Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Ascent is now on an extended break.
Since 1997: ISSN 1715-085X
A Division of Ascent Aspirations Publishing
Ascent Aspirations Magazine is a not-for-profit publication with the mission to publish new, cutting-edge poetry and prose poetry.
We will no longer be sending out mass email announcements but will be posting on X and Facebook each week as reminders to visit the Friday's Poems site. Look up Ascent2009 for X and David Fraser for Facebook. We will still be emailing you if you have signed up for our contact list.
We will no longer be sending out mass email announcements but will be posting on X and Facebook each week as reminders to visit the Friday's Poems site. Look up Ascent2009 for X and David Fraser for Facebook. We will still be emailing you if you have signed up for our contact list.
Ascent Aspirations Magazine
Friday's Poems
December 28, 2018
Cover Art: Linda Stevenson
This is the last issue of Friday's Poems
We will be taking a vacation.
Please visit from time to time to look at our archives of the last three years of Friday's Poems
Send your comments to [email protected]
Friday's Poems
December 28, 2018
Cover Art: Linda Stevenson
This is the last issue of Friday's Poems
We will be taking a vacation.
Please visit from time to time to look at our archives of the last three years of Friday's Poems
Send your comments to [email protected]
Linda Stevenson is a Melbourne poet and artist. Her recent poetry has been published in local and international literary magazines and anthologies, including Bluepepper, North of Oxford, The Pink Cover Zine and Plumwood Mountain. A Chapbook The Tipping Point, Blank Rune Press 2015 is a collection of her ecopoems.
|
Please take a look at Howard F. Stein's new collection of poems, Centre and Circumference. Howard is a frequent contributor to Friday's Poems. |
Please take a look at this month's featured anthology of short stories, Our Plan To Save The World , a project in which one of our contributors, Frank Sikora has been involved. |
Available now, the most comprehensive book about the life, the art and the writing of
Tom Taylor aka The Poet Spiel aka Thoss W Taylor
“REVEALING SELF in Pictures and Words with Tom Taylor aka The Poet Spiel aka Thoss W Taylor”
www.davidpfraser.ca/reviews.html
Tom Taylor aka The Poet Spiel aka Thoss W Taylor
“REVEALING SELF in Pictures and Words with Tom Taylor aka The Poet Spiel aka Thoss W Taylor”
www.davidpfraser.ca/reviews.html
Bower Bird
The two jet streams
have merged,
they flow now
North to South,
pole to pole. It’s a shock.
Equatorial air crosses,
cooler, anomalous.
Our intimations flicker,
there is a breach,
a presage of blistering summer.
Our seasons, weather,
known patterns
of drought and storm,
surrender;
their paradigms veer and shift,
submit to a strange chaos.
The sea ice darkens.
Here, in the bush,
the bower bird builds, oblivious...
collects, displays
seductive art,
found, natural,
artifice, indigo, scraps,
dreams up a blueprint
for his quivering dance,
choreographs
his unquestioning
continuance.
Linda Stevenson is a Melbourne poet and artist. Her recent poetry has been published in local and international literary magazines and anthologies, including Bluepepper, North of Oxford, The Pink Cover Zine and Plumwood Mountain. A Chapbook The Tipping Point, Blank Rune Press 2015 is a collection of her ecopoems.
An Old- Fashioned Stunner
She is straight off the pages of 1970s Paris Match.
Catwalks towards us with model girl carriage.
Echoes of Stevie Nicks in her boho hair.
Youth and nature have bestowed the beauty upon her
that the rest of us must counterfeit with make -up.
A silk shirt dress glissades to the knee,
promising full breasts and long legs.
No practiced selfie pout, instead she
smiles back at a life that smiles upon her.
Suddenly I droop under the extra stone
run up like a bad debt over the summer,
curse my curls for fluffing like a Pomeranian in this heat.
She’s beautiful I say, always willing to pay beauty its due,
Your usual diplomatic; I didn’t see her,
revised to, must admit I did notice.
Your words graze; no prospect in middle aged
of an ugly duckling transformation,
only the last resort of surgeon’s knife or aesthetician’s needle.
Then I remember Annie, photos about her house
boasting she was a Julie Christie ringer,
who at 72, understands time’s democracy,
so, her goddess wisdom to such ripened girls is to
Enjoy blowing their beauty’s trust fund.
But my inner toddler briefly tantrums
at a youth withered in mother’s shade,
until I recall, how in my 30s at ‘’Dos’’,
middle aged matrons would observe me in second skin dresses
gorging on the buffet and bemoan ‘’She is so slim’’.
Whereupon I would twirl to the music
like a figure in a James Bond title sequence.
Smiling at this karmic payback;
I brush off envy like dandruff from a collar.
Fiona Sinclair lives in the UK . She has had several collections published. Her most recent Slow Burner was published by Smokestack press in August 2018.
Swirly Skirt of Skins
The skin of the yellow banana opens easily,
and I peel off one piece and then another.
I look at the perfect light pointed cone shape,
with a swirly skirt of skins.
Feeling the delicious flesh inside my mouth,
I hold the fruit in front of me, and look at it,
Asking, “How are you here?”
Janice Konstantinidis lives in Paso Robles, on the Central Coast of California. She is the President of the writing organization SLO NightWriters. She enjoys writing poetry, memoir and short fiction. Born in Tasmania Australia, Janice immigrated to the USA in 2005. She draws inspiration from nature and a deep regard and sense of the transience of life.
Girl Talk
I’m dirty
and a long way
from the home -
where dust was sinful,
and I thought
it was more important
than me.
I divorced her
when I was eight.
Couldn’t take
her ambivalence
and penchant for shadows.
Thrust my boney chest
forward and cut through
my blue ribbon life
as beautifully
as a whisper of scent.
I lost my twin
In grade three,
he came back
from the hospital
an entitled genius.
But even monuments crack
and are worth no more
than a pillar of salt
or a sister
still humming his song.
Yes,
I am dirty.
Sad.
Scared.
He cannot hold my head
under green water anymore.
I am not burnt
by his black bucket
of anger. I bury
under the many-armed maple
the deep grief of us.
I am dirty
and must survive
the cascade of guilt
that goes with separation.
Falling,
who shall I reach for
when we finally stand
at our mother’s grave
and simply sigh,
‘enough’?
Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, vocalist, spoken word performer and mentor. She publishes frequently in journals, anthologies, and e-zines. She was shortlisted, highly commended and finalist for many international competitions including: The Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), The International Poetic Republic Poetry Prize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize (UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Competition (UK) and the Carers International Poetry Prize (UK).
Jude has written six books.
Her book, A Quiet Coming of Light, A Poetic Memoir (leaf press), was a finalist for the 2015 Pat Lowther Memorial Award,five of its poems were shortlisted for The Magpie Award, judged by George McWhirter, Vancouver's first Poet Laureate and three of its poems were nominated for the coveted Pushcart Prize (US) by three different publishers.
One of Jude's poems from her recent book, Splendid in its Silence, was chosen by Britain's Poet Laureate to ride with other winners around the Channel Islands on public transit for a year. Jude was a featured reader at the Guernsey International Literary festival.
This book was recently a SPM Prize winner and was published in the UK last April.
Some of these poems can be heard on Jude’s collaborative (viola/spoken word) EP, Places Beyond.
Jude's forthcoming book, A Blooming, will be published in London the spring of 2018 and her collaborative collection, Cantata in Two Voices, with Bonnie Nish will be published by Ekstasis Editions in the fall.
The Night Sky Leaves Her Stars
From “I Ask For Silence” Pablo Neruda
The night sky leaves her stars
as each day creeps into being born
and so I wonder in the leaving
what favorites will be left behind.
Birdsong, tree frogs trilling through the dark,
wing flutter of a thrush, a knotted knock
staccato beat of woodpeckers waking up the hydro lines,
our silences except for a steady drift of rain upon a lake,
those moments behind a cabin’s screened door,
a dry-wood fire to soften a crisp morning,
a look across a table, sharing strawberries,
a touch upon the hollow at your ankle and your smile.
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016. Recently April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.
The two jet streams
have merged,
they flow now
North to South,
pole to pole. It’s a shock.
Equatorial air crosses,
cooler, anomalous.
Our intimations flicker,
there is a breach,
a presage of blistering summer.
Our seasons, weather,
known patterns
of drought and storm,
surrender;
their paradigms veer and shift,
submit to a strange chaos.
The sea ice darkens.
Here, in the bush,
the bower bird builds, oblivious...
collects, displays
seductive art,
found, natural,
artifice, indigo, scraps,
dreams up a blueprint
for his quivering dance,
choreographs
his unquestioning
continuance.
Linda Stevenson is a Melbourne poet and artist. Her recent poetry has been published in local and international literary magazines and anthologies, including Bluepepper, North of Oxford, The Pink Cover Zine and Plumwood Mountain. A Chapbook The Tipping Point, Blank Rune Press 2015 is a collection of her ecopoems.
An Old- Fashioned Stunner
She is straight off the pages of 1970s Paris Match.
Catwalks towards us with model girl carriage.
Echoes of Stevie Nicks in her boho hair.
Youth and nature have bestowed the beauty upon her
that the rest of us must counterfeit with make -up.
A silk shirt dress glissades to the knee,
promising full breasts and long legs.
No practiced selfie pout, instead she
smiles back at a life that smiles upon her.
Suddenly I droop under the extra stone
run up like a bad debt over the summer,
curse my curls for fluffing like a Pomeranian in this heat.
She’s beautiful I say, always willing to pay beauty its due,
Your usual diplomatic; I didn’t see her,
revised to, must admit I did notice.
Your words graze; no prospect in middle aged
of an ugly duckling transformation,
only the last resort of surgeon’s knife or aesthetician’s needle.
Then I remember Annie, photos about her house
boasting she was a Julie Christie ringer,
who at 72, understands time’s democracy,
so, her goddess wisdom to such ripened girls is to
Enjoy blowing their beauty’s trust fund.
But my inner toddler briefly tantrums
at a youth withered in mother’s shade,
until I recall, how in my 30s at ‘’Dos’’,
middle aged matrons would observe me in second skin dresses
gorging on the buffet and bemoan ‘’She is so slim’’.
Whereupon I would twirl to the music
like a figure in a James Bond title sequence.
Smiling at this karmic payback;
I brush off envy like dandruff from a collar.
Fiona Sinclair lives in the UK . She has had several collections published. Her most recent Slow Burner was published by Smokestack press in August 2018.
Swirly Skirt of Skins
The skin of the yellow banana opens easily,
and I peel off one piece and then another.
I look at the perfect light pointed cone shape,
with a swirly skirt of skins.
Feeling the delicious flesh inside my mouth,
I hold the fruit in front of me, and look at it,
Asking, “How are you here?”
Janice Konstantinidis lives in Paso Robles, on the Central Coast of California. She is the President of the writing organization SLO NightWriters. She enjoys writing poetry, memoir and short fiction. Born in Tasmania Australia, Janice immigrated to the USA in 2005. She draws inspiration from nature and a deep regard and sense of the transience of life.
Girl Talk
I’m dirty
and a long way
from the home -
where dust was sinful,
and I thought
it was more important
than me.
I divorced her
when I was eight.
Couldn’t take
her ambivalence
and penchant for shadows.
Thrust my boney chest
forward and cut through
my blue ribbon life
as beautifully
as a whisper of scent.
I lost my twin
In grade three,
he came back
from the hospital
an entitled genius.
But even monuments crack
and are worth no more
than a pillar of salt
or a sister
still humming his song.
Yes,
I am dirty.
Sad.
Scared.
He cannot hold my head
under green water anymore.
I am not burnt
by his black bucket
of anger. I bury
under the many-armed maple
the deep grief of us.
I am dirty
and must survive
the cascade of guilt
that goes with separation.
Falling,
who shall I reach for
when we finally stand
at our mother’s grave
and simply sigh,
‘enough’?
Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, vocalist, spoken word performer and mentor. She publishes frequently in journals, anthologies, and e-zines. She was shortlisted, highly commended and finalist for many international competitions including: The Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), The International Poetic Republic Poetry Prize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize (UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Competition (UK) and the Carers International Poetry Prize (UK).
Jude has written six books.
Her book, A Quiet Coming of Light, A Poetic Memoir (leaf press), was a finalist for the 2015 Pat Lowther Memorial Award,five of its poems were shortlisted for The Magpie Award, judged by George McWhirter, Vancouver's first Poet Laureate and three of its poems were nominated for the coveted Pushcart Prize (US) by three different publishers.
One of Jude's poems from her recent book, Splendid in its Silence, was chosen by Britain's Poet Laureate to ride with other winners around the Channel Islands on public transit for a year. Jude was a featured reader at the Guernsey International Literary festival.
This book was recently a SPM Prize winner and was published in the UK last April.
Some of these poems can be heard on Jude’s collaborative (viola/spoken word) EP, Places Beyond.
Jude's forthcoming book, A Blooming, will be published in London the spring of 2018 and her collaborative collection, Cantata in Two Voices, with Bonnie Nish will be published by Ekstasis Editions in the fall.
The Night Sky Leaves Her Stars
From “I Ask For Silence” Pablo Neruda
The night sky leaves her stars
as each day creeps into being born
and so I wonder in the leaving
what favorites will be left behind.
Birdsong, tree frogs trilling through the dark,
wing flutter of a thrush, a knotted knock
staccato beat of woodpeckers waking up the hydro lines,
our silences except for a steady drift of rain upon a lake,
those moments behind a cabin’s screened door,
a dry-wood fire to soften a crisp morning,
a look across a table, sharing strawberries,
a touch upon the hollow at your ankle and your smile.
David Fraser is a poet, spoken-word performer, publisher and editor. He lives in Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Rocksalt, An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue Press), Poems from Planet Earth (Leaf Press), Walk Myself Home (Caitlin Press) and recently Tesseracts 18. He has published six collections of poetry. His most recent collection is After All the Scissor Work is Done, Leaf Press, April 2016. Recently April 2017 David received the Federation of BC Writers Honorary Ambassador of the Year Award.