GAS Featured Poet: Kenneth Pobo

 

 Kenneth Pobo grew up in Villa Park, Illinois, but now lives in Pennsylvania.  He is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections.  Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Uneven Steven (Assure Press), Sore Points (Finishing Line Press) Lilac and Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose (BrickHouse Books). Opening is forthcoming from Rectos Y Versos Editions. Human rights issues, especially as they relate to the LGBTQIA+ community, are also a constant presence in his work. 

BOBOLINKO BURNING WOOD

Many things paralyze Bobolinko.  His friend

Mina asked him point blank “Do you prefer

spring or fall?”  He shifted from foot to foot,

eyes glazing over.  The radio plays “Sure Thing”

by Dionne Warwick.  He had been sure

of one thing, Phil, who resembled

the Lincoln Monument.  He expected him

to always be there.  Phil left him after slightly

less than five years.  He said,

“This just isn’t working out.  You’re

a nice guy, but I need something more.” 

Either he had no idea that the letdown

was coming or he chose not to see it. 

He didn’t think that the Lincoln Monument

would shake off Georgian marble

and walk away.

 

Hobbies help.  Sometimes Bobolinko goes

to his basement and does woodburning. 

He purposely burns too deeply,

making any word illegible.  The smell

attracts him, sweet and acrid,

the burnt wood, the deep gash smoking.  

WILDFLOWERS IN THE WOODS

 

Pink at the lip

of earth, 

 

gaywings,

shorter than my ankle,

change a forest

each spring.  A wildflower

has a quiet power,  

 

opens

briefly--

 

long enough

for lasting joy.

GAS Featured Poet: Benito Vila

 

Benito Vila lives in a remote fishing village on Mexico’s Pacific coast. He first had his poetry published in 2020 in Love Love, an underground magazine based in Paris. His other published work includes the editing Of Myth & Men, a narrative cut-up of poet Charles Plymell’s email correspondence (for Bottle of Smoke Press), and creating profiles of "counterculture” instigators for pleasekillme.com and legsville.com. 

Enough

I am meant to breathe and smile, be human.

I am meant to grow, the way an acorn is meant to be an oak tree.

Enough of fetishes and materialism

Enough of verse in rhymes and measures

Enough of private clubs and endless vacation

Enough of clarity, control and self-improvement

Enough of who’s who, what’s what and where it’s at

Enough of chattering, poking and blaming

Enough of alerts, dings and constant noise

Enough of emotion, logistics and expectations

Enough of oil spills, dead fish and dead birds

Enough of greed, the apocalypse, jingoism and Election Day

Enough of mystics, misogynists and misinformation

Enough of pointing out differences and glorifying privilege

Enough of the 289 ways of Christ

Enough of repeating old news over and over and over

Enough of selling doubt and fear all day long and doing it again the next day

Enough of sentence structure and social hierarchies

Enough of spotlights becoming crosshairs

Enough of likes and efficiencies

Enough of self-pity, self-esteem and skin creams

Enough of ascribing sex, shaming intelligence and repeating big lies

Enough of rectangles and refusing to acknowledge the obvious

Enough of kindness coming in second

I want to stand tall, hear birds describe God.

I want to have the ground feel good when I go to lay down.

The New Now

The new now is taking notes

to begin a new narrative.

The new now is more than

the same old shit, imperceptibly different.

It’s an everywhere of everything 

where everyone is sacred, where each living thing is a saint.

The gift is to die dreaming.

Shouldn’t we all get to die dreaming?

I come awake to the history of the world 

as being only about what’s going on right now.

The past, the future, so much of that depends on

the snake, the swan, the maiden, the moon.

I’m in no hurry to find out

where Holden’s ducks or where Bob’s roads go.

Welcome the new blood.

It has new life in it.

I have a feeling about you and me:

we’re building cathedrals we can marvel at.

We need each other.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

GAS Featured Poet: Leah Mueller

 Leah Mueller is the author of ten prose and poetry books. Her work appears in Rattle, Midway Journal, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. It has also been featured in trees, shop windows in Scotland, poetry subscription boxes, and literary dispensers throughout the world. Her flash piece, Land of Eternal Thirst will appear in the 2022 edition of Sonder Press's Best Small Fictions anthology. Visit her website at www.leahmueller.org.

Footslog

 

Once I walked

without counting

steps or calories.

 

Sidewalks were

fields of play.

 

I hurtled forward,

weight like

paper wings.

 

But now, I check

the numbers

on my phone face,

 

as I trudge ahead--

first towards 200,

then 1,000.

 

When I achieve

6,000 steps,

my phone

congratulates me.

 

You have

reached your goal,

it crows.

 

When did movement

become a duty,

stripped forever

of adventure?

 

Such a cruel

trick of age

and metabolism,

but at least

 

my decrepit feet

still know

the way home.

 

 

GAS Featured Writer: Rodrigo Toscano

Rodrigo Toscano is a poet and essayist based in New Orleans. He is the author of ten books of poetry. His newest book is The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2022). His Collapsible Poetics Theater was a National Poetry Series selection. He has appeared in over 20 anthologies, including Best American Poetry and Best American Experimental Poetry (BAX).  Toscano has received a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He won the Edwin Markham 2019 prize for poetry.  rodrigotoscano.com  @Toscano200

La Proletaria

 

The smell of pulp, turpentine, and bleach, usually permeates this side of town. But when winds from the southeast swoop into the valley, the toxic brew is fast cleared away, and what remains is the smell of wet grasses, mud, and wildflowers. This natural phenomenon mitigating human-made conditions has only a limited effect on the minds of the hard-working townsfolk whose every other thought dotes on the health and growth of the town’s young.    

She not only had the gall to admit it to herself, but also had the presence of mind to look for an opening (any) to construct a whole new reality for herself, and for something else. The eerie attraction she felt for this outcropping of Pre-Cambrian rock spoke clearly and directly to her the first time she saw it in the middle of the field. 

In the deep of winter, the paper mill’s indoor facility is cold and noisy. In that environment, she didn’t pay much attention to the roll press feeder guy dressed in the mustard-colored industrial pants and brown checkered long sleeve felt shirt. Also, the safety glasses and helmet occluded much. 

One day, her workmate buddy approached her about the possibility of maybe coaching her “little cousin” on basic lacrosse techniques. She readily agreed, having been a great player in school herself, the same school her buddy’s “little cousin” was now attending, but also the Pre-Cambrian rock in the middle of the field, enabling her resolve. 

Actually, she recognized him before he did her. She had caught his eye at the mill. She thought he was “cuddly,” but sufficiently “rough,” her exact taste in “little cousins,” which was just beginning to pick up speed. Decked out in a bright red, terry cloth, short sleeve disco shirt, and loose-fitting green parachute pants, the only part of him she could correlate to the Pre-Cambrian rock in the middle of the field and/or the guy at the press feeder on the third shift – the general mass and approximate density, was something else.  She could barely cloak the dilation of her cheeks’ surface arteries as she laughed easily at herself flaying the lacrosse stick every which way, tumbling to the ground, legs all over the place. 

At the end of practice, she offered to give him a ride home. As fate would have it, hard rains had made the winding road where “little cousin” lived impassable. They had to turn onto “the estuary,” the oldest road in this part of central Missouri, a tree-lined road made of stone and railway planks. 

The sound of the automobile’s front axle rod snapping in two reached her ears pretty much at the same time as something else crawled its way up into her nostrils. The last moment of sanity she remembers is the look of her own short brown hair flared out onto her face in the mirror, sticky and messy, the Pre-Cambrian rock in the middle of the field there also. As a whole new reality set in, a gust of wind made the maples around them rustle.

GAS Featured Poet: Ben Nardolilli

 Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, The Northampton Review, Slab, and The Minetta Review. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is trying to publish his novels.

The Nardolilli Review

Reading through last night’s dispatches, gifts sent from me
in the past to me in the present,
the results are mixed, but always interesting,
I guess I lost the ability to spell sometime around midnight

The voice is unrecognizable, the themes fluctuate,
these insights and opinions refuse to stay focused and wander,
they start with politics, surge on to art,
then crash land into a slurry of existential ruminations

Memories begin to bleed through the last of the text messages,
a darkness gains its light, and teases me
with hints of a world between the pavement and bed,
where I was paranoid, garrulous, and preoccupied with death

Just to Let You Know What Is Up

Before or after, or prior to whatever
aftermath there remains now,
the good fat of the universe is on display,
it’s about community, the cosmos,
taking a moment to not
stuff more words inside of your brain

Usually, we search for voices
which agree with us, instead of genuflecting
before the extraordinary mundane,
no need to seek conversation
with the rest of the three-dimensional world,
the background is available to us all

Look up in silence, it’s an atmosphere
of acceptance and mutual respect,
remember to first rub it on your hands,
then on your face,
before trying to read it, here, you are safe
never waking while dreams continue
 

GAS Featured Poet: Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo

 Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo  is a Sickle Cell Warrior, Poet, Student, Video Editor, Stickers Creator, Literary Contest Linker, Smile Therapist and a Guitarist-to-be.

Some of her works are in WSA, WHI anthology, Firebrand magazine, sledgehammer, Nnoko, GEMP, Prawns paper, Mixed Mag, Agape review, Mad Swirl, The Beautiful Mind, Enceladus Magazine, The New Man Gospel Movement Fringe Poetry Magazine and more.

She lives in Lagos, Nigeria.

Bed of Beauty 

Yesterday, I took a walk to the blue sea 

& pretended to be a fish.

I dived into the bed of beauty, wagging my tinny-weeny tails.

I was with a form & not void.

I shook my little tail to the lyrics of the roaring waves.

My skin glowed & glowed.

I read no sun & watched no moon 

& I never hungered and thirsted, for I had a mouth-

full, in bubbles & babblings. 

I went to the school of fish: I learnt to pray 

& not to be preyed on.

I greeted the old water turtle taking a walk.

I played hide & seek with the seashells.

I enjoyed the scene of the happy dolphin high jumps. 

In here was a home of unity, a world of uniqueness 

with the colour of freedom.

GAS Featured Poet: Doug Jacquier

 

 Doug Jacquier has lived in many places across Australia, including regional and remote communities, and has travelled extensively overseas. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK and Canada. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways. For readers prepared to come along for the ride, he likes to make them laugh or cry or groan and, occasionally, shake their electronic fists at him. 

Carried on the wind

 

Sounds carry on the wind,

carry in the wind,

sometimes are the wind,

deafening the soul.

 

Sand carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind,

stripping the paint.

 

Tears carry on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes are the wind,

spreading desert rain.

 

Hope carries on the wind,

in the wind,

and sometimes is the wind

of whispered prayers.

 

Tomorrow carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind

of soaring birds.

 

Writing carries on the wind,

in the wind

and sometimes is the wind

of Heaven.

Reflections

 

For you and for me,

all things seem possible when we look across blue water

from the solid shore.

Peering towards the horizon,

we conspire towards a thousand buoyant courses.

 

Imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,

we do not weigh our stamina against the undertow

nor the wind strength against our craft;

we have enough gods

to warrant speculation.

 

But there are those who stand upon the solid shore

who are already at the end of this world

(and the next)

and our imagined journeys

are their fated drownings.

 

For them,

as they squint anxiously across the water

imagining a receding shore and a rising tide,

sailing into the blue

seems a truly godless journey.

 

So they sit watching us,

like hermit crabs,

waiting for us to set out,

assuming we are unlikely to return,

and picturing life inside our empty shells.