ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online)
Featuring the works of Robin Dunn, Marie Lecrivain, Beorh, Grant Tabard, Amy Huffman, Gary Beck, Jeffery Alfier, Tobi Cogswell, Steve Klepetar and Kyle Hemmings Hard copies can be purchased from our website.
Issue No 26 November 2014
A New Ulster On the Wall Website
Editor: Amos Greig Editor: Arizahn Editor: Adam Rudden Contents
Editorial
page 5
Robin Wyatt Dunn; No despair is equal to the colour white
page 7
Marie Lecrivan; The Tea Room
page 9
Who Do You Love?
page 10
Beorh; pages 12-15
Remembering Bloody Sunday
Grant Tabard; Shadow Play Over and Above And they follow
page 17 pages 18-20 page 21
Amy Huffman; From idea thisEpic & Unplayed Tune I am Flint
page 23 page 24
Gary Beck; Momentous event Equalizer Danger Zones Susceptible Innovative
page 26 page 27 page 28 page 29 page 30
Jeffery Alfier Not far from the corner of White and broad Streets Fugue for an Early Snow Good Woman Gone Toward the Whetstone Range
pages 32 -33 pages 34 -35 pages 36 -37 pages 38-39
Tobi Gogswell;
Tune up page 41 Narrow Alley in Morning—From One End to the Other page 42 Back in His Arms Again page 43 Suitcase page 44 Grandma’s Got a Blowtorch page 45
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Steve Klepetar;
Canal Street Two Poems Wardrobe: Lesson in Dressing for Success We Interrupt This Program Waking to Rain
page 47 page 48 page 49 page 50 page 51
On The Wall Message from the Alleycats
page 53
Kyle Hemmings; Kyle’s work can be found
pages 55-57 Round the Back
Press Releases Book Launches
page 62
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Manuscripts, art work and letters to be sent to: Submissions Editor A New Ulster 23 High Street, Ballyhalbert BT22 1BL Alternatively e-mail: g.greig3@gmail.com See page 50 for further details and guidelines regarding submissions. Hard copy distribution is available c/o Lapwing Publications, 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast BT14 8HQ Digital distribution is via links on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/anewulster/ Published in Baskerville Oldface & Times New Roman Produced in Belfast & Ballyhalbert, Northern Ireland. All rights reserved The artists have reserved their right under Section 77 Of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 To be identified as the authors of their work. ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Cover Image Loggerhead� by Amos Greig
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“We are what we repeatedly do. Exellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle. Editorial Welcome to the Americana issue of A New Ulster I believe that this represents yet another first for our magazine. We have short stories, poetry and artwork all waiting to be devoured. A word of caution though as some of these stories are of an adult nature so procede with caution. Pple, up and coming fresh talent and seasoned veterans can have a voice. The world has gone through some interesting and terrifying changes since we began this journey in issue three we talked briefly about the ceasefire in Gaza and the work being carried out by artists from both sides and now peace seems so tantalizingly far away. Aristotle famously said “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their
inward significance” That is why poetry is still so powerful even after all these years.. It has been a difficult time with the anniversary of Heaneys death and also the recent passing of Desmond O’Grady an Irish poet who I had the honour of knowing and for whose book of poetry I provided the cover art. So we remember the passing of great men while celebrating the ongoing publication of A New Ulster.. I hope you get as much enjoyment reading these pieces they speak highly of the artists who submitted to this issue and to paraphrase Arthur Rimbaud they show the artist as God. Their brush strokes, words give life to a world we can barely interpret however through their eyes for a brief moment we can walk different lands. Enough pre-amble! Onto the creativity! Amos Greig
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Biographical Note: Robin Wyatt Dunn
Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming in the Carter Administration. He lives in Los Angeles.
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No despair is equal to the color white (Robin Dunn)
No despair is equal to the color white. I watch and wait. I know my name. I love my victories. My families. My envisionings of the future, my hatred of color. I hate color because it is straightforward. Because it is inescapable. Because it is dangerous. Because it is lonely. Because it is enlightening. Because it is memory. It is action. It is love. It is luminous, divine, shaping, syncopated, thrilling, fomenting, stupid. It is stupid because you can’t think about it, you just experience it. You just get owned by it. It controls you, color. And no feeling of pain, no hurt or love affair or terrible soul-destroying worry can equal the despair of white, a blankness without soul, without love, without reason, or suspicion, without a thought, or a hope of a thought, without hope. White is without hope. Always I’ve felt this way, that when I see white I rage, it is so overwhelming, a curse, askance at all I am, attack, a vengeance from beyond meaning, a love into an ecstasy that will be inescapable, a cast for a vault in which I will be contained, a nexus of pain, and a nexus of evil. It is irrational, sure, but color exists before reason. It cuts its way into my heart. Sometimes I avoid going out. If I see white it’s like a bull seeing red, I go mad. I break things. I shout. I cry. I moan. I wet myself. It isn’t good. But still I go out. I just don’t look at the white. I keep my eyes averted. In the corner of my eye, I can feel it smiling.
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Biographical Note: Marie Lecrivain Marie Lecrivain is the editor-publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, a photographer, and is writer-in-residence at her apartment. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Edgar Allen
Poetry Journal, Maitenant, A New Ulster, The Ironic Fantastic, Nonbinary Review, Spillway, The Los Angeles Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and others. She’s the author of The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre (© 2014 Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House), and she’s the editor of the anthology Near Kin: Words and Art inspired by Octavia E. Butler (© 2014 Sybaritic Press). Her avocations include alchemy, alternate modes of transportation, H.P. Lovecraft, Vincent Price, steam punk accessories, and the letter “S."
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The Tea Room (Marie Lecrivain)
I come to the Tea Room to write. Owned by a Russian couple, it’s quiet, cozy and lit with tapers, the kind one finds in a chapel. A samovar keeps the strong black brew at the optimal temperature. The lemon wedges and white sugar cubes are artfully arranged and rearranged according to customer needs. A smoky, sorrowful icon of the Virgin Mary hangs on the east wall. Her ancient virgin eyes are clotted with dusty tears. I pour myself a cup of tea: Russian Caravan. It smells like what I imagine winter in Russia would smell like 200 years ago; wet, woodsy, and filled with darkness. I take my cup of tea to my favorite seat in the corner, the one next to the cookie table. I set the cup down next to my journal, and note how iconic a cup of tea and a journal appear together. I suppress the urge to take a photo with my cell phone. I take a moment to inhale the steam. Again, I am inundated with the sense of an unfamiliar time and place, one that I have always longed to visit, but will never be able to – the gift of olfaction is the poor person's gateway to time travel. People come to the Tea Room to read, write, play chess, or to engage in intimate discourse. I furtively watch a middle-aged couple, heads bent into a curve of complicity. He reaches up to stroke her hair. She bends her head into the familiar curve of his palm. A young girl, and an older man play chess. She studies the board, her right hand already sculpted to the shape of the white queen. The man smiles. He's knows he’s going to lose the game. The silence is broken as a group of rowdy teenagers come through the door and demand coffee. The old world atmosphere of the Tea Room irritates and confuses them. After a brief discourse among themselves, the teenagers turn as one and leave the premises. Tea and silence are our panacea against mortality.
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Who Do You Love? (Marie Lecrivain) … tell me who do you love? - George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Sweat drops form a wet corona across Alice's forehead. She looks up into his flushed face, gauges the tension in his arms positioned on either side of her as he holds his whole weight poised between her legs. The medicinal smell of Bushmills wafts over her with each exhale. “I... want to do this... but I love her... and I think I love ya too,” he groans. Her eyes briefly flit down to the eager erect penis between her legs. Through an alcoholic haze, Alice hears his plea. She turns her head toward the nightstand. Alice spots the photo of him and and “her”. A full moon shines through the skylight, illuminating the smiles of two people in love. Alice sees the woman's head, crowned with a long fall of autumn hair, is melded to the crook of his shoulder. Her left hand rests comfortably on his chest. Alice takes note of the diamond solitaire ring that decorates “her” third finger. In the photo, his head is thrown back with the force of laughter. It's an intimate moment, the synchronous candid kind rarely caught on film. She understands. Alice grasps his penis. She shifts her left leg up and gently guides him down and around until they reverse positions. Alice kneels between his legs, one hand wraps around his cock while the other strokes his thigh. She shuts her eyes as she encloses her mouth around his penis. The decision is no longer in his hands; he climaxes quickly, leaving Alice with a mouthful of semen and and a heart full of relief. Within moments, he's fast asleep, wrapped in the twin blankets of exhaustion and alcohol. Alice rises from the bed, swiftly dresses, and leaves the room. She makes her way into the bathroom and spits his cum into the sink. She opens the medicine cabinet and finds the mouthwash. She gargles three times. Alice walks into the living room, empty but for an easy chair and and a fireplace. She spots a larger version of the photo on the mantle. A flash of white catches her eye. As she approaches the fireplace, she sees a prayer card with a picture of the Virgin Mary, her heart pierced by swords, tucked into the bottom right-hand corner of the frame. She removes the card. She flipped it over, and reads the first line: Fiona Mary Daly, 1974-2001.
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Biographical Note: Scath Beorh
Fabulism, horror, nostalgia Beorh once lived in Armagh.
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Remembering Bloody Sunday (Scáth Beorh)
There is no gloomier place than Derry Hostel, its rooms looking much like college dorms built during the height of the Bauhaus architecture era. I stayed there two nights, finding that my friends living there had absconded to brighter terrain than that lorded over by shadow-men with guns trained from their black razor towers overlooking the town. Border town. Typical border town. Walking along the city wall one day, overlooking the Bogside district of Derry, I spied a piece of razor wire broken off and lying in a shadowy crevice. I walked over and kicked at it, and then picked it up, laughing. It was made of plastic. Decoy razor wire. Did the installers wear protective gloves to complete the illusion? Were Derrymen hired by the UK to whisper tales of people being cut to the bone on the “wire” while trying to escape British soldiers? As I walked into the parlor of the hostel, I saw an old man sitting alone. He had no tea, no pipe, but he did wear a tweed jacket. He just sat there looking down, as if in deep, sad thought. "I'll sit with him and hear his story," I said to myself. "I know he must have one." It was November 15th 1997, and the man I met was B— Johnston, aged beyond his years by whisky and grief. His tale needs to be told. ***
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“The day is now called ‘Bloody Sunday,’” B— said with a clarity in his eyes and voice which surprised me. “But on January 30, 1972 we were doing a peaceful protest that day, and Bernadette Devlin was there. We were all very excited and all of us, Catholic and Protestant alike, were proud to be part of the Civil Rights Movement. Then the B-Specials showed up, parachuted in and started to strong-arm everybody. I was twenty-three at the time, and I knew everybody there. We were all friends, and we were having a good time before the British soldiers came. I was raised Protestant, but nobody minded. There were a lot of us Protestants there that day, supporting the Catholics from the Bogside. Supporting everyone who wanted civil rights. “People from other places don’t often realize that Protestants not affiliated with the Church of England have been treated very badly here in the North, especially after the Penal Laws were put into effect. Anyway, the Specials started pushing us all along, trying to get us off of Waterloo Street and back into the Bogside, where they thought we belonged. They were corralling us, like animals. and so naturally we started to buck them, like animals. After all, we were there for our civil rights. As far as we could see, they were playing right into our hands, really. But they had guns, and none of us had brought weapons. It went against what we were there for, which was peace.
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“The next thing I knew, there was like a gauntlet set up that the police who were behind us pushed us all through—two lines of police, who were the gauntlet. We had to go through this trap, and as we were corralled through, each of us was hit in the head by the butt of a Bspecial rifle. Some of us were being knocked out cold, others were escaping within inches of being seriously hurt or killed. “I was with my friend Jack Duddy at that moment. All I remember is thinking, Now, if I reach down and pick up that orange soda can and toss it at the soldier that I know is going to try and hit me, maybe he’ll flinch and his gun butt will miss me. Well, that’s what I did, and the plan worked. The soldier, who looked younger than me, did flinch away as he saw the can coming at his face, and I ducked and ran under his rifle. Jack was to my right, and as we reached the end of the gauntlet, out of the corner of my right eye I saw him fall. I thought, He must have gotten hit with a gun butt!, and so I ran over to him to pick him up and help him get out of there. I was the first one over to him, and when I picked him up by his shoulders, his insides poured out all over the pavement. I took a quick look and didn’t see a hole in his back or anywhere, and I knew then that he had been hit by a hollow-point bullet. And the soldiers there were supposed to only be using rubber bullets. “I ran in a panic, and when I got onto the wall that surrounds Derry out there, there were lots of us running along it, crouching down behind it.
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The word spread quickly that a hundred of more of us had been killed, and so we hid behind the wall for what seemed hours, and finally the word came that only a handful of us had been killed, all boys. They were all friends of mine, and Jack Duddy, a dear friend, was one of them. All these years I have asked, Why not me? Why didn’t I get shot and die that day? “Every Summer, when the Orange Marches begin, I go out to them just like everybody else does, Protestant and Catholic. And I always speak across the street to my Catholic friends, and sometimes a certain woman friend of mine who is Catholic will meet me in the middle of the street to talk, and I’ll either go over to her side of the street, or she will come over to mine. I hope every time that someone will see us doing this, and will get the message we are trying to give.”
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Biographical Note: Grant Tabard Grant Tabard is currently the chief editor at The Screech Owl. He has worked as a journalist, a contributor to magazines, a reviewer and an interviewer. His poetry can be seen in such magazines as The Rialto, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Bone Orchard Poetry, BLAZE, The Journal, Southlight, Sarasvati, Earth Love, Mood Swing, Puff Puff Prose Poetry & Prose, Postcards Poetry and Prose, Playerist 2, Lake City Lights, The Open Mouse, Miracle, Poetry Cornwall, I70, South Florida Review, Stare's Nest, Zymbol, Weyfarers, Synchronized Chaos and Decanto. Grants poems have featured in a number of compendiums, including Dogma Publishing's Miracle at St. Bede's. Also, he had poems exhibited at a local gallery a number of times as well as at the Quayside gallery in Maldon, Essex. He came first runner up at the age of sixteen in Ottakar's National Poetry Competition with a poem entitled Delicacy and won The Poetry Box Dark & Horror Poetry Magazine's Sinister Poetry Award May 2014 for his poem Crows Feet. His first collection 'Yellow Wolf' is being published
by WK Press.
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Shadow Play (Grant Tabard)
i.m. Rory Gallagher
You held your guitar like a child ready to catch, falling between the fug of prescriptions.
The Blues wailed in a whiskey soak an misplacement of what once was a fugue of loss.
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Over-and-Above (Grant Tabard)
1.
Almost immediately I arrived on the grid;
a blur of yellow energy. This Babylon of paints
with a streak of primary colour, westward across the shimmer.
I have seen them, two knitting needles
that'd scratch raw patches on the grey scarlet,
pouring sabotage out of a orange swirl sky.
I have seen them, their pressure to conform
to the surrounding architecture was oppressive,
a bible of image, a mouth, large, spittle'd 18
with ten thousand fairy lights encased in a gilded cage.
From this height we were just golden watches keeping time
amongst the almost dead, moths revolving around the bulb
jumping headlong into a stutter in a semi trance of adrenaline.
2.
Eight months of people that thought their life would last
into the fog of old age. Eight months of keys turning
to homes that would never be turned again,
eight months of whistling, eight months of deli coffee.
3.
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The dead have a tail of peacocks eyes
growing within a steel body.
I was too rushed to see, playing lip chess with
a great image of moaning god, this sphere of monks.
Foreign matter boils out of a need to be heard,
a great fossilised relic of a carpet of widescreen chaos.
Lean forward so no choral refrain would be missed,
the lyrical steam willowing playing the character
of the ethereal prima do単a and the primordial ogre.
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And They Follow‌ (Grant Tabard)
I was born unprepossessing and I was alone
I was famous overnight and they follow
I was found out overnight and they follow
I was cleared overnight and they follow
I was living a quiet life and the follow
I was laid up in a bed and they follow
I was drowning in a lake and I was alone
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Biographical Note: A.J. Huffman A.J. Huffman has published eight solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. She also has two new full-length poetry collections forthcoming, Another Blood Jet (Eldritch Press) and A Few Bullets Short of Home (mgv2>publishing). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com
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from Idea this Epic (A.J. Huffman) It begins, a mental manifestation, a lingering dream. Expansive, a snowball rolling downhill, gathering momentum meets potential impasse, erupts over the top, continues as larger pieces of the whole, grows wings, maybe fangs, consumes energy and vision until reaching fruition on canvas, page or screen.
Unplayed Tune
Dimensionless notes, dots, dashes, scales, fixtures of ink on page. Undeciphered hieroglyphics. Fodder for fingers that never found their key.
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I Am Flint (A.J. Huffman) Abrasive auxiliary, a necessary partner, designed to be struck. I am friction’s facilitator, instigator of breathing spark.
I inevitably lead to burn.
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Biographical Note: Gary Beck Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. He has seven published chapbooks. His poetry collection 'Days of Destruction' was published by Skive Press; 'Expectations', Rogue Scholars Press; 'Dawn in Cities', Winter Goose Publishing; ‘Assault on Nature’, Winter Goose Publishing; ‘Songs of a Clerk’, Winter Goose Publishing. ‘Civilized Ways’, 'Perceptions' and 'Displays' will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His novel 'Extreme Change' was published by Cogwheel Press; 'Acts of Defiance' was published by Artema Press. His collection of short stories, ‘A Glimpse of Youth’ was published by Sweatshoppe Publications. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City
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Momentous Event (Gary Beck) A speeding car jumped the curb, hit a woman walking down the street. People rushed to the scene some to help, most to gawk. Many deployed camera phones eager to capture disaster, suffering. Someone called 911. Soon sirens were heard attracting larger crowds. Emergency services arrived, placed the woman on a stretcher, loaded her in an ambulance, raced off, intent on life saving. The police questioned the driver obviously distressed by the crash. He asked over and over: "How is she? How is she?" The police ignored his questions, tested him for alcohol then took him into custody, two lives dramatically changed in one disastrous moment.
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Equalizer (Gary Beck) The wealthy drink champagne, exclusive bottled water, consuming the best money can buy, living beyond the means of ordinary folk, convinced they are better by accumulating more than the rest of us. Somehow they've forgotten, despite all their possessions. we all breath the same air, a rude reminder of equality.
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Danger Zones (Gary Beck) Bad news is reported daily disasters in Africa, crises in the Middle-East, recession in Europe, setbacks in Asia, so many problems at home it is hard to imagine how our beleaguered people can survive endless threats and still go shopping.
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Susceptible (Gary Beck) I'm too tired to work, so I turn on the tv that tries to submerge me into channels of response, instructions to buy something whether I need it or not, graphic demonstrations with painstaking details of every type of crime actually committed, or created by writers, motivation day or night to get up from the couch, grab my assault rifle, go out and kill someone, courtesy of the sponsors whose inspiring messages saturate the airways, eroding repugnance for iniquitous acts.
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Innovative (Gary Beck) We acquire habits depending on class, wealth, education, inclination, some good, some bad. For those who read books many elders remember when books had hard covers. Then paperbacks spread quickly and it was good for the people, reading accessible to all at a reasonable price. E books snuck up on us and it didn't take long till they had their own listing on the bestseller list, although some people could not accept not turning the pages.
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Biographical Note: Jeffery Alfier
. Jeffrey Alfier is winner of the 2014 Kithara Book Prize for his poetry collection, Idyll for a Vanishing River (Glass Lyre Press, 2013). He is also author of The Wolf Yearling (Silver Birch Press) and The Storm Petrel(Grayson Books, forthcoming). His recent work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review and Tulane Review. He is founder and co-editor of San Pedro River Review.
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Not Far from the Corner of White and Broad Streets (Jeffery Alfier) My mind fades home to Red Bank, to a homeless man who breaches my memory. He ordered coffee one winter in a cafĂŠ we shared, then strangely drank it outside in a gaining blizzard. Last year I found him on a Navesink River dock, gave him $10. He touched my face in crude wordless thanks. I shocked myself by pulling away from his hand, his illegible eyes.
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Late today, from our front steps, my woman and I saw a trio of Mylar balloons caught in the branch of a neighbor’s tree. Wind slid their festive colors in and out of sight, like a circus disappearing over a hill. Like souls few hazard to believe in today, but keep showing up before slipping off, the way those balloons finally did, or the makeshift tent December wind will empty along a river.
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Fugue for an Early Jersey Snow (Jeffery Alfier) ‌written on the edges of my life, you old light. Johannes Bobrowski, Village
Winter of my fifty-ninth year, daylight silts through the bruised blue of a storm front. On Red Bank sidewalks, figures lean into wind, are dressed for journeys that will carry them beyond the city,
back over Cooper’s Bridge, where an immigrant casts a fishing line. The first signs of ice lave the water. A Sunoco, shuttered three decades, keeps its empty vigil at the south end of the bridge.
Wind regathers in bare maple limbs. A small cyclone of leaves is what the city 34
inherits of autumn, wind etching calligraphy in early snow that slants past bricked-over windows, over streets that will weigh the drifts to come.
The blizzard finally blows out to sea, Stars plunge east into deepening Atlantic twilight. I join the fisherman at the bridge’s railing, his cast line a prayer he breathes over water.
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Good Woman Gone (Jeffery Alfier) Morning is a motel’s borrowed bed, the hour edging forward into a day layered with gray overcast, like a secret. On my back, arms arched overhead, my hands brush the headboard’s wrought iron, morning cold, a Bourbon Street balcony summoned our of yesteryear.
A groundskeeper sweeps the parking lot, slides the broom over the space her car had been, as if to second her exit. Pausing to wipe his brow, he pushes into the dustpan the desiccate rasp of magnolia leaves, spent cigarettes – their cooled crush of deserted ash.
Not yet 8:00 a.m. and I stretch myself to her side of the bed, smoothing-out
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the imprint of her body on the sheets, the warm depth gone out of them.
Gulls mount a sky beyond sight. A voice on the alarm clock breaks open in mid-sentence, warning of traffic down some road vital to anyone but me. Next door, a maid bangs about, her cell phone ringing a hymn in Spanish.
Idling in my vision, I think those are lilacs she left behind, like frail blossoms of her voice. In days ahead they will lose their scent, their memory. Their secrets.
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Toward the Whetstone Range (Jeffery Alfier)
Pummel of wing against sun. The hawk banks and loses sky
to sluice the daylight that westers from us. A starved cougar
is spine-high in graythorn and what’s left of driftwood char
where she navigates the storm-cut wash, deterred for mere seconds
in tractor ruts sunk to the hard fluency of stone. The hawk retreats
north of me toward a farm field once
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held in corn. A quarter-mile off,
a mule deer will meet the foreclosed future of mercy when the big cat slinks
through pepper grass whelming the oxide slumber of cast-off steel.
Ravens in dark lace leave the higher reaches of river cottonwoods,
wingshadows limning this moonscape of thorn and bone. The world is balanced
on a map’s cold coordinates, never absolved of what it would take to name me lost.
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Biographical Note: Tobi Cogswell
Tobi Cogswell is a four-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Credits include or are forthcoming in various journals in the US, UK, Sweden and Australia. In 2013 she received Honorable Mention for the Rachel Sherwood Poetry Prize. Her sixth and latest chapbook is “Lapses & Absences”, (Blue Horse Press). Her seventh chapbook, “The Coincidence of Castles”, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.sprreview.com).
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Tune-up (Tobi Cogswell) He loves in the way the used-to-be green Chevy advances up and over the hill—engine churning its last leg rumble. Invisible until cresting into view, a little rust added for wry charm, baggage of old receipts and papers in the back. He ignites. Like the crack of a ground ball charging past the reach of a desperate glove, a strike of heat lightning in a dry field. Explosive. Immediate. Unstoppable. She loves in the way an orchestra tunes up. Tentative, yet deliberate, playing the scales of possibility while ensuring fine melody and perfect pitch. Strong hands comfort the most fickle of strings, of reeds with histories back to time’s beginning. A countenance of concentration. Quiet as she gains confidence, she will bring you memories with lush harmony. Hers is a slow smolder. To watch them both is to learn the way ice melts in a glass, tempering heat, cooling the tongue. You sit on the porch of observation, watch the streetlights come on, learn how carburetors make music. A question is answered.
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Narrow Alley in Morning—From One End to the Other (Tobi Cogswell) Tattered seam of sky ripped by curls of iron and quiet chaos— an opaque surface hangs suspended, while the morning blush of sun patterns jigsaw pieces on worn stone and smooth walls— pungent color softened by shadow. Balconies dry clothes, somnolent flags of people’s lives. Their colors fly, like ticker-tape, floating pinks and reds, ready to greet the day. Out of sight, roused by the hush of lost dreams and the smell of coffee, one mangy neighborhood rooftop cat picks a careful path through chimney smoke.
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Back in His Arms Again (Tobi Cogswell) She loves quiet Sunday afternoons. She can feel herself sink into sleep in the comfort of the big green chair, familiar music that makes her feel like kissing playing on the radio on the window ledge. The occasional ping of her lover’s computer and phone tells her someone is awake. Her lover reads by the light of the window, the gentle breeze brushing.shadows from the camphor tree and climbing rose across his concentrating brow. He stops to answer his phone or stretch, or change the music, then goes back to his book. Sixty pages a day, that’s his goal. Her goal is a dream of anything lovely—a waltz in the kitchen, fresh peaches on the porch, the tightness of his arms around her as he kisses her neck. Always a rosé from the South of France, though they don’t drink rosé and have never been, their plans including other destinations but never France. She’d like to picnic on the bed with him, both wrapped only in the sheets. She’d like to wear a hat decorated with broad ribbons. She’d like to change her dream to hear the morning waking of the shore, the widening sound of tides as wind pours whispers through their open window like a sigh. Like her sigh, as she opens her eyes. Dance with me.
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Suitcase (Tobi Cogswell) Must carry the green and brown boiled wool of a sweater, old as a castle floor in ghostlight, picked from the pile of “going to nobody’s,” the scent of home enough to keep you gone and bring you back. Must be small and square enough to carry, to carry pens and books and how to write the checkerboard of country as it gives way to the blue-black of oceans, cities full of life we can only imagine and cannot understand. Must gracefully negotiate rutted tracks, manicured lawns, the gravel crush of footpaths to a resting place, days or weeks, with pockets to hold secrets and silences, a note that wraps its arms around your vagrant heart.
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Grandma’s Got a Blowtorch (Tobi Cogswell) She makes crème brulee wearing a welder’s helmet, can change canister lights with just a reach up, no ladder, can make a bank deposit, coffee, and birthday cake for the little one in 2B all at the same time. She babysits her grandkids for entire summers, chats up the mailman, argues with parking enforcement and sugars frozen grapes—— to be used in counting lessons after camp, a snack to be earned. You don’t mess with grandma, she’ll burn you down, shortsheet your bed, raise your rent. She’s said goodbye twice to husbands—one dead, one run off to sit at the bar, no smoking allowed, not a blue flame in sight, his chest hair finally re-grown. She needs kisses from the kids, a canister of propane, and the money on time. When she’s wearing her hairnet, best watch out, be on your best behavior, be ready to run. Grandma’s got a blowtorch—she’s not afraid to use it.
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Biographical Note: Steve Klepetar
Steve Klepetar’s work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Three collections appeared in 2013: Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications), Blue Season (with Joseph Lisowski, mgv2>publishing), and My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press). An echapbook, Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, came out in 2014 as part of the Barometric Pressures series of e-chapbooks by Kind of a Hurricane Press.
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Canal Street (Steve Klepetar)
In February storm snow tumbles
a man off Canal Street huddles
in a doorway ragged blanket pulled to his chin
doesn’t shiver half asleep on cold concrete
thin cover black against wet white flakes.
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Two Poems (Steve Klepetar) One about a window, one about a ball. The window is open in the rain, but somehow, through all those grey streaks, lovely colors hover, bits of brown and green and even a burnt red woven in subtle threads.
Near a pile of soaking black and yellow leaves, dripping basketball, skinned knee on oil-slick tar. Cool, wet breeze, sheer white curtains damp, almost sagging in a sweet gesture, Chaplin’s shrug of acceptance and surprise.
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Wardrobe: Lesson in Dressing for Success (Steve Klepetar) Today, with my red sweater and yellow shirt I feel like a hairy popsicle, some strange reject marketing cartoon that terrified kids at a focus group in
LA. I ask my wife, but she says “You look nothing like a popsicle.” Still, I’m not so sure. Even in cold, December sun, I feel myself melting at the neck,
strawberry-banana sweat drooling down in puddles as I glide the streets. I know people are staring by the way their eyes dart aside. “Bite me” I want to yell, at once
aware how inappropriate that phrase must sound, how it might seem like nothing so much as invitation, all sweet red-yellow slush between tooth, tongue and oblivion.
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We Interrupt This Program (Steve Klepetar) Bulletins made my mother jump, yell “Cuba!” as if the somber man on the black and white news was breaking in to let us know we had
about fifteen minutes before the bombs began to fall. Not a mercy, really, kind of a mean way to spend your final time, imagining that roar
(the last you’d ever hear) and melodramatic mushroom cloud, flash tearing sight from your eyes, searing heat, flesh blistered in the firestorm.
Better not to know, like the girls jumping rope at the end of Seven Days in May, birds still twittering in trees along the avenue, radio playing
too loud, cars honking at final splash of ordinary green.
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Waking to Rain (Steve Klepetar) Here is rain pushing up through layers of ragged sleep, struggling dazed, pock
marking gray puddles of this new day. And here is dream rain, pouring down
in columns of fiery red, and there iron cold ponds, open mouths on dust-brown
skin of earth. All night this marvelous weather, and trees like strange lizards
with long, pulsing necks, green and yellow flowers braided through
tawny brush, small faces smeared with eyes.
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If you fancy submitting something but haven’t done so yet, or if you would like to send us some further examples of your work, here are our submission guidelines:
SUBMISSIONS NB – All artwork must be in either BMP or JPEG format. Indecent and/or offensive images will not be published, and anyone found to be in breach of this will be reported to the police. Images must be in either BMP or JPEG format. Please include your name, contact details, and a short biography. You are welcome to include a photograph of yourself – this may be in colour or black and white. We cannot be responsible for the loss of or damage to any material that is sent to us, so please send copies as opposed to originals. Images may be resized in order to fit “On the Wall”. This is purely for practicality. E-mail all submissions to: g.greig3@gmail.com and title your message as follows: (Type of work here) submitted to “A New Ulster” (name of writer/artist here); or for younger contributors: “Letters to the Alley Cats” (name of contributor/parent or guardian here). Letters, reviews and other communications such as Tweets will be published in “Round the Back”. Please note that submissions may be edited. All copyright remains with the original author/artist, and no infringement is intended. These guidelines make sorting through all of our submissions a much simpler task, allowing us to spend more of our time working on getting each new edition out!
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November’s 2014S MESSAGE FROM THE ALLEYCATS:
A Response to Arthur Broomfield’s response? It can only be Peter O’Neill Actually due to time constraints this will be a separate piece.. Time flies when you are a cat we also have On The Wall which talks about Graymryh. Well, that’s just about it from us for this edition everyone. Thanks again to all of the artists who submitted their work to be presented “On the Wall”. As ever, if you didn’t make it into this edition, don’t despair! Chances are that your submission arrived just too late to be included this time. Check out future editions of “A New Ulster” to see your work showcased “On the Wall”.
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Biographical Note: Kyle Kemmings
Kyle Hemmings's artwork has been featured in The Stray Branch, Euphenism, Otioliths, Uppagus, and Stink Waves. He loves 50s SciFi movies, manga comics, and pre-punk garage bands of the 60s. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/
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Superhero in Window by Kyle Hemmings
Sleepy by Kyle Hemmings 55
Uptown by Kyle Hemmings
Going Home by Kyle Hemmings
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Blue Dress by Kyle Hemmings
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Two press releases this month Gary Beck has a new book out Call to Valor and E.V. Greig’s The Legend of Graymyrh books one and two can be previewed on Issuu. https://issuu.com/e.v.greig/docs/the_legend_of_graymyrh_book_one_-_b?e=0 https://issuu.com/e.v.greig/docs/the_legend_of_graymyrh_book_two_-_t?e=0
PRESS RELEASE October 31, 2014 Gary Beck’s novel, 'Call to Valor' accepted for launch by Kindle Scout
Call to Valor is a sweeping story of war, love and courage, as determined Americans face the war on terror, in a world of increasing nuclear threats. A dedicated doctor and a resourceful Marine join forces to prevent a terrorist group from detonating a dirty nuclear bomb in New York City. (https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2XJ0F53MDCHH4)
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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS RECENT and NEW TITLES 978-1-909252-35-6 London A Poem in Ten Parts Daniel C. Bristow 978-1-909252-36-3 Clay x Niall McGrath 978-1-909252-37-0 Red Hill x Peter Branson 978-1-909252-38-7 Throats Full of Graves x Gillian Prew 978-1-909252-39-4 Entwined Waters x Jude Mukoro 978-1-909252-40-0 A Long Way to Fall x Andy Humphrey 978-1-909252-41-7 words to a peace lily at the gates of morning x Martin J. Byrne 978-1-909252-42-4 Red Roots - Orange Sky x Csilla Toldy 978-1-909252-43-1 At Last: No More Christmas in London x Bart Sonck 978-1-909252-44-8 Shreds of Pink Lace x Eliza Dear 978-1-909252-45-5 Valentines for Barbara 1943 - 2011 x J.C.Ireson 978-1-909252-46-2 The New Accord x Paul Laughlin 978-1-909252-47-9 Carrigoona Burns x Rosy Wilson 978-1-909252-48-6 The Beginnings of Trees x Geraldine Paine 978-1-909252-49-3 Landed x Will Daunt 978-1-909252-50-9 After August x Martin J. Byrne 978-1-909252-51-6 Of Dead Silences x Michael McAloran 978-1-909252-52-3 Cycles x Christine Murray 978-1-909252-53-0 Three Primes x Kelly Creighton 978-1-909252-54-7 Doji:A Blunder x Colin Dardis 978-1-909252-55-4 Echo Fields x Rose Moran RSM 978-1-909252-56-1 The Scattering Lawns x Margaret Galvin 978-1-909252-57-8 Sea Journey x Martin Egan 978-1-909252-58-5 A Famous Flower x Paul Wickham 978-1-909252-59-2 Adagios on Re – Adagios en Re x John Gohorry 978-1-909252-60-8 Remembered Bliss x Dom Sebastian Moore O.S.B 978-1-909252-61-5 Ightermurragh in the Rain x Gillian Somerville-Large 978-1-909252-62-2 Beethoven in Vienna x Michael O'Sullivan 978-1-909252-63-9 Jazz Time x Seán Street 978-1-909252-64-6 Bittersweet Seventeens x Rosie Johnston 978-1-909252-65-3 Small Stones for Bromley x Harry Owen 978-1-909252-66-0 The Elm Tree x Peter O'Neill 978-1-909252-67-7 The Naming of Things Against the Dark and The Lane x C.P. Stewart More can be found at https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/home All titles ￡10.00 per paper copy or in PDF format ￡5.00 for 4 titles. In PDF format £5.00 for 4 titles.
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