ringlet      kisscurl 

next time at the departure gate
let’s not forget the rule about looking back

 

(ii) 

four-room flat deep in the complex
the heart’s walls striated by sorrow’s twine
can’t wait for summer ⁊ summer’s gone
the last old blush vandalised by rain 

⁊ a bronze bagman in a borrowed jacket
loafing on a traffic island feels more than I can
what has twined my love from me?
sickly planes absorb particulate matter
stare back along the road until the waters meet again

 

 

Kit Fryatt is a lecturer in English at Dublin City University. His most recent book of poems is Book of Inversions, co-authored with Harry Gilonis (Veer 2, 2025). Another book, all things that are passing, a collaboration with Ellen Dillon, is forthcoming from Spite Press in 2026.