Volume 3: November 2024
This is a sort of welcome back for delicate emissions. Due to circumstances, we took a break, considered staying on that break forever, then after getting a few publications, I thought about how poetry matters. I thought about the importance of words, of art, of seeing your poems in print and on the screen.
Then I remembered how fun putting a zine together can be. And how much I love poets. We’re strange, divisive, see the world through the lenses of language and rhythm. The world needs poets, and we need one another.
Having made the decision to toss out our Twitter/X account, we lost a portion of our former base of contributors. Submittable is a great platform but out of reach financially for this tiny zine. While starting to build our presence on the social media platform BlueSky, I reached out to past contributors and a few responded.
This month, we as a zine and myself as editor are proud to present poems by Steve Denehan, Ankur Jyoti Saikia, and John Tessitore. Since in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re heading towards darker days before hitting our Winter Solstice, I decided to start here with the warm and playful language of Jyoti Saikia’s “Without Balthasar.” Tessitore brings us to mental motion, asking questions, and answering them in different poems. To close this issue? Steve Denehan’s beautiful, simple, spare poems about love, loss, memory, and hope.
Thanks for your patience. Thanks for your faith in the human spirit, and in the human heart, and may we all emerge on the other side of December’s solstice with fortitude, resolve, and grace.
Your friend,
Dusti RW Levy
Founder & Editor
delicate emissions poetry zine
ps — if you’d like to order a full-color paper copy, head over to our Ko-fi shop. We ship worldwide.
Ankur Jyoti Saikia
Without Balthazar
Without an outlet/ withers wondrous worth/
creativity crackles/ if induced/ inertia inhibits
breaking bonds of/ pessimistic procrastination/
Without William/ Shakespeare, Shylock/ nothing
short of a pound of flesh/ Prudent Portia had
saved Antonio’s day/ dusk without dullness
John Tessitore
Enter
As soon as I arrived
I knew I’d leave changed.
The little liar inside tried
knocking under pretense,
the thinnest excuse, while
my reason kept watch and
my knowing kept silent
(even my yes would be
tacit) but yes, I was already
different when he opened
the door, and no, I haven’t
been the same man since.
Paris
What do you think you’ll find when
you return? What life did you discover
the first time around, when you caught
the train under the Channel, strolled
the river, ate a heavy dinner, wandered
the cobbled streets in the gloaming?
What answer did the old town offer?
What lesson or moral? What longing?
It did not give me art, or God, or history.
But notice me here, now, in this moment,
sleepless in a small room, in the wrong city,
reaching deep inside, coming up empty…
Hurt
I spend the nights alone,
my injured knee waking
whenever I’m close
to sleeping since pain
requires no provocation,
which is how you return,
a burning in the darkness
when everything else
is quiet, since memory
needs no coaxing, since
love heeds no warning.
Steve Denehan
Early Night
An early night
another early night
I am too warm
though it is February
I peel
the blankets back
leaving me exposed
to the dark
I ask my wife if she can hear the rain
she cannot
My Father
It is hard
when I remember
that he
is dead
harder still
when I forget
Iron Cold
The iron cold of winter
bulletproof and never-ending
presses against the windowpane
the fire is burning down
the flames gone
to pulsing embers
soon we will go to bed
to dream
of warmer days
ABOUT THE POETS
Ankur Jyoti Saikia (he/ his/ him) is a botany researcher based in India, who believes in his self-coined maxim: “scribble, submit, repeat.” Twitter/X, Instagram & Bluesky: @amythfromassam.
John Tessitore doesn’t know what the hell he is, and writes about it. He has been a journalist and biographer. He has taught history and literature at colleges around Boston and directed national policy studies on education and civil justice. He serves as Co-Editor Across the Pond for The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. He has published several volumes of poetry, a novella, and hosts a poetry podcast, Be True, available on all major podcast platforms. Read and engage at www.johntessitore.com, Twitter: @JohnTessitore2, Instagram: @jtessitorewriter, TikTok: @Jtessitorewriter, Facebook: JohnTessitore, Writer. Threads: @jtessitorewriter.
Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. He is the author of two chapbooks and five poetry collections. Winner of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award and twice winner of Irish Times’ New Irish Writing, his numerous publication credits include Poetry Ireland Review and Westerly.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Dusti RW Levy is a queer, disabled poet, essayist, dramaturg, and actor who founded delicate emissions poetry zine in Seattle, WA, in 2021. You can read their poems in FUCKUS; boats against the current; the tide rises, the tide falls; and Impractical Things, among other places. Their creative nonfiction is forthcoming in WINDMILL: The Hofstra Journal of Art & Literature. Having spent many years in the Mountain West and in the Pacific Northwest, they recently returned to Alabama, where they write about love, longing, grief, and ghosts from a 110 year-old house in Montgomery.
