Monday, December 21, 2015




Bluepepper would like to wish all poetry lovers a safe and enjoyable Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous 2016.



Sunday, December 20, 2015

New Poetry by James Diaz










Anyone Can Light A Match In The Dark

Some say that I never really knew
the things that I needed to know
in order to survive

but if you are reading this tonight
it means that I exceeded 
more than a few low expectations

that I went uphill on my knees
year after year
undeterred 
and that all of the shouting
from over my shoulder
was no angry God
just a few hungry ghosts
that I refused to feed

and when I look back on it now
nothing haunts me,
I stood the test,
not of time,
but of the emptiness that sits between time
what gets filled with the light
you learn to hide from all of the death eaters

the cheerleaders of nothing and nowhere
whose hands 
at the end of the day
have no real creases of their own
no signs of having survived
with only this:

the will and the need to go on.


- James Diaz 2015


James Diaz lives in Upstate New York. His poetry can be found in Chronogram, Calliope, Ditch, The Voices Project and A Long Story Short.







Thursday, December 17, 2015

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney










Book Signing

Keep writing,
a famous writer 
once told me
signing his novel,
until you have said
something true.
The thing of it is,
he cautioned,
some never do
yet find no time
for life as it is.

They find no time
to feed the hungry,
give drink to the thirsty,
clothe the naked,
care for the sick,
visit the imprisoned
or call an embalmer
to bury the dead.
Instead, he said, 

writers keep writing 
hoping they’ll say 
something true
and maybe they will.
The thing of it is,
he said, so few do.
Most write about life 
as they wish it to be
and not as it is 
for too many.
A pity, he sighed,
signing another book, 
but so often true.


- Donal Mahoney 2015



Donal Mahoney’s fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including Ink Sweat & Tears (England), Bluepepper (Australia),The Galway Review (Ireland), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria),Revival (Ireland), print and online magazines in the United States.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

New Poetry by Les Wicks










Pop

Just another pain, I
turn away
blood in the pupil, a crookedness on the spine.
This absence of words
is covered by planking
under construction
safety first until we burst
in grief.


- Les Wicks 2015


Les Wicks' most recent publication is Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience), Puncher &Wattmann, 2013.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

New Poetry by Damen O'Brien










The Flinch

We knew about the flinch, because
time-lapse photography showed
bruised leaves and cut-stems curling,
nearby branches swaying away
in distress, through the same filter
we’ve witnessed rival canopies clashing
and striving in bitter border disputes,
but now we know that in silent outrage
and perhaps also in plea, each plant calls
to its neighbour in chemical messages,
if it is assailed by caterpillars or
by the predations of grazing cattle,
not for its own sake, but to warn
its neighbour to furl flowers or close leaves.
So, anthropomorphic enough to make
vegetarians quail, and meat eaters
smile around the edges of their steak:
empathy Dahl and sympathy salads
and indigestible moral dilemmas.


- Damen O'Brien 2015



Damen O'Brien is a Queensland Poet, previously published in Cordite and Mascara, and winner of the Ipswich International Poetry Feast, the Yeats Poetry Prize, and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Award.