Earlier this year, EGW Publishing from California in the USA released the first issue of a new journal: Nourish Poetry.

Issue 1 of Nourish Poetry offers more than 80 pages of contemporary poems plus 25 pages of haiku, showcasing an international line-up of poets. The collection is headlined by Juan Felipe Herrera who was the first Mexican-American to be appointed United States Poet Laureate, filling the position from 2015 to 2017. His direct and forceful poem, Don’t Push the Button America, offers the lines:

don’t push it please don’t push it
you are making me nervous I am slouching toward nowhere
art is not enough
performance is not enough
something is missing don’t push it to fill the vacuum

In contrast, David Gershator’s poem, Candle Power, depicts a more ephemeral and dream-like world:

what became of the shadowy children
and how did they disappear so quickly
back into the walls and woodwork
of a country far
so far
from gazelles

While my poem, Desire, considers how the relationship between artist and model can concentrate the senses:

the light is soft
and low as it feeds
the blush on your skin
each delicate hair
alert now like a sentry
on watch

that hesitant arc
of charcoal
about your buttocks
initially too gentle
but then the tracing
too bold

a clumsy image
at best though
somehow that very
clumsiness captures
my urgent desire
to split a melon

If you’d like to read some new poetry in a new journal, then get a copy of Nourish Poetry from Amazon in paperback or on Kindle.