NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

A 36 page stapled booklet. Well produced. There are a few pieces of artwork but most of the pages are taken up with a variety of poems from contributors. A very mixed bag in this issue. This is from SUBTRACTED SLEEP by Matthew Lee Bain:

	I had a dispute with gravity:
	Ultimately she won —
	Releasing me from her hold
	And letting me float to the ceiling.
	there —
		in craters of drywall elaboration —
		on a pale surface
		less trekked than the moon —
	I was forced to spend the evening.

	The museum of chrome and glass
	knows the starkness of prison walls.
	Imprisoning a woman, the black
	and white photographs show frontier life.

This is a thirty-six-page poetry journal, printed and bound in chapbook-form. THORNY LOCUST's editorial office is based in America, and with one exception, all of its thirty-nine contributors also originate in the US. Virtually all are represented by a single poem. Out of these materials, the editors have formed an attractive and very enjoyable little magazine, possessing variety, humour and some serious reflection.

For my part, I feel the first half of the journal contains the most imaginative and intelligent writing. J. L. Kubicek's PIAF is a charming piece, as is David M. Breeden's ARRIVING/NOT with its Imagist-like observations:

	Damp streets and a chill
	To the air that has
	Every denizen in scarf
	And leather-autumn in
	Paris,

	I live in a lateness

	.

	My lateness joins the ends of time

	.

	I am not counting

	.

	Stars are dust in my hourglass

	Full concerts of latent heat
	Over a landscape
	Sleeved with living creatures.
	Lattice-work of filaments & wings.

Also scattered throughout the journal are tiny wistful line-drawings which contribute to the mood of the whole, without distracting attention from the writing they accompany.

Certainly if this issue is typical, then it is fair to say that THORNY LOCUST offers some really fine performances on a small stage.

The depravity of the themes (not just lines) of three poems (MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHER, HUNTING IN THE SOUTH, INQUISITION) in this 36pp issue did not allure me to the editor's selective sensibilities.

The medium-length CARPENTER BILL'S COFFEE BREAK by Ken Meisel is an attractive and highly amusing description of the workings of the brain of a carpenter about

	a woman he wanted to love him

	a gap where no putty could fill

	carpenter himself,
	like a labourer, into the private home
	of someone else's love?

	. . . If loving
	could be a matter of measurement,
	if it could be like a thick package
	of architectural drawings laid out
	for him with a cup of coffee, perhaps
	he could try. If loving could equal
	procedures, like tracing a line for a saw,
	or placing a C-clamp around two
	separate pieces already glued, he could 
	give it a try . . .

	Monet's myriad water lilies
	tells us nothing of lilies
	but much about the eye
	that received the light.
	So show us the hand behind the brush.
	Paint the mouth that will tell us
	who you are.

Thorny Locust is produced in Kansas and is made up of work by poets and artists from North America. It is a pleasing square shape with an eyecatching cover and well laid out contents, though poets' names are inexplicably squashed under the ends of the poems. The poetry is varied and generally excellent, covering a range of styles and topics including relationships, ageing and concepts of justice. Most of the poems are free verse underpinned by good understanding of the sounds and rhythms of language, though a few of the poems are too fond of gratuitously short lines that I find detract from the rhythm of the words. There are illustrations scattered throughout, though these did not impress me as much as the poetry did.

This issue opens with Brian Daldorph's MISERY, an atmospheric evocation of heartbreak and blues music:

	when no Delta bluesman 
	sweating through August night
	has ever groaned out 
	a song blue enough for you,

	We did not all belong

	The boy saw it 
	from his seat
	by the window
	and thought it looked
	strangely like
	a human head. 
	What an imagination!
	his teacher said.

	A more creative teacher 
	might have used this 
	as an object lesson
	in biology

	Three girls in plaid dresses 
	playing rock paper scissors

	the stoning of a bride 
	who abandons her vows.

	met to divide the spoils, the memorabilia
	she collected in a lifetime devoted to family;
	met to spoil the memories we had collected.