Dave Lewis
Dave Lewis is a writer, poet and photographer from south Wales. He read zoology at Cardiff University and has always lived in Wales apart from a year, teaching in Kenya. He founded the International Welsh Poetry Competition – the biggest in Wales. He also runs Writers of Wales and the Poetry Book Awards. His epic poem, Roadkill, deals with the class struggle, while his collection, Going Off Grid, outlines the dangers of digital capitalism. His latest release is Algorithm, where he dips into AI, war, nature, race, love and travel. Resolutely untrendy he’s shunned by the literature establishment in Wales.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Dave Lewis and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Always been a horse
I’ve always been a horse so why change now.
Not much point in dying of this conspiracy.
The dead are not afraid of course,
because they’ve been here before,
seen the horror of the breathing
when breathing is all you can do,
tasted the tears of television
when the TV talks back to you.
The only way to go is to delete yourself.
Clear the cache and burn your VPS.
Reject the dying room; go for a walk
to all the old places, the promises and definitelys.
The car radio loud, the squall
rushing in through open windows
and the only surprise is that your old Labrador
is no longer asleep on the back seat.
James Stemmle
James T. Stemmle is an old man, currently living in retirement with his wife of 58 years. In warm weather, he writes poetry during morning meditations on a bench in his back yard, where, immersed in nature, it is so quiet that, depending on atmospheric conditions, he can sometimes hear interstate traffic four miles distant. He had a Federal Government career mostly with EPA, earned a doctorate from Catholic U in Chemistry, and was born in Louisville, KY. He is eager to share more of his accumulating poetry. He has published 27 poems so far in several small literary magazines including: The Octillo Review, Evening Street Review, The Raven’s Perch, Deep South Magazine, Hektoen International (a journal of medical humanities), Literary Veganism, Choeofpleirn Press, Seattle Star, Poetry Super Highway, Open Arts Forum, The Light Ekphrastic, Midway Journal, Open Door Poetry Magazine, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal and Literary Heist.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by James Stemmle and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Seven
a prime number the seven primary
stories that get retold in movies with
different settings furniture time
frames characters even genders
stable or fluid the seven demons
of Mary Magdalen the seven deadly
sins OK first there’s birth where
you push or get pushed out into
the universe transferring to another
space ship environment strange and
wonderful needing exploration to
produce a jampacked map of reality
a new being a new creation that
but for you and your partner would
not exist and second before that
how you met which is another story
that should be counted third causing
us to wonder where to start the
chicken or the egg if we cycle
around continuously the flight and
fight of the lucky semen who out
swam and outfought all the others
or just got lucky enough to penetrate
the egg shell and dissolve spilling
its genes unspooling the entire length
of its helix so it can hook up with
another a story of love a story of
war and struggle followed by
growing up coming of age let’s
see does that make seven
