Free The Weed & The Poet

by Paul Tristram

I once scraped that sentence
into the grey depressing paint
of a wall in the far-end detention cell
underneath Neath Magistrates Courts.
I then forgot all about it!
Until 18 months later
when I was again thrown backwards
in through its angry door
after first being upstairs
where I was remanded in the custody
of ‘Her Majesty’s Prison Swansea.’
I chuckled (Which played havoc with
my broken ribs!) as I glanced
at my old drunken handwriting.
There were at least 30 different
names written and scraped under it.
I smiled as I finally added
my own name to my 18 month old petition.
Then I layed down gingerly
upon the concrete and wooden bunk.
There would be no jumping around
for me until I got through
them Gates at Oystermouth Road
and got me some DF118’s on the wing.

Heisenberg

by Mike Berger

It was a new Mercedes on the autobahn,
going nearly the speed of light. The car was
stopped by the police.

The local cop asked for a drivers license.
He examined it and said, "Dr. Heisenberg,
do you know how fast you were going?"

Heisenberg look strangely puzzled. He mused
for nearly a minute, then replied, "No but I
know where I'm at."

Quaternary Glaciation in the American Midwest

by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Quaternary glaciation, in the American Midwest, brought more than buckets of cold.

That formal giving over of difference, constituted by obliged change, resulted in enabling.

(Caliphates were excluded from such causality by dint of bribes or religious immunity).

Maledictions of less than a century in duration, remained, nonetheless, preeminent execrations;

Artistic types, ensconced in Las Vegas, readily posted that such imprecations evoked Tophet.

(Material wealth remains as nothing more than doggerel at that otherworldly train station).

Simultaneous to participating in seminars in the field of literature, some nubile youths popped

Klonopin; their publication-rich professors ignored those highs, knowing only Xanax.

(Complacent students were less a curse than were nontraditional students intent on learning).

Consequently, restocking pharmaceutical wonderlands meant sellers culled no titillation.

A significant part of commerce continued to be their sober fiduciary growth opportunities.

(Marketeers necessarily responded to life as it was rather than as we wished it to be.)

Sunflower Times

by David Mac

Sunflower, don’t laugh at me

Sunflower, I took you back

so be good

Sunflower, the boys in bars

playing the fruit machines

make too much noise

and it’s Sunday

it’s awful

Sunflower, are you like me?

I am a sunflower too, in a way

But come 12 o’clock noon

I’ll be drunk and full of

red-faced bleak words

hateful as old grey town

derelict abandoned

buildings forlorn
underground…

dying is sad news…
soul news…

So sunflower don’t hate me
don’t be like me
Get out the shade

Stick to what you’re good at

The Pale Crusader; Justice is Served

by Erik Moshe

The desert wanderer sits down for an on-the-go history lesson
He was a bonesman, Geronimo’s head in a tin under his bedding
He was a marksman, a statesman, had what you’d call an arrangement
Signed an agreement in infidel blood he’d have to honor with Satan
History books lie covered in a cloth by his satchel, embedded in sheets
Mankind’s exoduses through the ages, the dead ends that they’d meet
Gnostic anklets, anthropologic pages, Gods impeached
Lost in exchanges of Zimbabwean battles endured in Moroccan heat
This dark regime - perhaps out for revenge in irontown skirts
500 years or so of servitude tend to cause slightly aggressive outbursts
Picture a slave master looking back at you with a shrewd glare -
Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad system, no Standard Oil fuel there
It wasn’t fair, their skin wasn’t white, their eyes weren’t bleached
The singing newspaper concubines were chronic lies and a cheat
The righteous throne was plight endowed; the truth would strike at home
As soon as Rosa Parked her behind in the seat…
Black milk filled the corridors of government halls, homogenized in deceit
Things fall apart from the roots, sprayed down & sodomized in the streets
The pale crusader held the book, it said ‘This is tantamount, hear what’s left…’
Malcolm X’s and Y’s, alchemical properties of a man without fear of death
He slowly began to understand that his cause was a travesty
Around the same time Martin Luther’s soul took a fall from the scaffolding
Black panther, white tiger, brown lotus under a blue moon
Or was it once in a blue moon? At the time of slavery rotation
They made them behave but they were made to be bodacious
In the end, we’re all cavemen canvases, raised to be different paintings
When W. E. B. Du Bois was worldwide, when Ali contracted Parkinsons
Around the same time Mr. Booker Taliaferro went to Washington
The times varied but the stars in the skies were binary
On opposite sides of a black river, the white man traversed the night ferry
He was furloughed from facades, in a canoe, trying to row in the fog…
“Shine your light on the world, and black bodies will glow in response”
It truly pained the pale crusader when he finally began to understand
He ran his hands through the sand, started to cry just like a drunken man
The atonement of a sultan Bush - his race had slain, had stole, were crooks;
Then a band of Moors invaded his camp, slit his throat & stole his books

…justice is served.
وفي ذلك عدل

Source in Summer

by Tom Hatch

If clouds could lecture on color
and bats lecture on swoop and turn
Cicadas whole metered beat
teaching percussion
to the hum of air conditioners pressure
and pool pumps flowing tide
sitting in darkness
as the neighbors lights turned on
color learned from earlier clouds
the sound waves of small traffic
on the road behind the fence
going to bed soon as the breeze
is still behaving with truth
as the bats lead me
in a weavers pattern to Cicadas beat
with pumps and condensers
Leading finally to the house
The bats not directing in a straight
Line takes me into dawn
The cicadas treat me to this conga
Line of one in time to get ready
For work stumbling to the train station
Blaming the bats, cicadas and condenser
Pumps for a draining hangover

A Race of Lonely Giants

by Laura Behr

Maybe I’m waiting for nothing.
Maybe I’m unearthing instructions
to keep the sky from falling.
Maybe I’m just supposed to sleep here.
Maybe someone will wake me with a squirt gun.
Maybe the highest good, is always a parting guest,
just out of reach.
Maybe the edge of the wind diverts logic,
unveiling limitations.
Maybe limitations could be anything,
the best of days gone by, time punching a clock.
Maybe you’ll let me put our stories in a box.
Maybe I’ll let something good be said for you.
Maybe I’ll take you home and kiss your life-lessons.
Maybe you’ll soon forget lost loves and worn out Sappho.
Maybe at the appointed hour, just before dawn, the last night of August,
a race of lonely giants will arrive, like dark energy outlaws
becoming one nation, saving morning, pulling it through a tunnel of light.

Goethe’s Clock

by Brian Wake

Goethe’s clock is ticking in an empty room.

He sits quite motionless. All art, then peels

a curling strip of wallpaper from a dilapidated

wall, begins, he says, from what we know

and seeks connections everywhere. All poetry

gives probability to our disjointed world.

Goethe winds his clock each afternoon

at twenty five to four. I wind the present on,

he says, the shipwrecked man ashore. I will assert

my part in what, until a moment such as this,

has been concealed. I wind a dawn of flickering

light bulbs into something more meticulous.

Goethe winds his clock against the floodgate

swelling with the pressing weight of all he knows

but fears will forget, the force of instinct, reason

and the privilege of art, the walls of books.

I wind, he says, the unexpected footprints

in the newly fallen snow. I wind the barricades

set up against the odds of never growing old.

I wind the passive consciousness of such

impossibilities. I wind, he says, and pours

a quantity of wine into an empty glass,

the sum of almost everything I ever knew

into a time that, for the life of me, I hope

might never pass.

The Color of Solitude

by Juan Angel

I thought my walls were painted with the color of solitude.
I took a bucket and brush to it
Shades and shades
The final product
Still lacked color.

I thought the city would recognize me
I introduced myself
Spent days deciding how to spend days
In malls or crowded venues
But the others all lacked color.

It was a pressing question
Of what I would do when I turned the book’s last page
When the light crept from the park
And I was forced to return to a littered room
That was painted the color of loneliness.

I met others
We drank and we sang
I woke with headaches and stomachaches
And everything still lacked color.

Come out more, Come out with us
They said.

I was with them
We were all together
Because we were all alone.

The mirror insinuated
From the mottled features peering out
That my flesh lacked any color.

Whenever I was with me
I would be alone.

So I left myself
Glaring from a foggy mirror
And went to search for color.

Stalking Horses

by Jeremy Marks

I send out at night
my stalking horses

They report to me
            at dawn
behind the firewood shed.

My children feel that I turn
into a four-legged, centaur-like man
while they are sleeping

That my eyes are seated behind
a pair of large globes
catching the sinuous, roving robe
of equine landscapes

But they do not-

The horses are their own;
they stalk for themselves
through many a darkness
I know not

And they are not mine-
we merely share this patch of Earth

I bought off a man
-as I bought them

And all of us were then turned loose
upon ourselves.

Joe Brickle's Estate

by Donal Mahoney

I have spent hours
lying in the sun
on Joe Brickle’s farm

waiting for Pedro and Pablo
to fetch Little José
with his sickle and scythe

to cut down the high grass
so Pedro and Pablo
can roar their mowers

over the cowlicks.
I have not wasted time
lying in the sun

watching two doves
in the grass
walking in circles

waiting for a sparrow
to dance on the rung
of a feeder

Joe Brickle hung
in his Dogwood.
The doves need the seed

the sparrow will scatter.
Joe Brickle named goats
after prophets in the Bible.

He'd be happy to know
that I've named the doves
Pedro and Pablo

and the sparrow
now landing
is Little José.

Adirondacks

by J. K. Durick

Riding on 189, heading west
riding into the afternoon light,
there across Lake Champlain
the Adirondacks line up, fill
the scene, become themselves
their moods, their shapes shift,
one day they’re dark and ominous
another, a soft green greets us,
sometimes they’re pale blue
distant figures in vague outline
the suggestion of mountains
we see in Japanese paintings,
some days the cloud cover plays
tricks with them, some light here,
this peak or that fully lit up
while over there a storm rages
while low clouds, long gray hands
capture others, hold them
in anticipation of sun or snow,
a live Hudson Valley painting,
some days, close and threatening,
other days, like happy memories
worth this afternoon’s drive
into this humbling scene.

George Jones Years AgoRIP

by David S. Pointer

The news man announced
that George Jones had died
and I started remembering
a story that an old tunesmith
shared with me twenty years
ago about circuit days when
Buck Owens and George
Jones were touring together
and Buck wouldn’t share
top billing from show to
show so the next night
George hit the stage and
sang all of Buck’s songs
and Buck couldn’t sing
George’s tunes so he had
to repeat the same songs
George had poured over
the audience to a bout
of hissing and booing, then
the following night George
Jones headlined the tour
and Buck learned what
a melodic Opossum
could really do.

By Lantern Light

by Linda Crate

When all the world turns dark, be a lantern.
Let the darkness fade away into the musk of oblivion,
dream a better dream for yesterday and breathe
it into the horizon. Never forget yourself in the trees
the birds will sweep you away to heights you'll never
return from instead kiss the knees of the clouds
in humility and pray that tomorrow will bring light.

Topographical Depiction

by BethAnn Caputo

I wonder could tomorrow be

the day we go back to that dark corner of the woods

where we once sat on stones and set fire to the skin of trees.

Limbs twisted together like vines, you fed me your thoughts with a spoon
and watched as I swallowed each one whole.
Just one more time, can we stand in front of the flames?
Bare and exposed, press our fingertips together
and feel them tremble until we become a melted coalescence,

a topographical mess of friction ridges,
like the complicated map I carry in my pocket,
the one only you know how to read. 

On Getting Fired

by Tom Hatch

Packed two boxes from my desk
Narrowed it down to one
Then discarded it all but the
Pictures of the wife and kid
The silence of a pink slip
Actual it was silent because
I only got the raw pink coarse words
It's been a good run I was told
What will I tell the wife
I will tell her I got laid off
She will understand that
And maybe a little arm around the
shoulder of sympathy
Got my sack at the train station
Had some time to really kill
Climbed up in the shoe shine
Chair even the Honduran has a job
Shining my scruffy loafers
Might as well arrive home
In newly shined shoes
Then the wife councils
What's with the shoes
Tell me what is the celebration
I tip toe upstairs then
Slipped off my shiny shoes
Climbing into bed that
I will not have to get up from
In the morning
As I shut the blue door

I had this argument oncewith my imaginary

by Michael Cooper

girlfriend        maybe that’s why she is always trying to kill me.  We solved
it, 3 young men dove into
an ocean raced 211 yards
to the bouy- I lost.  Later, drencht in her
car designated driver in wet clothes with sand
in my crotch the blue woman told me that I
won because I was the first one in
the water, the brave one;  then she married
the drunk-he cheated
on her repeatedly there is no no
cheating there is only 1 man
and 1 woman at all times uni
verse the ocean lulls me in her 1011 arms
or maybe just seven.  Here is the transcript of
yelling:bebraveboldshimmeringhuman).

on the corner of genesee and dewitt

by J.J. Campbell

the house i was
molested in as
a child is now a
crack house on
the west side of
town

and out of all the
memories to come
out of that house

when i drive past
it now and see the
bullet holes in the
side of it

i can't help but think
that's somewhat
appropriate

Blinker

by Marc Carver

As i came down the escalator
i got something in my eye
so i started to blink.

One of the two women
coming up the other way
started to smile at me
and then she said hello.
I smiled and said hello too.

ON WISCONSIN

by Patricia Williams

The world has returned to normal
when you see a one-humped camel
on a Wisconsin country lane
 – or maybe it’s all that brandy.

The world has returned to normal
when you take a bite of the sun
at a Wisconsin corner diner
– or maybe it’s all that cheese.

The world has returned to normal
when you hear mute men protesting
in a Wisconsin major city
– or maybe it’s time to take a second look.

I Spent the Night with Jesus

by Laura Behr

I like to hold prayers
until sorrow loves me
like a home country
that desires to lure me
home again, but doesn’t act.
Keeping track, and watchful,
so I can’t know why troubles
happen. Looping against a version
of turning your eyes away from this,
and envisioning a new world
expectant as we are of false spring.
I’d like to tell you the future will happen
between us. Falling down, learning to begin
again and making stories full of silence
sing where anything that says it’s possible
takes shape out of breath and darkness.

Broken into Unexpected Song

by A.V. Koshy

Vina
the ground beneath your feet trembles
under such fragile soles!

Today I too feel the earth has swallowed you up.
Your cherry lips’ called and I was unable to reply in time.

I looked for you but I could not, and still cannot, find you there under the mango tree in our heat-riven orchard of green

The distance between us seems to have become infinite, unbridgeable -

It's under my feet that there is no longer any earth, Vina

Rest your head on my lap(’s) hollow, Vina
let me, a sage once
only a sinner now
not beg at your door, as a Buddhist monk

 Deny me
not
into your musical domain

Do not take these few shreds, mere pot-shards, of dignity I have left
away from me
and into darkness, alone, reft, cast...me

where there is no future or return; the ice never melting
from polar caps
to end and restart the world
again and again

Oh, do not
I abjure you
leave me here, lonely, calling your name
playing on its resounding strings
in the outer dark

where there is weeping and wailing
and gnashing of teeth
forever
but no instrument
to make Song praising you
as Orpheus or Tansen did
 Eurydice or white fire. .

blossom of regret

by Linda M. Crate

seduce me into silence,
give me a reason not
to speak, I wish not to
hurt you; but you have
done so much damage
with your words, you
have cut into my heart
such carnage cannot be
easily forgiven; I do not
know what I ever truly
did to make you hate
me so; but whatever it
is, I hope that you do
get over it, because if
you keep breaking my
charred heart with your
sharp teeth of zephyr, I
will have no choice but
to make you regret that.

The Incredible Strength of Belief

by Bryan Merck

At the Kingdom Hall, Elder Shorty defines the nature of love:
“Love opens us up to a world of pain?
If I care for someone, it hurts me when they hurt.
It hurts me when they die. We all die.”

Shorty ran moonshine for years.
He was also a serious drunkard.
This was high-level stuff until he found God.
He had sought to inculcate the Playboy philosophy in Gillsville, Georgia,
until he met the Tingle sisters, Dottie and Zooey Lou.

Shorty goes around on Saturdays and witnesses for Jehovah.
People knew him then; people know him now.
He once rode a go-cart all the way to Gainesville to find liquor.
His son, Bubba, liked serial-killer collectible cards.

Shorty and Zooey Lou Tingle married.
The Tingles are Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Zooey’s great-grandfather died in Aushwitz
along with a bunch of other Witnesses.
As a group, they refused to kill any fellow human beings.

“There are Witnesses in high places,” continues  Shorty.
“Michael Jackson was a Witness. He had all that plastic surgery
to keep from being recognized.”

Shorty backslid into a brief stint with snake-handling Pentecostalism.
Zooey would have none of it, however.
Shorty was rebaptized in the name of Jesus.
Luther, an old friend, got bit by a canebreak rattler.
He refused help and died.

At their first meeting, Zooey Lou Tingle changed the life of the miscreant Shorty.
He had just done three years for stealing a nice bass boat.
He spent most of that in solitary for general meanness.

He saw Zooey Lou downtown one morning.
His heart broke. He asked her if he could see her.
She said “Yes, if you are a gentleman.”
And so from that day on he became one.

Magnolias

by Lauren Tivey

Budding in early April,
the bare-branched trees
are candelabras, their tips
flames of white, purple,
mauve, the rare yellow.

We are allowed to gush
over them, the event
of their opening cups,
their unfolding into
party gowns, as Étienne,

toiling in his arboretum
for the Empress Josephine,
must have wept with joy
over his hybrids, over
each individual angel.

Tonight, the maiden moon,
intoxicating scent;  I am
thinking of you, how seductive
and perilous the metaphor.
But it is spring, a time

of indulgence, and we are far
from France, under exotic skies,
flowers trumpeting their magic:
I cannot stop looking at them.
I cannot stop thinking of you.

Bravado

by Richard Hartwell

Leapfrogging breakwater gravestones,
embracing air from boulder to boulder,
almost never missing, still tempting fate.

Out to the end of the Newport jetty,
tagging a steel pillar set in concrete,
navigation light dimmed in the fog.

Returning back block to block,
a gurney of granite if misstepped,
first leaping then looking to land.

Not a race, a challenge of agility,
missed only once, proved by a
fifteen-inch white badge of courage.

GOT KIDS?

by Randall Rogers

GOT KIDS?
THEY WERE
KINDA ODD
WHEN THEY REPLIED
YEAH, WE HAD
SWEET
AND SOUR
CHILDREN,
JUST LAST NIGHT.
ONLY BONES
THAT’S LEFT
ROUND
HERE NOW.

Momentous

by Adina Rosenthal

Agonize over the simple pleasure
of a reminiscent breeze
a desert full of chimerical cacti
with the occasional bloom.

But with the crash of a wave
a single Moment.

The cacophony of memories coalesce
Evanescence proudly at the helm!

Only salty tears
Enclose a bleeding heart

there is no honor in hate

by Linda M. Crate

cruelty bestowed
by the hand of her brother
an ax to the face,
Gul Meena's brains dislocated so the world
could see — a miracle that
she lived; yet she wished she were dead
my heart breaks for this girl
only wanting love and a life where
something good happened,
where she was truly happy
yet her brother killed her dreams and her love —
almost murdered her; my fury burns
like the flames of stars, i wish i could scald
him in my fury long and outstretching
as the arms of the oldest oak
i cannot understand — why can anyone fathom
such an atrocity is atoned by the excuse of
honor, it is beyond me in a culture i don't comprehend
yet i know that this is wrong in my
heart of hearts and i can't imagine they don't know this too —
if animals can get along despite their differences
love transcending between species and generation gaps
why is that we humans cannot do the same, why is it that our hate
consumes our sense if we are the only animals that can act civilized
is there a reason why we're always content to be beasts?
the answer lays in the fact that it's easier
in assuming no responsibility than to swallow the truth that
every action holds a consequence,
that evilness lurks in the hearts of men.

the mental scars only grow deeper

J.J. Campbell

it's walking through
a grocery store and
watching a father
beat a lesson into
his son

a part of you wants
to step in but another
part of you understands
it's none of your business

bruises heal you
surmise as you walk
by and say a silent
prayer

even the lord knows
the mental scars only
grow deeper with time

you hold back the urge
to tell the boy while the
father is looking away

accept the beating

it will make you
stronger and one
day you'll be
strong enough
to seek your
revenge

bombs go off everywhere. i am tired

by Amy Soricelli

everyone is tired.
sleeping head on their arms on their desk their papers
their papers are a pillow.
they tell me this - they say 'i am so tired'.
we carry hate like bricks in a lunch box the apple from 4th grade move over
there is death now - a little chocolate chip cookie of death -
it is easier to spin this on a sunny day but i am too sleepy to think.
three people in the morning said "i am so tired i could nap - i could nap right here
in this spot".
the arrow "you are here".
i would be there snoring away
soundlessly snoring we are all so tired of sorrow.
exhausts us all.
it is tiring to fall down and not get up.
everyone is tired.

over the moon, two by two

by Leeroy Berlin

be
unafraid to close your eyes
like simians swinging cypress trees
in an atavistic ballet
kids on tire swings
or catapults hurling tom cats
over the moon
listening to
the long howl good bye.

Wild Animal Doctor

by Bryan Merck

Petesy is Pete’s wife.
She and Pete and I are fishing with shiners at Oak Mountain State Park.
A wild duck in some sort of distress has caught Pete’s eye.
The duck, a male Mallard, is a few yards down the bank.
It keeps dipping its head into the water.
It doesn’t fly off when Pete approaches it.

Pete sees the problem. The duck has a fishing lure in its mouth,
a minnow with two treble hooks. It stays in its spot on the bank
even with Pete hovering right above it.

Petesy sees the problem and gets emotional, crying a bit.
“Poor thing, Daddy, what can we do?” she laments.
Pete is already at work. He gets a bath towel from our picnic table
and a pair of needle-nose pliers from his tackle box.

Two of the barbed hooks have pierced the duck’s lower bill.
Pete moves close and in an effortless series of actions
drops the towel on the length of the duck and takes it up in his arms.
Petesy squeals in dismay. The duck tries to fight its way free.
Pete’s grip on it is sure, gentle, unyielding.

The duck and Pete sit down on the bank.
With a deft hand, he snips the barbs off the offending hooks.
The duck is quickly free of the lure.
Pete gently releases it into the water.

Petesy squeals in some sort of fit of increased love and devotion.
She hangs herself around Pete’s neck. I am truly amazed.
My opinion of him has just gone from “tolerable hill trash” to “amazing human being,”
a wild animal doctor. I am envious.

I immediately think of St Francis.
I have a statue of him in my garden, holding a refillable bowl of birdseed.
Pete is a tool user; tools are his natural extension of will.
Now he has shown himself to be a man of nature, too.
He possesses esoteric knowledge about internal combustion engines
and electromagnetic motors, even if there is  a computer associated with either.
He is versed in the ways of lumber and brick.

Life is smiling on Pete.
I can see trouble in his eyes.
If it involves an animal, he always abuses me about my leanings toward reincarnation.
He untangles himself from Petesy.

“Was that a relative of your’s, brother?” he earnestly asks.
Pete is now more than just a tongue-talking handler of venomous snakes in church.
He is escaping the clutches of samsara; he is approaching original mind.
“I know what you’re thinking, dude,” he says.

Reading Eliot in Eastlake

by Michael Ceraolo

A few clouds are laid out against
a rare sunny December sky
as we breathe in, you and I,
the exhaust from the stack at the power plant,
the same plant the power company,
in a fit of pique,
threatened to close earlier this year
rather than be compelled to clean it up
No wonder
The air tastes like this.

SOUMYA

by Vinodkumar Edachery

The train was moving slowly
When stealthily did he enter the coach
The one-armed beggar psychopath
The brute-like criminal Govindachami
How he trampled on her innocence
Strangled all her cherished dreams
On the way back home in lady’s coach
Of Kochi-Shornur passenger train
Where she was a regular commuter
After the day’s work in a private mall
What a pitiful tale it is!
She was coming back home from place of work
Somewhat distant from her native place
Years ago since her father left
So poor and needy was her home
Wants clinged to her so desperate
Like new-born infants for mother’s milk
The only bread- winner of a humble home
Prop and support to a fragile roof
Lately, a man had proposed to her
Who  was coming home to see her soon
She was weaving good many dreams
The one-armed beggar was seeking alms
In the empty lady’s coach where Soumya was
At the extreme end of the passenger train
Wickedness his real motive
First he tried to rob her things
Then to molest her as no one near
Helpless as a lamb she was
Cried out for help, but no one came
Some heard her cries, but in a hurry  they seemed
To get back home, can’t stop the train
How tedious it is to pull the chain
And stop the train or alert the guard
And delay the journey, is it not?
Like a wolf in disguise did he snarl
When she resisted the rape attempt
He banged her head against the wall
Then pushed her off the train, jumped out he too
With great dexterity along with her
Unconscious, as she fell near the track
Stood he like a raven by the dying deer
Adroit in crimes of all sort
He could easily overpower  and stop her resistance
With a stone he smashed her head
And brutally raped the hapless prey
What a gruesome crime did he commit!
Some in coaches noticed this
But didn’t venture out to see what happens
Still they  told the Station Master about this
When the train reached the station next
They found her half-dead near the track
And saved what is left in her
For five long days she fought for life
In ICU, then succumbed to death
With grievance none, she flew to heaven
In the fine garb of a holy dove
Let her soul rest in peace
Let the butcher be brought to noose
He was just a one-armed beggar
Till then in public view
The habitual criminal,  Govindachami
Had been in jail some eight times
A real threat to women, with underworld links
A prominent criminal lawyer to defend his case
Landed from Bombay to the dismay of all
They say a hunter Govindachami
Is lurking unawares in every male
When they get a chance, no doubt
Pounce upon the helpless eve
But it is a sin to slap them all
Though some wicked rapists may be found
Much anger and anguish
Din and clamour
State-wide protests over this
What a pity is the mother’s plight!
After her father abandoned them
It was she who brought her up
Without letting her feel his loss
How much she has suffered for it
How much grief-stricken she is now.
All their hopes rested on her
Throughout their life, the victims suffer
As haunting nightmares, taunts that sting
Loss of face in media trials
They suffer the trauma till their death
But no such travail the hunters face
Who go scotfree in such crimes
Rape has become a game for them
And easily get away with the crime
There is need of stringent laws
Fast-track courts and speedy trials
To stop this violence against maids
Who  survive female infanticide
To fall a victim to lustful beasts
Where women can travel without fear
Even at midnight,  there is heaven
So Sage Vyasa tells the new-crowned king
In the great epic ‘Mahabharata’
That a state is judged an ideal one
When it is such a heaven for dames.

Destination Unknown

by Lauren Tivey

Go
see the world
its hanging temples
colossal carvings
exotic blooms

the stars will look different
and the people will pray
to strange, stone-faced gods

dogs will be skittish, food
fiery, climates unpleasant
mountain passes, often blocked

chaos will reign
but I promise
you will never
want to turn back,
not once.

In Line

by J. K. Durick         

I’ve stood in this line so long – for hours, seems like days,
Perhaps my whole life – I’m a part, a piece of it.
If we were a chain, I’d be a link. If we were a mile I’d be
A dozen feet or so of this measure of time, of distance.

If spied from space we’d be a careful brush stroke,
A string stretched out, almost taut, almost ready to break.

I’ve stood in this line so long – one in front, one behind,
Then another one in front of that one and one behind,
On and on, sometimes in alphabetical order, sometimes
By height, and then sometimes, like right now, by seniority.

We look straight ahead; rarely talk anymore, the talk once
Helped a bit, but now we shuffle our feet and feel restless.

Dear Mr. Lenderman

by Randall Rogers

My father informs me the former manager of the hotel I am running here in Cambodia was able to steal $40,000 from my account through using a faked copy card, using my number or something. I don't know how he did it as I can not even pull out that much without Amex putting a stop on my card.  The embassy investigators here have pictures of the guy going around Cambodia pulling out at ATMs like $5,000 at a time.  I caught the guy stealing or embezzling from the hotel.  He confessed and then took my passport, all my credit cards, my bankbook for an account here which he cleaned out, the hotel van, jewelry, everything he could grab.  Others, his gang or something then started breaking into the hotel when I closed it and fired everyone.  More stuff stolen but I fought, and rigged up booby trap things so say if they busted the lock on a door when they opened the door a plate or glass would fall break and alert me.  One night I just sat in a chair on the first floor in the dark in the middle of the night.  I sat silent, pitch black.  And then someone was trying to force the door open.  They got it open, started walking into the kitchen whispering something in Khmer as if an accomplice was already inside.  In the dark when the guy got near me I said some epithet and smashed a vinaigrette bottle over his head and beat him.  He managed an exit.  Thought I was through with these characters after that but the security guard in cahoots with this guy next busted in, I heard the plate break and from the third floor opened the window and rained bottles down on him and cursed him.  I was on my way to the tourist police to report the theft and all this in the morning but this security guard/cop incensed me.  I kept lobbing bottles at him as he ran away (I had the high ground) and the neighbors called the police and I was arrested and put in prison for a month and ten days.  My first Christmas and New Years spent in a big house.  I was charged with if you can believe this; shooting at the police, destruction of property and ganja.  I said you must be joking.  They weren't, or well, it's all a joke when they get someone that someone is going to prison here and going to have to pay to get out, whether you did anything or not.  I'm a criminal justice area concentration at the PhD level, it was like a surreal movie.  there was a lighter in the shape of an old relic gun that that criminal manager, Now Makara aka Bee Bee, had here as a joke thing to light the guests cigarettes.  Apparently I used the lighter to shoot at the police, broke my own place up, and had marijuana to boot!  Then under this French system I had to go give my statement to this judge with interpreter.  I told the judge the story of the manager who is still out there who took everything I could identify myself with and the van.  I told him get him!  Let me go!  And I read the UN rights book in prison and told him your system has violated about every one of these international legal codes and practices it says your government agrees to follow in this book.  He became stern but the stenographer got it all down.  Seemed he wasn't believing me so I started to question his competence.  I started to ask him first year law school questions.  But the few he let me ask he got right.  Then after the statement he brought out the bag of "evidence" against me. In the bag was the lighter (which he insisted was a gun), this I guess odd powder they were charging me with - wheat flower still in the opened General Mills white bag (cocaine?), he tasted it.  That's flour, I said, sort of like rice flour or ground rice one makes bread out of it, I told him.  If you want to make bread use that.  Then I looked, he dumped the contents on the big table I was being inquisitioned at, I didn't see any marijuana or ganja as they call it here.  Where did that go if you ever had any I asked?  He wasn't sure.  Anyway after he heard my story I thought they'd let me go.  But no, back to prison - for like thirty two or so more days!!  Finally I got a lawyer that would not just take my money and do nothing and easily after paying 4,000US I was out.  When I got back to the hotel though the police had cordoned off the place they came in and stole my new computer, mobile phones, had a good go at the booze supply. I'm still discovering things that are gone.  Someone took my Birkenstock and Nike shoes!  With no ID I could do little when I got out.  I reopened though and sold cut-rate rooms, still are as I write.  Then I was able to get 1000 US from my father by Western Union with no picture ID (one pays more to send the money and two test questions).  That's what I am living on now.  Oh also I think these folk were breaking in after the manager ran possibly to get these craftily hidden accounting records I found and have.  It appears the manager and someone with brains was laundering money through here, then moved into the making phony credit cards operations.  What is strange is that the manager's wife works at the bank he cleaned my account out of and she has access to my Visa with that bank.   

Picasso in Ten Lines

by Jerrold Yam

Tell them the orange ocean. Make fear
a nude woman. Two characters are more
likely competitors than companions. Or
the cautionary tale with shadows?
Nothing is uglier than an angle struggling
under the weight of mismatched colours.
Lanterns are exaggerated faces. Be quick
to judge but slow in remonstrance. See
the fruit bowl stepping into a trompe l’oeil?
Follow its lead. Stub your pencil out.

Cash

by Tom Hatch

Long black veil when Johnny cash sings

We want to die but stay alive to weep

But then the angels sing Johnny taught

Them something walking in his shoes

A million miles away but I'm still alive

I'll be back again, I walk the line

The man in black I keep a close watch

On this heart of mine rivers of tears

So let me die on a night of thunder

storms kicking legs towards cry, cry, cry

The beer I had for breakfast didn't hurt

So I had another for dessert

A sidewalk sunday morning walk a,carpenter and a lady

Giving you his only ness of holy Cash

osculation of the dragon

by Linda M. Crate

flames of the dragon

blow across your face

a golden echo that

reminds you of better

days, and of all the

sunsets that are yet to

come; borrow his wings,

and soar through azure

skies dancing their balm

against your youthful soul.

Forgetting to Breathe

by Chris Butler

BREATHE!

AIR!

Gasping inhales,
exasperated exhales.

PANIC!

Quaking chest,
muscular tremors.

ATTACK!

Fade to black.

Reaping Imaginary Riches

by A.J. Huffman

 

Even in the darkest room

more than your shadow

finds me. Cloaked in nothing

more than simple

subservient sin. I am

shaded and layered

to your hands' liking.

Together they/we are

a puzzle game dream. In this

midnight's holding:

 

Turn one: our every piece is a step.

Flop two: our every step is a gamble.

Fold three: our every gamble is a touch.

Set point match: Connection is complete

 

ly irrelevant as we raise

everything but our minds. Temperament

al misogyny is our latest god.

We worship on our knees.

Our needs soaking the floor

of this make-shift temple

that no longer resembles

any form[al/of] bed.

Analysis of Diverse Perversities

(after the painting by Paul Klee)
by Neil Ellman

They are perverse, not us,
we the straight and narrow
in the marrow of our bones
they corrupted mulish miscreants
contrary to the body politic
they play at politics and war
feign ecstasy and empathy
and ride on irregular tracks
they the heretical renegades
we the righteous
and the pure.

cheap thrill

by Linda M. Crate

 

you're sex in a bottle just waiting for

release; already you've ravaged me with

your eyes - as if you know all the secrets

and contours of my body effortlessly as if

that were something you could calculate in

your sleep, and i wonder if you see past your

lust enough to love me the way i've fallen

head over heels for you; or if i'm just another

day and another dollar spent for your cheap

thrills, an entertainment you couldn't afford.

Cavity

by Chris Butler

She’s so sweet
her kiss gives me
cavities,
but I don’t need
Novocain to
kill the pain.
I want to feel
everything.

SUMP

by Paul Tristram

What was I thinking?
Up to 20 tall cans a day,
just pouring them down my throat.
Trying to drown something
inside of me or wash it away.
The pain and the aching,
the longing for help and rescue
from something without a name
chewing upon your heart
like a beast with a bone.
The more I drank the tighter it clung,
the weaker I got the stronger it got
and the more ferocious the torture
that came along with it.
You cannot drown the monster
but you can quell it.
It takes a different sort of strength
and determination.
A forging of character
out of the ruins that you have made.
You can build again
bigger and brighter and stronger
than before.
Faith is a weapon
(And I’m not talking about religion!)
far stronger than brute force,
it lasts a Hell of a lot longer, aswell.

BURN BABY BURN

by Marc Carver

I looked out the window
the sun was out
the next minute i looked
a howl of snow was going through the air
I took another good look
just to make sure
they weren't cleaning out the furnaces
down at the crematorium
but no
it was snow alright
but still the sun shone
i looked again at the schizo weather
and sure enough the snow had stopped
and the sun shone again.
what a country
and don't even get me started on the people

Triptych

Everything you can imagine is real.
 --Picasso 
by Jerrold Yam

I. Bird
They gather in the park but
are gone by morning, grass
abandoned to its patchwork
of leaves. No aging couples
to entertain. If I wish hard
enough I can imagine roofs
hiding their earnest bodies,
the way winter hides its own
undoing. Come back, when
sun weighs down the earth,
come and see what remains
of the square, the chestnut
and bare oak, the moving on.

II. Tree
What does it feel like to feel
nothing, stranded between a
seed and its grander purpose,
the constant race for warmth
and devotion? Where I come
from, a hollow in the world's
bleak mansion, disappearing
is imperfect surrender. Here
there is existence, soil, rain.
Your snow-dusted branches
tell me happiness is greater
than the sum of fears. Shrug
off your bark and confront
the wind. Then feed me the
same insolent words again.

III. Wind
I cannot accept who you are,
stranger, or speak a language
of invisible omens. I do not
pretend to matter. Knowing
you is knowing the planet’s
exhalations, how one talks
winter into spring. At least
be indifferent to my longing
and intolerant walks home,
my feet bound, fastened to
the ground. Promise to care,
bless, love me the same as
what you give everyone else.

The Middle of the Night

by Tom Hatch

After the years have past

Love is the way of their being

Appearing into the darkness of night

His faint silhouette leads to a deception

Clarified only by reason of what she knows

Of him his features harkened highlighted in her mind

Seen not by sight in dark and shady age

Black and frozen letting her mind exposing

Him much younger than he is, is a cowardly

Thought in the dark not disclosing age

A short pause as the furnace starts

Chimes in shouts hollers flowing

Hot air settling down to a whisper

Again, darkness and remembrance working together

Glancing back into those old memories eyes

Memory that is orchestrated hard staring

Not stopping for a pause because

Control is unwanted as her memory takes over

Dancing around the room with him in the dark

On second thought this is not a coward's way

She knew they were young once and what of it

And are still in the nights darkness

Old lovers in the middle of the night

In the darkness is the young aglow

Flowers

by Subhankar Das

Those are our flowers
This is our bedroom
and this could have been a study.
But never mind
time is always more powerful than
a wish.

Concert at Bernie's

by Donal Mahoney

When Bernie wakes at 6 a.m.

there's a piano on his chest

and Erroll Garner's playing "Misty."
Sinatra's on the headboard

improvising lyrics

and Krupa's in the corner

painting on the drums.

The music is magnificent.
Once the song is over

Bernie chants his morning prayers,

shaves and showers and limps to work

for another day at the gherkin factory.
The foreman, Mr. Simpkins, is an ogre

nonpareil, a sumbitch unsurpassed,

who stalks the catwalk all day long

with megaphone and stopwatch.
At 5 p.m. the factory spits Bernie

and his cohorts out the door

so Bernie limps to the Hot Wok Shack

and buys a carton of Egg Fu Yung

and heads back home to wait for dawn

so he can hear Erroll play "Night and Day"

while Sinatra does the vocal and

Krupa punctuates the piece

softly on the drums.

Bernie spends each day in hell but dawn

is always a concert from heaven.

Hard Time Singing

by Allison Grayhurst

The ground that grows
the wasteful blight and
estranges the kiss and hiss of wildlife
is in me like a slaughtered tribe
that has no face that doesn't bite.
I am in the nightmare cloud, wrapped
in tar and rotted wood. I hide
beneath the blanket, undone.
Sickness has walked around me, mile
around mile and names me this stone chiselled
in two. It is the beginning, but it is midnight
and I am marked to be unmoved.

Song of My Collective Self

by Séamas Carraher

With my self who he knows not,
me! most mother of a storm,
(under stones and hard ground
and relative to the dead).
All this tearing and grinding
that claws in your softness
for these dictators and time,
all christens in my birthing
with airraids and allies; and
no rest in these exploding bones,
this city of the self
like a mask shapeless in carbombs.

My brain here beats its heart
into shreds.

i exclude in
my circumference
both beast and child
with no legs to multiply in crippling
our illegible history.
(This scholar sinking in speeches
and disowns with books this burning child!)
And all
the swallowing lights of a town
long ago
gone out, and out
(O all my cheapness in mealtimes and sex,)
that not in my nothing-birth, this i! and
all my collective selves
of air and dust and debris
and all our simple journeys
to the stomach,
my groaning workman and my love
all ghettoed between these empty faces.

O you're shy,
with touching time, with body
disembodied
and all this whispering spirit.

Then save me, too late, in my softness,
commissar-with-your-gun
who punctuates my freedom in noughts,
and who, now, i celebrate in collisions,
in grief, and shells and echo.
As if in both battlehour and conversation
we have not lost all greater part.

This coming in our waves,
like a people unfit into being.
Here are the dead still singing.
Our dead, like a scattering,
buried deep in their difference,
unrepentant!
Here is life in an endless loudness.
Here's a self that sings in its travelling
all blessing in our being, a miracle!
still bending in the rain.

But then this pitiful face.
Him pleading in our unravelling
that both our hunger erects in its barricades
his spirit bursting into storms
in all this cold fathering weather,
to call me a home and hands, and all,
now estimated, my poverty,
in this savage way
of war, and debt and dying.

It is better, love, in this downward time,
it is better,
and our hollowness of heart,
to own nothing.

Comrade, it is better,
that all the world,
this mighty with their machines,
(their grinding and tearing in
my simple selves)
be born another time in coming.

On this day in hours,
my self unlocks the sun,
her softness sprinkles in its showers of skin
and all these lights unwind
in their wandering dead.

We ache this much, forward!
our future convulses in reverse
and in this working weather
like a tree encircles my armless self,
that at the closing of that time, surprised,
this we and me, all stillness still,
at life, and O, (despite all)
our endless
surge
and
hallowing.

Old City

by Stephen Jarrell Williams

Too many walls,
baloney smell
damp.

Our minds infiltrated,
radiated
with bogus facts.

Confusion
slicing us
into stumps.

Fruit
bloodied,
roots dangling...

We're mashed
potatoes
heaped on their golden plates.

They're laughing
at us
spooning us down.

Closing us in
cardboard boxes
against the elements.

But when our babies weep,
we sprout thorns
engorged.

Our old city shaking,
a thousand cities quaking,
dust rising to the sky.

Stones coming their way.

The Cake Is A Lie

by A.J. Huffman
 

These makeshift bloodprints scream at me

from all sides as I fight, unsighted, through the maze

I believe to be your mind. Sidestepping emotion-

al boobytraps designed to destruct us both,

I am your willing guinea pig. Pre-programmed,

I am following. The sound of your promised touch

is enough to drive me forward through each level’s devastation . . .
 

Are you/they designed to test me or destroy me?

That conception turns me inside. Out

is a concept I abandoned eons ago, before I began

dodging the precariously balanced bullets

spinning on ice I will never be able to see

even as I direct its flow (or so I’ve been taught).

It blankets my view in void

space, begging for a [port]hole: an escape

hatch to actualization. I try to vocalize

this new ideology, but you have not granted me a voice. Over

night I simmer in the cold eye of [ac]knowledge-

Meant to tax my understanding of what is . . .
 

True: extraction is both feasible and attainable.
 

I allow my conscience to ascend. A lever

is broached. Green lights follow

me . . . spanning the fray

                                        [ed ends of another nameless abyss].

Coltrane

by Ryan Bermuda

The psalmist speaks

            Avant

Altissimo

Raised by miles and monks, fashioning

  giant steps

   toward Birdland

Good Bye Naima

       Chops the track

to the wheel

Black bellows blow, the gospel of

  Saint John-

   A Love Supreme

1962 Baby Blue Chevrolet Impala

by Amy Soricelli

My  brother remembers my father by the cars he used to drive.
The dusty blues with ringing horns –
he would see the hopeful face of it as it turned the corner-
its headlights giant cartoon eyes the fender with its simple smile.
Years later it was red - bigger- 65 Ford Mustang/Candy Apple.
His girlfriend sat in the front seat blue eye-shadow smiles
pouty painted/red lips.
Us kids in the back first the movies then Chinese.
I would stare at her half-face in the side-view mirror…
Looking for what could love my father strong enough for him to leave us.
Her eyebrows in pencil thin-black- hands like braided chains tight in her lap.
Like a nervous bird I would sing all the songs I learned in school –
Each of us had a window.
He drove up once in a brand-new 1967 forest green Camaro -
his dry-cleaned bags of suits hung like soldiers sticking to my bare knees in the middle of July.
My brother remembers my father by the cars he used to drive.
He’d stare out the window while he drove us around our block my mother would ask
why he didn’t take us somewhere real.
Around the block was okay sometimes – it was enough for my brother.
He remembers mostly the cars.

Facing the World

by Anthony Ward

Lying supine and couchant,
Shadows denote a presence
Through the transubstantiation of night.

The sound of car engines churning over,
Their head-lights shining through the window,
Illuminating branches, wavering against walls,

The luminosity of light emitting diodes,
Entrancing stratospheric reflections,
Embracing hypnogenic catatonic paralysis

With introspective rainwater
Racing down culverts
Into depths of consciousness.

The vast ocean of thought evaporating
Into multitudinous clocks,
Elapsing at different intervals-
Retaining time.

All or nothing

by Marc Carver

How i love
to use all their hate
they think i don't want it
but i do
i want all they can give me
and more
it is my fuel
The more i see the hatred in their eyes
the more i know i am doing the right thing.
Don't hate me a little
give it all you got
suckers.

Love, (Rubbish)

by Amy Soricelli

My closet is filled with you.
Your books with random thoughts underlined
with your yellow/ (very yellow) marker.
You underlined the most random lines and nothing -
(no, nothing)
was quoted anywhere else. It fell on deaf ears your underlined musings -
I could care less how much you cared.

It was less of less - those boots you walked in.
They're in the back buried, like nobody worth remembering; their shiny tips curled-up
in a bad 'stick out your tongue' sort of way.
Single socks are stuffed deep into the right one -
(or the wrong one.)
Your boots are here, you left them.

I came across your hat it sung to me -
its lousy off/key 'down on its luck love me till I die' tune.
It fell at my feet like a broken bird snapping its neglected song into my air
or chirping like they do -  when they're stuck in a cage in some poorly ventilated Bronx apartment
under the El -
(and not near any good food.)

I found your notebooks on the left side deep-in by my winter coat.
You wrote in code (you wrote in code -)
and it didn't make me shake my head and fall down on bended knees...
I did not sit down and think.
How funny to find you so filled in my places-
and how easy you fit into one box.  All of you-
just the one.

Drought

by J. K. Durick      

We pray for buckets
and buckets coming down
cats and dogs out there
cellars full and gardens afloat
ornamental bark down the sidewalks
and driveways heading
for a street’s worth
of puddles and gutters
so deep we splash
amazed we remember the games
like kids sailing paper boats
near the curb
pirates after a Spanish galleon
rounding the Cape of Good Hope
with a cargo full of diamonds
as clear and as precious as rain.

ode to Hugo Chavez

by Ross Vassilev

Bulgarians
are now
immolating themselves
to protest the poverty
their post-communist rulers
have thrown them into.

they weren't doing that under communism.

I live in the U.S. of A.
the nation that is the greatest enemy of socialism
since the Red Army destroyed Nazi Germnay.

in the U. S. of A.
there is the cult of the soldier

we're supposed to honor the troops
worship them as heroes and demi-gods

let me tell you something:

the troops can go fuck themselves

and the fascist government they fight for

and the corporations that own that government.

let me tell you something else:

in the 21st century
socialism is gonna liberate the world
from you white Anglo pigs
so that the people of the world
will finally live in peace and prosperity and decency

and if you don't believe me
remember what Uncle Ho said:

we'll fight one day longer than you will.

Sorry

by Conrad Ridgestone

There are only so many things you can be sorry about
until your sorries seep out of you like sap out of a tree
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
Everyone is sorry in their own way
Everyday
They’re sorry to their kids, to their lovers and to their friends
Sorry they didn’t come, didn’t leave and didn’t stay.
Sorry they didn’t have enough time, gave too much time. They’re sorry.
It’s pouring out all over the place and if you don’t bring your cup there won’t be any sorries left for the rest of us.

An Apology

by Tom Hatch

The nurse’s outfit
Well you are definitely the nurse
I was wrong to say you were not
I am the bum in the clouds
Which is my eh, bed I feel the
Sheets that you made for me
with military hospital corners to lay
Upon that I have to stop
Shadow boxing
The foreshadows
She offered me a lie detector test
Because she didn't believe me ok then I'll do it
Upon receipt of my sincere apology

The Apology:
The sounding horns of Gabriel
Because I need him there for my support
You my girlfriend in nurses outfit
That you wore on the
Float in our main street parade
In home town Texas drawl (this lays me flat on mercy)
But it becomes a river of mercy
Tears streaming down my cheeks

Clear and cold your shoulder
As I see the shore disappear to see
A new shore of heaven or hell
Yet to be determined until you and I arrive
But she is there happy in that sexy
Nurses outfit that I love so much thinking
The secret screams of holy whippets
A sound bite that really hurts
That I know will heal feeling a little small
Even-though I am tall 6'4" but
My heart is the same size as yours
but yours I hope is a little bigger to accept
My apology
Sorry I said “you were not my nurse”
The garter belts and white stockings are the
dead giveaway to me anyway
You really are my
Nurse that takes good care of me

Thank you

by Subhankar Das

We do not have a Thanksgiving Day here
In this part of the world
And it was not the second Monday of October
Or the fourth Thursday of November
But still I thought I should say thank you
For the smell you kept locked in my cupboard
Thank you for the three beautiful mornings
Thank you for the waves that moved back to the sea
Thank you for the reality that never existed
Thank you for the dream where kisses were still alive
Thank you for the mad days, thank you, thank you.

Rainy Season

by Lauren Tivey

There’s a sick part of you
that looks forward to it
every season, these weeks
of rain, their long romance,
their sodden caress, as if
you were a sad character
in an existential film, moving
through the vapors of a gray city
in your fedora, contemplating
some unrequited love, some
quiet angst.  You smoke,
haunt cafés, a Billie Holiday
soundtrack in your head,
and you sink in deeper
by the day, as it never stops.
It’s the danger of succumbing
that attracts you, of approaching
the edge and peering into that hole
you fought so hard to escape.
You watch it filling further
with each storm, a lovely bath
of depression, and you’re so
tired, wet, beaten; so susceptible.
But that’s too easy, and you’re
still, after all, a fighter.

Rail Road Crossing

by Lauren Bennett

There was a dull throb at my temples and a clench in my jaw. I hurled four bodies down the road alongside me. Seventy miles per hour, aiming toward train tracks obscured by a charcoal blur. I stepped on the gas. No sound but tires crumbling asphalt. I ground my teeth down then asked “How much do you all value your lives?” A pair of slow-moving chapped lips answered “Enough.” Enough. One hundred fifteen miles per hour toward those glimmering tracks. Air whipping by punctured with “slow down!’s” On impact, I swear I heard my own neck break.

Summer Mathematics

by Kelley Jean White

The Ice Cream Truck, its too familiar
tune, tumbled, troubled, that edge
of danger, that edge of what can be
understood, known, pushed to sharp
stick simplicity, in the narrow
and extreme night.

Vortex

by Jeremiah Walton

Woodshift helix burn holes

plushy pink mind landscape aflame

Shoe in the head

coherent thought stomped

Weak cohesive glue psyche together

Only for Now, but this Now is much too eternal!

Self induced seizures, rattling subjective beads of group

moral

Who's bad trip is tripping up who?

Sleep sleep sleep

Sheep bark stripping naked refusing their numbers

Rearing the farmer's sheers in revolution

Revolt! Revolt! Revolt!

Cut and twist brain cells into knots of understanding

Misunderstanding! Our God-head is beheaded!

Guillotined shoulders bleed cries of eternity, farts of

existence, sputter of the asshole mouth

Teenagers deep in perception Armageddon

"Please, dear writer, write my final thoughts...

I know what is happening... This is our end..."

I feel the Great Sleep riding in from Edge-City

Driven by spiritual spinal chord

We've stayed too long

The end will never end

When was the beginning?

The room spliced in Red and Blue

Contrary counterparts

Red TV senses bombardment, gushing inwards

background thought’s vocal chords warn of calamity

Light or dark? heavy light switch pendulum flicks

bbbbaaaccckkk aaannnddd !fooorrrttthh

lost in the updown bounce of lunatic laughter

Why is he rolling along the carpet’s erect hair? Cutting

patterns, laughing laughing laughing

Who's looking in the mirror now?

Make sure they leave the knife upstairs

"DO NOT GO OUTSIDE THE WORLD IS HUNGRY"

Fire of breath couples up within our lungs

We are burning alive, gasoline baking dough expecting

sweet bread

Every Thought born panics into death

Chairs wiggle wobble dance

showing unity of what?

Unity of new reality and old, space and time perception

stretched before in white holes vomiting existence

upon our outstretched tongues and cheeks

We are dying in the basement of Existence

Mother upstairs unAware