Leaves Literary Journal
Contributors
Patrick Emanuelle
Ross Enrique
Mark Whitmore
Andrew Stinylus
Styulou Enderich
Francais Nichols
David Simpson
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Patrick Emanuelle
A Translation
THETIS ORDERING THE NEREIDS TO DESCEND
INTO THE SEA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
552
JUNO COMMANDING THE SUN TO SET. . . . . . . .
556
TRIPOD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
561
THETIS AND EURYNOME RECEIVING THE INFANT
VULCAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
562
VULCAN AND CHARIS RECEIVING THETIS. . . . . .
564
THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOUR TO ACHILLES. . .
577
HERCULES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
592
THE GODS DESCENDING TO BATTLE. . . . . . . . .
597
CENTAUR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
614
ACHILLES CONTENDING WITH THE RIVERS. . . . .
628
THE BATH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
662
ANDROMACHE FAINTING ON THE WALL. . . . . . .
663
THE FUNERAL PILE OF PATROCLUS. . . . . . . . . .
677
CERES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
705
HECTOR'S BODY AT THE CAR OF ACHILLES. . . . .
709
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
710
IRIS ADVISES PRIAM TO OBTAIN THE BODY OF
HECTOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
715
FUNERAL OF HECTOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
744
Ross Enrique
A newness
Standing in the domain.
I will never faulter
But when I am here
there will come a new need,
to let go of the wetness
that hides in shards of glass
but come now
we must not faulter
Hearing
What comes
Will be enough,
To shelter
The sound that is the spring
I will be here
for you
and all our children
Standing in the domain.
I will never faulter
But when I am here
there will come a new need,
to let go of the wetness
that hides in shards of glass
but come now
we must not faulter
Hearing
What comes
Will be enough,
To shelter
The sound that is the spring
I will be here
for you
and all our children
Mark Whitmore
Style
We’ve all acquired some education
A bit of this a bit of that,
God be thanked, some imitation,
And we can all display éclat,
Onegin, he was deemed by many
(Critics stern, acute as any)
As well-read, but opinionated,
For conversation’s art created.
He had the gift of easy chatter,
Touching lightly on each theme,
Then like a very sage could seem
When talk was of some graver matter,
Yet make the ladies smile, un-clam
With some ready epigram.
Andrew Stinylus
The Temptation
Why are we here?
Because
Why do we need stimulation?
And why?
Only because
There is nothing left
And nothing left to bend
So true.
Regression
Why did Freud regress?
only because
When there was something more
he didn't take it.
Green
A night
That is neither cold
Nor hot
It is in the extremes they say
Well
Extreme
All that has come to pass
And all
That will come to pass.
Why are we here?
Because
Why do we need stimulation?
And why?
Only because
There is nothing left
And nothing left to bend
So true.
Regression
Why did Freud regress?
only because
When there was something more
he didn't take it.
Green
A night
That is neither cold
Nor hot
It is in the extremes they say
Well
Extreme
All that has come to pass
And all
That will come to pass.
Styulou Enderich
Silence is a wish that never can be granted
A well that seeps the dew of the stars
a noise that makes me hold you close
when lamplight reveals the mist as a ghost
a quarter moon will disappear into the darkness
and that which holds the sea from the sky
will believe once again
in what the laughter of the dawn has always known
(that silence is a wish that never can be granted).
A well that seeps the dew of the stars
a noise that makes me hold you close
when lamplight reveals the mist as a ghost
a quarter moon will disappear into the darkness
and that which holds the sea from the sky
will believe once again
in what the laughter of the dawn has always known
(that silence is a wish that never can be granted).
Francais Nichols
La Boucle Retrouvee
Il retrouve dans sa memoire
La boucle de cheveux chatains
T'en souvient-il a n'y point croire
De nos deux etranges destins
Du boulevard de la Chapelle
Du joli Montmartre et d'Auteuil
Je me souviens murmure-t-elle
Du jour ou j'ai franchi ton seuil
Il y tomba comme un automne
La boucle de mon souvenir
Et notre destin qui t'etonne
Se joint au jour qui va finir
The Farewell
I picked this fragile sprig of heather
Autumn has died long since remember
Never again shall we see one another
Odor of time sprig of heather
Remember I await our life together
Il retrouve dans sa memoire
La boucle de cheveux chatains
T'en souvient-il a n'y point croire
De nos deux etranges destins
Du boulevard de la Chapelle
Du joli Montmartre et d'Auteuil
Je me souviens murmure-t-elle
Du jour ou j'ai franchi ton seuil
Il y tomba comme un automne
La boucle de mon souvenir
Et notre destin qui t'etonne
Se joint au jour qui va finir
The Farewell
I picked this fragile sprig of heather
Autumn has died long since remember
Never again shall we see one another
Odor of time sprig of heather
Remember I await our life together
David Simpson
To Cease
A clashing
Darkness
Wanting
Without holding
Winding
in the meantime
I am here
and the treasure
of the mean
is inhanced
and then let go of
Why do we plunder
When to die
is enough to get by
Don't give up
Or else we all will.
Climbing
Each step
Is like the last
it knows that wind has its mark
in times that are for the deer
i am in my most selfish spirit
because when we are through
i will have it all.
A clashing
Darkness
Wanting
Without holding
Winding
in the meantime
I am here
and the treasure
of the mean
is inhanced
and then let go of
Why do we plunder
When to die
is enough to get by
Don't give up
Or else we all will.
Climbing
Each step
Is like the last
it knows that wind has its mark
in times that are for the deer
i am in my most selfish spirit
because when we are through
i will have it all.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Volume 1, No. 2, Autumn 2013
Leaves Literary Journal
Volume 1, No. 2, Autumn 2013
Contributors
Anna Fern
Stu Hatton
Stuart Barnes
Iain Britton
Phillip A. Ellis
Paul Fearne
Alice Melike Ulgezer
Les Wicks
Volume 1, No. 2, Autumn 2013
Contributors
Anna Fern
Stu Hatton
Stuart Barnes
Iain Britton
Phillip A. Ellis
Paul Fearne
Alice Melike Ulgezer
Les Wicks
Anna Fern
Anna Fern
in
my chest
a
grass tick buried deep
homesickness
cheap motel room
smoke alarm chirps
halfway there
dawn
chorus
kookaburras
chuckle and laugh
my
insomnia
driving
home from hospital visit
his
health improving
an
L-plater bunny hops
***
urgent proofreading job
across the pages he sprawls
purring
my velvet tin roof drummer
bounces to his own tune
purrs to the moon
spring shower
baby blackbirds hop on the lawn
cat sleeps inside
cleaning
out the freezer
my
dead cat’s kangaroo mince
rissoles
and tears
Stu Hatton
sands
Sweat behind the knees; craving
the shade that never finds us. When the only way out of a desert is to sit with
it awhile. Thought we saw the bird flying but in fact it was grounded,
lifeless. Drinking perspiration from a shirt. Deep in the desert, a bridge over
sand … for what purpose? Scarves failing to filter dust from our lungs. Rubbing
eyes with sand-fingers. We travel at night where possible.
after
reverdy
for
Paul
these are false portals
through
which nothing leaves
& what is the endless wall?
what
is the heavy house that sleeps?
a seedsman’s garden
overcrowding
of seeds, rose dust
if hope has no object, what are seedlings?
the
garden birds’ wings too short for the task
flows
Knowing there would be some way
to continue. So many forms of breathing (breath-forms), the many stations of
the breath. Breath spiral.
Bonding in the spiraling.
Breathing changes what happens. Confidence in uniqueness. Trying to find out
what the words want. The breathwork.
And then you know you’re in the
detail; glints of the not-yet settle. Let the breath itself do the breathing. A
house of breath is not a building. Countless forms of yes; yes-forms.
Time may enter or be entered …
as flows. Tending toward multiplicity, multiple vectors, multiple persons. Two
people will breathe this differently. A close reading of breath … a close
dissolving.
Unbounded breath; no beginning,
no endpoint of. No bounded system. Mind is part of the air. A home in yes, of
flows … flows flow through flows.
Stuart Barnes
Stuart
Barnes lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he writes & edits PASH capsule, a journal of contemporary love poetry. Poems
are forthcoming in Southerly, blackmail
press, sacred /
profane, Mascara
Literary Review, &Assaracus: A Journal
of Gay Poetry.
The Secret History,
your prized
thyrsus,
soon became mine
(no other could’ve prised my twenty-first
fist).
fist). In a leather bar
that Frenchman’s
spiteful
spiteful telling,
then the laughter—
The Bacchic shout† awoke
A shoot entwined your throat
Quickly
I grasped some antiquity’s
safer
veiled.
†… I have chosen
Thebes as the first place
To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond
In fawnskin habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands –
The weapon wreathed with ivy-shoots –
—Euripides, The
Bacchae, translated by Philip Vellacott, Penguin Books, 1973
Iain Britton
paper-orange philosophy
first in queue
you open the door
to the girl with the
greenstone
pendant
here’s
where one’s beliefs change
every day
where prayers become power points
items of possession
healers of hurt
your conversation with
her
is predictably about
tomorrow
the colour of the
fountain
the sunset’s
haemorrhaging
couples tucked into
whispering
you approach her softly / by the lake /
at the water’s edge
you enter
the prizegiving
ceremonies
of her survival - her
reliance on walking
through gates / the
opening and shutting / each different
each for a particular
reason - a walk on the wild side
through panoramas
paddocks cities through invisible people
your friendship with her
stops at the lake
her
journey is one of many phases
here
today /
then gone
ubiquitous
in the next breath
and orange kites
criss-cross valleys in the sky
she leaves your house
every day
follows the path past
motels cottages volcanic stones
boats fishermen rivers
the living and the dead confessing
she’s there for you for
the morning
for the evening
for meals / she’s
there
because the newspapers
say so
because she’s become the
main feature /
because
her survival is fixed
on the rose bush
the palm tree
the rows of perennials
your shirts
pegged on the
clothes-line
she lives on the wild
side
in a town
which lives on sulphur
the tribal directions of a family
which eats with ghosts
beds down with ghosts
she
starts each day
as if things
were pushing her towards
the lake
the galileen
waters
wash her
feet
rainbows
beget rainbows
orange kites
grin
loose pumice
nudges
albino hedge-
hogs onto
the beach
she can’t be ignored
until all that’s ephemeral
is suddenly locked up
for the
night
Phillip A. Ellis
Phillip A.
Ellis is a freelance critic, poet and scholar. His chapbooks, The Flayed Man
and Symptoms Positive and Negative, are available. He is working on a
collection for Diminuendo Press. Another has been accepted by Hippocampus
Press. He is the editor of Melaleuca. His website is at
http://www.phillipaellis.com/
The war is not over. We continue to fight,
find ourselves wearied, worn down.
The piano plays in a bar, where we find ourselves
as we listen to the sob and clubbing of gunfire,
and we wonder, wrapping thoughts around truth,
like the hands we wrap around our glasses,
whether it was worth it, this endless fight,
whether it was worth brutal force.
We ask who will win the war, and do not say
what we imagine to be the truth,
for it does not take the brave to stay alive
when we would rather be the cowards that we are,
finding a haven in a place
made of 1s and 0s, where we can no longer be weary.
Paul Fearne
Paul Fearne
A thousand
I never
thought
that sunlight
would be so
thick
as to drown
the evening
in its own
restless clawing
there are
chances
and bright
stars
that the
daylight cannot hide
there are
songs
that take the
breathing of dreams
to let wander
over sea shells
a corner
in a room
that a
thousand children have been taught in
in that corner
a thousand
tears have been shed
and each tear
upon hitting
the floor
has given
birth to a thousand dreams
a thousand new
cities
a thousand
works of art
untold
marriages
and untold
books
and when the
tears have dried
and the cities
have turned to dust
the art picked
by wingless time
the marriages
gone to a thousand generations
and the books
to mere ideas
I will sing a
new song
and it will be
more lovely
than our hopes
could bare
and it will be
for you
and our
children
and the
wishing of the sun
The beauty of love
love and all
it brings
hope and all
that it lets us wish
when we find
that special someone
we open our
hearts
and our souls
and everything
we thought was hidden
but when it
comes to that missing heart beat
there is
nothing like love
to bind the
gap back together
we never know
what it truly
means to love
until we have
been there
and then
when the sand
of the hourglass
no longer
falls
here we find
ourselves
through the
mist
and into the
arms of the other
but when we
can no longer feel life’s pulse
here love is
stretching
and bending us
to that deeper
part of ourselves
that is not
for touching
but for
yearning
and all that
comes to pass
when we look
into the eyes of the beloved
here we find
that something special
that we cannot
describe
only hint at
when the dawn
is at its most precious height
and the
sparrow is at its nest
and feeding
its young
but we must
not be surprised at this
for when all
the poets have had their say
and all the
bards have sung their songs
there is
something more that sweeps us away
and that is
the strength we find
in the arms of
the beloved
and dance
which is love
I can only say
one thing more
and that is
when we are
through with everything about life
we return once
again
to that centre
which is where
love is
it holds us
breaks us
and transports
us
to where we
want to go
(and that is
everywhere
and everything
and all that
cannot be touched
by any hand of
winter
or any lap of
any wave
on
the hearth
which is the beauty of love)
What we have
always wanted
a sense
that we all have
that the daylight is a thief
as the time between moments
is what the scorching of the sun will take
and when we are through
I will have it all
and then
when the dance is done
and nothing can escape us
there will be a foraging
in the oldest places
we will find ancient manuscripts
and know them to be new
and then
when the darkness has left us without sight
I will forge a new path to the sea
and we will come to know
what we have always wanted
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