kingsoftrain

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.

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Trouble Every Day XLIII

We miss that little world overthrown
                Just for us
                  By our mothers’ arms

                  To such an extent
                  That we demand it even
                  From our enemies

Better to forfeit a head
                  Than adoration

Each adversary must admire
                  Us and say so
                  Though we must not

Thomas Tyrrell has a PhD in English Literature from Cardiff University. He is a two-time winner of the Terry Hetherington poetry award, and his writing has appeared in Spectral Realms, Wales Arts Review, Picaroon, Lonesome October, Three Drops From A Cauldron and Words for the Wild.

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POEM FROM PORLOCK

These hills eat time.
Two miles’ tarmacadam
unfurls underfoot
at an easy pace
or whirls underwheel
in a flash. On hillside tracks
seconds unspool,
and minutes amalgamate.
Clear-running rivulets
disregarded by the road
wrinkle into
vertiginous valleys;
meandering footpaths
dive falcon-like
for the ocean, then shoot
up at obtuse
inclinations.
The failed deer fence
gives a border bluster
to a town
where stags still
graze oblivious under
the church clock
then turn about, trotting
towards the chimeless, timeless
pathless hillsides.

~~

A SESTINA FOR THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

The city sprawls out shoreward from the mountains,
Grids grafted to the…

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recent reflections at {isacoustic*}:

on Peter Twal’s ~Our Earliest Tattoos~

http://isacoustic.com/2018/09/27/our-earliest-tattoos-poems-peter-twal/

on Anna Meister’s ~As If~

http://isacoustic.com/2018/09/17/as-if-poems-anna-meister/

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general {isacoustic*}:

site: https://isacoustic.wordpress.com
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Isacoustic-192435501303710/
twitter: https://twitter.com/isacousticVOL?lang=en
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isacousticvol/

/

regarding isacoustic’s release of Heather Minette’s ~Half Light~

on goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40533588-half-light?from_search=true

~

for purchase:

from Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/half-light-heather-minette/1128985743?ean=9781387874200

from Amazon

~

other info:
https://kingsoftrain.wordpress.com/half-light/

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support:

{mood piece for baby blur} is a privately published work of mine consisting of 60 poems and is available to anyone donating 5.00 or more to {isacoustic*}

donation can be made, here:

https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock
or it can be sent to (bartsmock@gmail.com)

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Ashley Bullen-Cutting is a writer concerned with the Weird, Eco, Gothic and Queer. He has been published in Lonesome October Lit, Three Drops Poetry and can soon be read in an upcoming issue of Riggwelter. He holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Sheffield.

<

Cutis Calligraphy

I

Her eyes are like

twin stars and hard liquor

like oblivion shores

black-glass lapping

mascara tears

cutis calligraphy to destinations

                            unknown

We call her Hali

I want to be different

                                  she thinks

but cardboard is cardboard

apathetic pre-made flaps

and I’m not ready to rip

to change my design

Her skin is like

November and a misdemeanor

like purpled purgatory

Our Earliest Tattoos
poems, Peter Twal
The University of Arkansas Press, 2018

~

With vision and expanse enough to spot grass in the teeth of god, poet Peter Twal is able, in Our Earliest Tattoos, to palm the pop mortality of what it means to be appropriately beheld and, as such, so gently infiltrates the inner circle of distance that one may get carried away with the knowledge that we don’t last long. In form, the work is bent by sonnet to its interrupted blessings; in shape, it is a gospel gone to pray for the unclosed if of immediacy; in voice, a haunted medicine dropper lifted from imagination’s melancholy and held above the ghosted vulgar of characters italicized by a dryness specific to the short life of apocalypse. Twal’s touch is deceptively light, but not secretive; mystery, here, is visibly moral; and mark, a brief bed for the…

Kate Garrett is the founding/managing editor of several web journals, including Picaroon Poetry, and her own writing is widely published online and in print. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. and her latest chapbook, Land and Sea and Turning, was published by CWP Collective Press in August 2018. Born and raised in rural southern Ohio, Kate moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat. http://www.kategarrettwrites.co.uk Twitter @mskateybelle

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Solitaire

Once upon a time I shuffled cards, exchanged
insights on the suits of wands and pentacles
for cups of wine and ten cigarettes.

Everyone’s clarity comes in a different
package. Back then a north wind cut
through clouds of tar that wouldn’t stick

on lungs too young to be anything other
than invincible. I’d tell them their new…