GAS Featured Poet and Musician: Stephen Philip Druce

 

Stephen Philip Druce is an eclectic poet

from Shrewsbury in the UK. He is published

in the UK, the USA, Hungary, South Africa,

Ireland, Canada and India. He has also 

written for London Theater plays and BBC

Radio 4 Extra. Contact Stephen on Instagram

@StephenPhilipDruce 

THE PIANIST'S FINAL FLOURISH

Rustling herds of marching embers

ooze a masquerade of tickled trenches

in seething dominion,

torched waterfalls - nourished by zephyr

mastery, lurch languid in a godly 

zeal of paradigm vanity,

sandcastle-shaped serpents

trigger spew a searing horizon

of tangled theaters in

screeching flower cages,

scalded in sodden shadow,

the swooping goose machine

scatters its crinkled chimes

in a sensory mist of

ragged tigers and skating

vulture dust,

the canvas hermit -

nurtured in chalice,

furtive in fountain,

splashed by ruby,

as the wilted maestro sits

in a solitude ceremony 

of feathered ferocity -

the pianist's final flourish.

BIRDMAN OF THE HIGHWAY

Birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

through roads that snake

in a club striptease,

over champagne lakes

in a cocaine breeze,

as fast lanes flock

to casino hills,

the mountains rock

the backseat thrills,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

through cocktail shakes

in tequila seas,

as the city bakes

the street girls please,

over lit-up clocks

and fairground shrills,

the prison blocks

are popping pills,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

the cat pimps chew on fat cigars,

the foxes in the ghetto croon,

the carpets laid for movie stars

are chewed up in the rat monsoon,

the hurricane

it stirred so well,

the whisky rain

and the ice hotel,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite,

the night owl serenades the scars,

of moonlit lizards in desert dunes,

the rabbits shoot at speeding cars,

the bats rap to the nightclub tunes,

the riot flames

they cry farewell,

the mob that shamed

have smoked in hell,

birdman of the highway,

flying through the night,

where days dissolve

and sunsets fold -

where ocean stars ignite.

GAS Featured Poet and Musician: Neil Flory

     Neil Flory is the author of mudtrombones knotted in the spill (Arteidolia Press, 2023).  Nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize by swifts & slows, Flory’s poetry has also appeared in various other journals such as Superpresent, Sleet, shufPoetry, Down in the Dirt, and Fleas on the Dog.  Flory is also a composer of experimental music and a pianist whose enthusiasm for improvisation in live recital settings knows no bounds.  He lives among the wooded hills and lakeshores of Western New York State with his wife, published poet and fiction writer Elaine Flory, and their three hyperactive cats.

  

Light

 

Paradox/miracle of afternoon light through bare branches

 

Hope/death of Hope, like trying to cross the raging river on 

a thin cracking log barely stretched from bank to crumbling 

bank

 

Here we are in the midst of it, but we can’t harmonize 

an intimation

 

My single shadow interwoven with the countless forest-shadows,

another constant from the ancients (I notice them every day despite

our cheap technology, ever erroneously exalted, popular myths of its 

distinctions flashing vivid high definition across screens the 

size of continents)

 

And each found himself in his own subterranean tunnel.

Dim lamps every fifteen feet or so, significant gaps in their 

coverage. Leading to who knows where.  The belly of the 

mountain stretches on, our path until discovering a fabled shaft 

of light instantly the spark shift as even the thought brings it all 

blazing back, the leafless giants, twining myriads of shadow-dances, 

cool spring air on the back of the neck and blessed steep resistance 

of the hill again immersed, in this midst.

 

And finally what does it matter if yes, it soars too far above 

our understanding’s reach? Perhaps that was never our true 

harmony in this at all, stagnant mirage shining instead to 

futile long distraction in divergent heat.  

 

No, we won’t turn.

Step again now, in all trust; there won’t be another crack.

All you need now is to focus forward and balance, in fullest experience

we can harness of all resounding fact of every woven shadow rendering

in vivid sharp relief the miracle (yes, paradox unforgotten) of afternoon 

light the size/scope/life of warmth of this whole open 

vibrant world

 

Neil Flory · apparitions of deep memory (recorded live)

GAS Featured Poet: Jason Ryberg

Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen books of poetry,

six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders,

notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be

(loosely) construed as a novel, and countless

love letters, never sent. He is currently an artist-in-

residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted

P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an

editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection

of poems is “Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023).” 

He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster

named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe,

and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the

Gasconade River, where there are also many strange

and wonderful woodland critters. 

 

 

Van Gogh Stars

 

 

Out here, the sky is

alive and swirling with Van

     Gogh stars and the wind

     is an orchestra of tree

     frogs, cicadas, and crickets.

 

 

A Small Rabble of Sweat Bees (Sleight Redux)

 

 

It’s just a bird singing through an open window, and a

woman closing the door to a dream of a lone tree on a

hill with just a single leaf on it (the tree, I mean), and

opening another one to a bowl of peaches, apples,

nectarines and clusters of grapes, just sitting in the sun,

on a wooden table (like one of those old paintings of

some rich lord or lady’s spread, back in the day, but maybe

also featuring, there, a few fish and some game hens,

recently caught that very morning, no doubt) crawling

with what looks to be a small rabble of sweat bees.

The fruit, I mean.

 

 

 

  

Review of Su Zi's DANKE by Jonathan Fletcher

Danke

Su Zi

Ethel Zine and Micro Press

2024

49 pgs.

$10

“Darkest moon cycle: / ritual of dawn and dusk, / wet wind bends dry grass. . .” (Su Zi 3). And so begins Su Zi’s Danke (2024), a chapbook-length poem in quatrains.  Though small in dimensions, relatively short in word count, Danke is anything but lean in subtext, diction, meaning, or description.  Within the compact pages, each rich in detail, crows summon mornings, moons melt, and a horse “allows a long embrace” (ibid. 18).  Though full of such unique and skillful instances of anthropomorphism, Danke does much more than lend nonhuman characters human attributes; it invites the reader into an environment too often (and equally sadly) foreign to a modern reader. 

 

As if aware of the cultural divide between such a reader and the pastoral, the speaker addresses Red Woman, presumably one of a handful of equine characters, at various points in the chapbook.  In such intimate moments, however, the reader gets the sense that the speaker is gesturing toward them as much as the horse, and maybe even the author herself. In such moments, too, the speaker nearly (and implicitly) bemoans the tragic and irrevocable separation of humanity from its primal habitat while also (and equally fervently) celebrating, even ennobling, the nonhuman characters and their georgic environment.  Su Zi’s choice of capitalization of the common names of the various animals (e.g. Mourning Dove, Cardinal, and Warbler) only lends further support for such an interpretation.

In Danke, Su Zi wisely eschews ornate language for plainer (though not plain) diction.  Though not exactly minimalist in nature, Su Zi’s descriptions are simple (though not simplistic) in syntactical construction.  Take, for example, the following quatrain: “never forgetting / hungry years, palomino now learns gentleness. / following difficult steps / those of a beloved ghost” (ibid. 7).  Or, to take another example: “grass is burnt with frost / yet my red sister searches / for sleeping green roots / disinterested in grain / it seems she dreams of sweetness” (ibid. 31). Or, yet another example: “these simple moments: / cranes come to peck corn and dance, / sun sweetens damp air / so Sister Mare cleans all seeds, strolls soft-eyed in golden light” (ibid. 35).  Though arguably quiet and reflective, Su Zi’s minimal language emotionally charges such otherwise interior moments.  Though neither metered nor rhymed, Danke operates with an informal rhythm.  It operates with alliteration and assonance (“awful arctic air” being an example of the former,” “flit of the left oat” an example of the latter) (ibid. 23, 21).  It operates with anaphora: “this moment’s wet wind / this moment’s intimacy / this forever in the now” (ibid. 19).  Though never overwhelmed by such conventional poetic devices, Danke allows for just enough and, in doing, so not only informs and enlightens the reader but transforms them.

Although Su Zi’s chapbook-length poem is indeed a quick read, it is one that stays with the reader long after.  It is one that begs for a reread. Several, in fact. Don’t pass up this literary revelation. Pick up Su Zi’s chapbook today, and let it settle within you. Let it rumble.  Let it rise.  You won’t be disappointed.

Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts.  His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests.  A Pushcart Prize nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025.  Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.

GAS Featured Poet: Mahdi Meshkatee

 

Mahdi Meshkatee is a UK-born, Iranian poet, author, and artist. His translation of the children’s novel Witch Wars by Sibéal Pounder has been published by Golazin Publication Company. His work has been published by a number of magazines, including October Hill Magazine, Nude Bruce Review, and Inscape Magazine. His writings are a continuity of attempts at decoding himself. Instagram: @Mahdimeshkatee  Linkedin: Mahdi Meshkatee

I Missed a Key

 

The stains on the page are your tears.

(you haven’t shed them yet)

 

Last night in the great theater hall

The crowd gave me a huge standing ovation

An encomium I deserved after years of struggle

To be able to express myself. They cheered me on as I approached

The grand black piano at the center of stage, 

spotlight on me without being afraid

To lose for the second time in my life, the first the time I committed

Suicide but it went wrong, and I stayed alive.

 

I began with a piece from Schubert, Romantic

Challenging and shattering the ways of the world.

Then I moved on to Beethoven, some were intoxicated enough

To dance seated, and then stand up to elevate their movements

Rising and falling inaccurately on notes high and low.

I registered the moment into my brain, imagined myself dancing along

Hands up, feet moving on the ground as I was taught

When I was only eighteen and my sister brought me a drink

And from there it only took two to make us jump to the dance floor

Bodies expressing themselves after years of being told

To be careful not to show much, to keep close, to always consider

The worst outcome possible, and grow concerned, conservative and cautious

So much so that liberty becomes a distant notion and not so palpable

As for you to reach your hand out and grasp it.

 

The music flows, crescendos and diminuendos, ends, dins rise, noise floats over

The people happy with who they were, and happier with who they are, now,

In illusion as to the divisible nature of time

That there exists a time past present future

As if Schubert died like Beethoven died like Mozart died like me

When my piano broke and my key was stuck 

In the lock

And nobody came 

Not even my mom

To open the door

I sat behind

Crying 

For so long

until I was twenty-five

And dad came home

Groceries at hand and

Silently opened the door

To the same increment of time.

Sadness Shouldn’t Be Buried

 

Sadness shouldn’t be buried in a graveyard

 

It shouldn’t be buried next to the cashier 

Who celebrated his 60^th birthday as 

A loving husband and papa.

 

It shouldn’t be buried next to the child

Who was drowned in a frozen lake

‘fore blowing a birthday cake.

 

It shouldn’t be buried next to the writer

Who was soon going to be published

And missed the right train.

 

Sadness should be felt, written about, cried over, lamented, reminisced, performed, lied, feigned, promised, maimed, mocked, longed, wanted, desired, haunted, gone, afloat, 

in the air, 

not in the 

ground,

Where the dead lie.