Poems new and old
I had a poem published last week on the website of Horned Things Journal. I will publish the poem on this site later this year. But you can read the poem on Horned Things now by following this link:
Horned Things Journal, Issue Two
This site is still relatively young but they have assembled an impressive and eclectic mix of writing and art in this second issue. I feel lucky to have had "Making Minerals" included in their journal.
I am posting today to highlight a poem I had published yesterday on another website.
My poem called "Newville 108" is currently running at a site called the Under Review.
I am hoping you will check my poem out there. Later on this year, I will post it here but for now I want to thank them for publishing my work and I want to invite you to check out their site, and to take a look at my poem there by following this link:
https://www.underreviewlit.com/issues/7-winter-2023
If you are headed there on your phone, I should say that my poem will read best and look best if you tilt your phone sideways so that the screen gets wider, allowing the poem enough room to accommodate the length of its lines. It also looks good on a laptop.
Finally, the Under Review has suggested that it might produce a limited run of print copies of this current issue, which I hope will happen.
If I have already
gone insane
but I want to get
crazier yet,
what’s my move?
Go outsane?
Crazy outside means
Attack of leaf blower,
mind wound down
like weedeater string;
the smell of suddenly
snipped neurons;
amphibious on gasoline,
when two strokes are
none too many.
How many RPMs?
How much throttle?
Green guffaw,
zero turn.
In the end,
I throw myself
to the ground
and roll around
on freshly mowed grass
until there’s nothing left
to cut.
Note: This poem first appeared at The Literary Bohemian.
https://literarybohemian.com/poetry/two-poems-by-john-randall/
by Phil Williams
whither you come from
-or-
the magic eight-ball
i venture into something, it's a mind-blower, but i gotta keep it under wraps for j-rand.
see: i had envisioned a wry conversation/transcription that was intertwined. red-vines
and mr. pibb; chronicles.
adjacent antecedent (i.e. addendum): the spatial discrepencies had been a problem, but
the chronological shifting was downright vexing. first it was 2004, then 2007, then 2003,
the years and specific dream ramblings resemble a rorschach test; it's another brick in
the wall.
the wood desired chasing, and the family desired spaghetti. sorry, but my thoughts get
confused, like waves in the midnight surf. german balloon aka led zeppelin: it parks its
dreams @ ground zer0. eros may have called, but failed to identify himself, leading me
to this shell of thoughts. it could be an atkins of fiction.
outra-verted, a word i wordlessly think when i encounter 'yar.' i consider the rivulet to
my s(l)ide, but conclude she's w/ the tall man. i'm obviously hallucinating. the police
have arrived and i've simply said the word 'plant.'
realizing i had entered a house of mirrors and drugs, i texted j. still and nick s. they
were part of my cleaning crew in the mid 90's. i suddenly understand that i'm alone and sweating,
in a basement, no shaman. the disorientation slowly dissipates and my carb-stricken mind intuits
the next phase may require an umbrella, inverted.
1
The only thing here in the traps was a very crisp frog. There's a bit of a breeze. Only some of the grass has grown, only some of it needs to be mowed. The rest is fried—if it isn't dead it might not grow again this year. So there's one upside to the heat, to the lack of rain: less mowing. If I can stick out the balm, I can spend my time here the next two days doing more of this, and maybe a little reading...
Don’t forget the mountains. Nor the glow on them
as a desert’s winter sunset unfolds in the west,
the mountains in the north latching on to all that light.
Warm, fibrous, resinous—cactuslight.
Altitudinous, the light of late bird activity,
of irrigation drip lines; light that skims golf course greens,
pools, and patios; light by which the bobcat
begins her night of scratch and claw;
light that seems to brake the turn of the Earth
before ceding to the dark once more,
letting loose squadrons of javelina, bands of coyote,
wily packrats, and scores of Sonoran moths and bats.
But this is light that will return, soon enough,
to climb the tall saguaro of morning.
Lunch rooms
in old department stores. Or
on the ground floor
of the office building downtown
where my pediatrician practiced
upstairs, that sterile waiting room,
booster shots, dropping my pants
so I could pass the physical but then
lunch with my mom in the bustling
café downstairs, like something
from the fifties, the glamor of my
own personal history, a café that
must be decades gone, its existence
now inexplicable, part of the long
beach of time that will somehow
also include the rest of this, my
unraveling life
Note: This was among four of my poems published in February at Parhelion, an online literary magazine. You can see all four poems by following this link. I also wrote a short essay about my writing process to accompany the poems. Poems by other writers published in the same issue, along with an incredible painting of a farmhouse, can be found here. Thanks again to Parhelion for including my work on their site.
A single bract
With a nutlet at its base
A flowering branch
A beech with its smooth gray bark
“It was more or less darkly mottled.”
Every vein ended in a tooth
It sent up suckers, so you see
Large trees were often surrounded
By little ones
Deer tiptoed at the margins
Browsing on coppice growth
Deer, most evenings
At the forest edge
In the gloam,
mirror on mirror,
shot glass memories.
Wild turkey, you’re a dinosaur.
Subtle grouse, you’re the heart.
New bird, I’ll never know you.
Sixty-six million years ago—
How long ago was that
In technology years? In robot seconds?
In the exhaust of wingbeats
Thudding like clickbait
Into the online brilliance
Of original flight?
Long live the crow,
Who abstains from all of us,
Who flocks like a nuisance
Until none of us is around
To scorn him.
Note: This was among four of my poems published last month at Parhelion, an online literary magazine. You can see all four poems by following this link. I also wrote a short essay about my writing process to accompany the poems. Poems by other writers published in the same issue, along with an incredible painting of a farmhouse, can be found here. Thanks again to Parhelion for including my work on their site.
Limited weapons, allies needed, where’s NATO?
Martial law, severe sanctions, “we don’t afraid of them.”
Sand bags and camouflage, separatist troops, conflict building.
Disrupted supplies, industrial metals and other commodities.
Interlinked energy, dependent demand. Hard assets up, soft ones down.
Leverage. Leverage the Saudis. You got Russia in your head.
See how Libya went? Ukrainian wheat shipments fell twice over,
the stomach of the Middle East left growling.
It’s the Donbas, dumbass. The president is a comedian.
They’ve been fighting in the east for eight years now.
Full-fledged operations in the Black Sea.
Amphibious landing in Odessa,
and I don’t mean Texas.
Shoot down the drones...
The Writing of John B. Randall 