May’s Poetry Issues is out, including “Platamon” by Alexandra Mouratidou.

Along with The Hague and Malmö, I am pleased to announce that a small number of copies of the current and previous issues are distributed to a selected audience for the first time in Berlin, thanks to the publishing professional and co-founder of Litdocs and the Literary Field Kaleidoscope, Dr. Sandra van Lente, and in Liverpool, thanks to the curator and visual artist Jenny Porter, some of whose work you can admire here.

And if you can’t get your hands on a copy, you can still enjoy the content of Poetry Issues #3 right here:

The end of our affairs

We’d like to fold them up in a neat

bedsheet-in-drawer manner

but they’re a roomful

of hopelessly knotted yarn.

So we set them on fire in the yard.

We resume our conversations

with ashes-on-mantel earnesty

then stuff them in shoe boxes

at the back of the garage.

So we get to keep the advantage.

In cardboard urns we align the has-beens

the would-be husbands we never miss

but then we judge it inefficient

as it all comes down to mass.

So we finally throw them in the trash.

Unfastened

I asked him to tell me once again

about the death of stars.

He went up and down the room

and I stayed focused on his arms

that broke into a dance against

the stubbornness of time,

tracing harmony and flow

back to when

each loose moment had the stamp

of the movement of the sun.

Platamon

by Alexandra Mouratidou

The evening leans

the sea shies behind a fan:

geranium red.

A Child’s Solace

A memory of

forever invincible

young parents laughing.

Mirror Image

It took me years of staring

at a flat map

before I saw

the night’s stereogram

as firefly lights descended their strings

one by one

and surfaced to the unlit soul

of the one staring.

Interrogation Triolet

The empty pages forced me to confess

to all the murders that I didn’t do.

The pen is now resting on my chest.

The empty pages forced me to confess

insisting that we made some progress

before the late-night shift was due.

The empty pages forced me to confess

to all the murders that I didn’t do.

The second issue is out, featuring the Greek poet Alexandra Mouratidou, who lives and creates in Malmö, Sweden. Again, if you can't get your hands on a printed copy of the pamphlet, either in The Hague or in Malmö, you can still enjoy its content here:

Panorama

Oh, I get the Flemish masters, now. Why

it’s always three quarters rampant sky or

a biblical sea crashing ships filled to

the gills with apples from China. I get

the art-nouveau postures of disfigured

trees reaching towards the promise of a

future sold through foolproof far-fetched words like

bioscoop and magnetron, and regal

swans chasing seagulls in rainy cobbled

streets – a mental note of life’s absurdity –

the rulers of the waterways losing

feathers like pillows dusted with long rods

letting off shrills carried through loud, defunct

chimneys. This is the place I’ll learn to miss.

Intentions

                by Alexandra Mouratidou

I’m scared of secrecy, silence, and sighs

the muted thoughts, the faceless sounds

and what does the unuttered hide.

Do words die out with time like past’s incense?

Soon, “I love you” will become a shroud you wear,

forgetting when or how­.

Dad died. But since the years have passed

it’s like the phrase has died.

Words die.

Just like a fallen star, an embryo, that hope,

the tears that have gone dry, the years behind –

Words wear banalities mostly when they’re cold.

Sometimes, they’re bored and tend to lie.

Words fly. At times, they choose to abandon all

their fateful sense.

The rebellious ones diverge:

They fall from poetry’s cliff revived.

Adolescence in Small Town

They were coming back from the church:

None of them believed in much of anything

but it was Good Friday. From around the corner

there ringed the laugh of the easy girls,

a silver bell calling paupers to charity supper.

Eager, the boys turned their untempered backs

on the spring wind, to light hand-rolled cigarettes

bought for a copper and a half each

by some older brother. They were fixing

their baby rockabilly quiffs,

ready to make an entrance and if there needed be

a scene, when a father’s bobbing belly came panting

and chased them down the road

thrusting insults mixed with warm spit.

The poor bastards ran like demons on that holy night.

Morbid Sensitivity

The crippling effect

of human interaction:

I take it all in.

I’m like sunglasses

with no filter to reflect

those carcinogens.

No good can ever

come from a self-image clung

on passer-by frowns.

Dear Contemporary Art Gallery

You are unequivocally clinical,

with blinding whites and cold spotlights,

and your wine is lukewarm and papery dry.

Your Django Reinhardt live nights

are of conservatorial principle

and your well-ironed guests will kindly abide

by smoking only outside. But art is a log cabin

in the thick dark woods, not a sterile science lab

for measuring and tagging pure consumer goods

– and it’s known for being moody and quite cynical.

So, Poetry Issues is out into the world! Nothing competes with paper but at least, if you can’t get your hands on a printed copy, you can still read the content of the first issue:

Job Search in Athens

Dreams die choked by job listings

soaked in strong communication and

numerical skills, overwhelmed by

excellent multitasking, tangled in

risk management drills.

Notably unadaptable

and lacking in combed manners

dreams cannot develop

concise and comprehensible content.

Completely uninformed on proper

social and business etiquette

and not client-oriented at all, dreams

die with near-native English

for a competitive thousand

to thirteen hundred monthly gross.

Black Cat, White Dog

Improbable friendships flourish

on freshly mowed backyard lawns.

Stencil flower fabrics host nightly

cuteness contests for a place

close to the lady’s painted toes.

We chase butterflies together

lick each other’s furs under the sun

in a mutually profitable agreement

valid for as long as you

keep your paws off my food.

Love

They say we are Millennials.

That’s how they flatter

us, the Big Pharma Generation

of Seroquel and Ambien

Ritalin and Risperdal.

Where there’s a need there’s

a way, and now you can even

tame that crude, primeval kick:

Try Adderall – They say it does

miracles for lack of concentration.

Refugee Haiku

Now trending: The trade

of man-made pain washed upon

a picture-blue shore.

Repressed Tanka

Drunken you order

a Sex on the Beach and text

your ex to let her

know your blind date is coming

oh yes, she’s cum-cum-cumming.

Landscape

when the sun

sets

a soft breeze

gives

the face of the earth

goosebumps

They come from the sand, ready

in tank suits and floral caps

with territorial air and scorn

for those who waste time lying in the sun.

They are like sea turtles, from their sense of purpose,

to the color of their skin to their wrinkled everything.

They trudge on shore but then swim forth

in straight lines cut with punctual strokes and eyes

fixed on a horizon beyond the horizon, closing

for the nares to take in the waft of brine.

They keep swimming back and forth and never talk

counting silently, in a self-devised mantra mode.

And the October sea stays calm, nurturing

and warm – because it knows.

They are like sea turtles

only that their heads always stay above,

as their statement of dignity and manifesto,

and they always return to the shore.

"Late Swimmers" belongs to the chapbook In Womanly Fashion.

"I have fulfilled my duty"

she said, and crossed

her hands to assert

her place among

the saints.

That’s what life was

to her: A service full

of humdrum tasks

she had to accomplish.

No wonder her children felt

like cheap porcelain dishes

left on the rack to dry.

"The Final Statement" belongs to the collection Checking the Exits, a chapbook that examines the themes of death, old age and terminal disease.

Into the glowing land of vivid dreams

the winding roads smell of white jasmine

brought in by sirocco’s dusty blows

taking me back to abiding memories.

The winding roads smell of white jasmine

perched on whitewashed walls and open doors

taking me back to abiding memories

to romp and race with friends until nightfall.

Perched on whitewashed walls and open doors

lizard me waits for the cool of day

to romp and race with friends until nightfall

before the moon ascends the starbound sky.

Lizard me waits for the cool of day

squinting towards the far and fiery West.

Before the moon ascends the starbound sky

fearless, I will leap aboard a roving ship.

Squinting towards the far and fiery West

with a jasmine bud behind my larboard ear

fearless I will leap, aboard a roving ship,

into the glowing land of vivid dreams.