HOW THEY ROB MEN IN CHICAGO (1900)

by Ricky Garni

HOW THEY ROB MEN IN CHICAGO (1900) PT 1

According to what I saw on the Mutuscope in O-Naught, a bonk on the head and then scram. A policeman runs up to see where the fire is, looks around, sees the coast is clear, steals the dough off the limp body. The whole movie lasts exactly 25 seconds, a masterpiece and one cardboard set. Yet with all the suffering in this world, I cannot bear to see it again.

In the sequel, the policeman buys a pistachio ice cream cone. He admits he is a homosexual in court joins the foreign legion and in order to avoid legal prosecution for his crimes against nature and because he likes the Frank Sinatra song but unfortunately gets trampled by elephants in Nepal. Back home in Brooklyn, the chief of police calls up to the apartment to tell the family the news. His mother leans out the window and says SERVES HIM RIGHT but she really is his son. And he gives birth again, and his mother says I DO. My brother is my uncle is my sister is my mother hijinks ensue. This is one funky family. The chief of police doesn’t bother with it because it isn’t his beat. One year til retirement. There is no honeymoon and no funeral and it rains blood.

HEY. It’s my sequel and I can do whatever I want.


HOW THEY ROB MEN IN CHICAGO (1900) PT 2

According to what I saw on the Mutuscope in Naught-Naught, a bonk on the head and then scram. A constable runs up to see where the fire is, looks around, sees the coast is clear, steals the dough off the limp body. The whole movie lasts exactly 25 seconds, a masterpiece of the era and one cardboard set. Yet with all the suffering in this world, I cannot bear to see it again.

So I make a sequel.

In the sequel, the constable waits on the curb for the man to regain consciousness. The constable presses a cool hanky to his forehead. “What th--?” the man asks. “Everything will be OK,” he replies “you were robbed, but you will be fine. Rest here for a moment. Then you must come to my house. I insist. It’s almost time for dinner now and my wife makes a terrific beef stew.”

We don’t know all this because it is a silent film.

And since I hate subtitles there are none of those either.

Some people will be reassured by the hanky and the smiling but if you are deaf than this is the movie for you. The constable has beautiful, supple lips, and he speaks slowly. The man enunciates clearly and deliberately, perhaps due to the injury. There is more smiling in the end than there is in the beginning. And there seems to be happiness there.

But when the movie ends and the lights come up, some of the audience is confused, and some look a little bored, but there are some people, a very few people, who are walking out into the night with their mouths watering and smacking their lips. They turn to each other to discuss the movie. Their fingers are moving like crazy. They loved it! They feel wild! This movie is really just about them.

But what happened to the money? Did the wife really make a terrific beef stew?

Sorry: there will be no sequel.


HOW THEY ROB MEN IN CHICAGO (1900) PT 3

According to what I saw on the Mutuscope in OH NO-Naught, a bonk on the head and then scram.

It just keeps happening.

And then, as usual, a constable runs up to see where the fire is, looks around a little but not much, the coast is clear but what else is new, steals the dough off the limp body that just wants it all to be over with.

Enough already. The whole movie lasts exactly 25 seconds, but it seems a lot longer,

I mean, it takes forever, and I guess it is a masterpiece of the era but I don’t care anymore.

But I should care. I want to care. I need to care. So I make a sequel.

NO! I SAID: NO SEQUEL!

Azurite Climber

by Julie Kovacs

Camel of Bactria
making a living climbing a steep mountain
the home of azurite
ancient gemstone
found in graves along with gold
Golden camel
your name is Zarathushtra
after the ancient Persian prophet
who spoke of
good thoughts
good words
good deeds
to the ancient world
long before the advent of the Persian Empire.

IN THE NEW GARDEN OF ASHES

by Stephen Jarrell Williams

They say it will be the end of the world
Soon

Cities blazing with blue flame

You're swallowing hard sitting in bed
Staring across the room at the mirror

I'm massaging your bare back
Window fan blowing in cool
Outside blur of what will come

You whisper
There's no way out of this

Our house between dying
Memories and desperate hope

Only some will survive
In the new garden of ashes

You sigh
Turning to me smiling

Swishing your breasts side to side
Whispering

Let's burn the bed down.

Jimmy The Toad

by Doug Draime

They said I was
babbling incoherently
and swinging at
anyone
who got within
5 feet of me.
No one in the bar
at the time,
could handle
the situation.
And Maxine ran
next door to
Ray’s Market
and got my friend
Jimmy the Toad.
All I know
is when I woke up
in the hospital
with a broken nose
and 2 cracked ribs,
Jimmy was leaning
over me
crying
and apologizing
for using a little
too much force,
offering me
a bowl of
orange sherbet

When an Abortion Doesn’t Take

by Chris Butler

I never asked to be born.

So Pa,
you should have
shot me into
the sheets,

and Ma,
you never should
have received
the seed

of me,

because
afterbirth
was just a mess.

It's All in the Wrists, Said Ted Bundy

by Donal Mahoney

The others, of course, are more rabid than I
but less apt to show it.

Whenever I strike, I never romp off.
I stand with the wrist that I've snatched

from the lady locked in my teeth
as I wait with a smile for the wagon.

As one of the few wrist-snatchers
still on the streets of Chicago,

I make all of my rounds in old tennies.
I dive for the purse hand, give it a whack,

and sever the wrist without slobber,
then stand like a Vatican Guard

with her wrist in my teeth until
I am certain I have no pursuers.

In my dreams every night I can see
all of those women whose wrists

I have had in my teeth.
They stand at their bus stops

like Statues of Liberty,
shrieking and waving their stumps like flares

as I wait for their screams
to bring to a frieze

the patrol cars glowing
in the middle of the street.

MIRAGE (NEVADA MOON)

by Ben Rasnic

Egg yolk moon over Nevada
quivers in the smoky mist
of a bloodshot sky.

Neon bleeds like candle wax.
Gold dust radiates from statues,
glass and sand.

Steady drone
from spinning wheels and show tunes
swells my brain like a cantaloupe.

Hung over, my head is chiseled
full of holes from shots
of Jack Daniels, chinks

of martini glasses, loose
change and the bone rattle
of snake eyes in the pit.

Stars hang in the waning desert sky
like sequin jackets,
moth-eaten and obsolete.

the lake grows

by David Mclean

the lake grows its untiring expectation,
though the expectation is projected
and the lake just is, like birds singing,

and the fell rain fell, like years fall
into a missing god's empty pocket,
consciousness stops because of bodies

and the way they always die forever,
but the lake is growing its autumn
and the rain is feeding the contented trees

so they grow another years obligation
though soon there is no memory left
and no live body for me to be

the rain sets history free

Priorities

by Aashish Thakur

If axe is your priority
Then forget the tree,
If you love honey
Then kills the bee
A lavish bed at home
Shared with many bodies
Can’t guarantee you happiness
Shadow is never a true companion
Yes, sun and moon exist
And flower and river too
And bullets and bombs too
And divorce and drugs too
But when somebody else pays for your shopping
You splurge like devil
(Plastic money is dangerous than nuclear bomb)
You know- “this mathematics of relationships”
And now you want to drink, wine divine
And what you are served
Is a cup full of blood,
Cheers!!!

Winter

by Robert Vaughan


I write minstrel music

about clouds while you

lay barely

respirator clogged

the oboe solo wavers

off stuck in winter

drifts then buried

horribly all plans

waylaid the swan

who stayed

My Black Pearl

by Carmen Eichman

I can breathe at the bottom
where bubbles burst from boiling surfaces
blacker, deeper places where I have not reached.
Sun light moves, sways me, above me,
people walk, sometimes hurried, sometimes languid
from this angle, but I hear nothing
as I watch from underneath, holding
my breath, waiting, waiting, waiting
for the dream, the black pearl, I swallowed
long ago, won’t digest, safe keeping in
the oyster of my guts, without it I die, again
and again, and again. Down here I gulp hope,
settle into a mechanical movement along
sandy bottoms, my blink a salute to the dry stars,
slip among the ordinary pearls
that just won’t do.

Internal Organ

by Chris Butler

My heart is hardened, like a diamond,
hovering over my dark charcoal soul,
yet it cannot be tenderized again
deep in my motherland’s bottomless holes.

My heart is high strung as an ornament,
or a fragile eggshell cracking on a tree,
devalued by its cheap sentiment
and sifted into shards of confetti.

My heart is melted and poured into molds,
forming a goddess’s perfect image,
yet temperate to temperatures cold
it’s disfigured in a macabre visage.

My heart cannot stop the irregular
rhythms of iambic pentameter.

avenue A

by Lynne Hayes

sitting on this gray step
worn old from life,
i see the world at its finest.

dog on a chain hating
his sports coat wearing owner
who calls his wife honey,
keeps a blonde on call
because her child must eat,
and the thrill is
most definitely not gone.

boy across the way
walks likes he’s ninety
calling his baby's momma
a whore,
and i see him hustling
on a gang controlled corner,
shot stone cold dead
within ten.

rising up,
i have seen enough
to wonder why
the old time singers lied.

things always remain
the same.

the art of words

by Rob Dyer

the art of words
is culled and torn
from a soul in crisis
as naked as porn
it cuts and slices
to tell what must be told
in tones both weak and bold
tearing through rages
to cover the pages
sending tomorrow to the ages
turning young hearts into sages
with blood from all our trials
tribulations
smiles and aggravations
from the obscure to the obscene
on golden ponds in life serene
where chance can stand and scream
and horror can kill a dream
once held in infants hands
poetry has no true demands
it needs no structured plans
an open path to walk through
to relive what once did kill you
but can never be cured
until the nothing seeks the word

Several Provocations Later

by Mathew Richard Carter

Her lips are buried
at the bottom
of her purse.
Wrapped firmly
around a lighter
shaped like a gun.

She pulls out a joint,
squeezes the trigger
and sparks a revival
of her smoky past.

The Misguided Itch

by Shawn Misener

Searching for fingernail clippers
and chewing gum
the lost poet weaves across this
empty sidewalk in the dawn's piss
thinking aloud to the streetlamps
and the weeds pushing through
the cracks, “writing is no good,
it's like I'm scratching my arm
when in fact it's my ass that itches”

He makes his way up a cement hill
scouring his pockets for change
and realizing he has enough for coffee,
which most definitely will do for now

Doomsday Prophet of Miami (or, God is Whoever You Say He Is)

by M.P. Powers

Standing in the shade of a palm tree
off Biscayne Blvd., feet planted in the grass,
head perched atop a sandwich

board proclaiming: THE WICKED
SHALL BE TURNED INTO HELL
AND ALL THE NATIONS THAT FORGET

GOD. He mops the sweat off his brow,
his John Bull
roachwhiskers titter

vaguely, his expression perfectly
miserable. "That's right," he shouts,
his eyes finding

a defenseless elderly lady

hunkered in her car, halfway under the steering
wheel. "I'm talkin
to YOU!"

A Mid-Winter Revolt

by Melanie Browne

Finding crows in a
church yard is bad

luck, one -thousand
surrounding us
in a theater
of gravestones

is a nightmare,
I run at them,
waving my arms
wildly about,

they fly nowhere,
I yell that I have
no bread,
nothing to satisfy,

I watch as they
break the beauty
of a mid-winters silence
with their ghastly 'caws,'
pulling the repulsive

sky

along for the ride

Down the Dead River

by Jessica Otto

Her feet had been stolen,
her head separated
from at the neck and
her teeth fell out long ago.

He was someone no one
bothered to read about
but he got on
the boat
anyway,
shoulders bare
in sunlight.

The stone ferrymen speak
unpronounceable words
to hoist their cargo along
the shadowed Nile.

She sits on a wooden bench
drinking red tea, amethyst
scarabs clotting at her neck;
they equal fertility
and ageless transformation.
She views her afterlife
with shriveled eyes.

He dangles his feet,
like a child,
over the edge looking
for crocodiles.
Grey water swells
and reaches up,
sputtering for the last
imaginings of life,
the last tug
at an ankle.

I Can’t Get the Smell of You Out of My Skin

by Len Kuntz

It’s been there since Tuesday,
sinking deeper every day,
imbedded
now into my blood system,
circulating like poisonous gas,
this scent
which had once been so very
lovely.

still warm summer sencha

by Jamie Gersh

And in this sun, all our talk of suicide
seems like nothing.

You will be leaving for London soon,
and with you: your bones so close
to surface of skin. I thread
your fingers with the bird
bones within them through my own

and try to nest
in the imprint.

I LIE ABOUT EATING

by Michael H. Brownstein

I lie about eating.
My wife says,
Don’t eat that,
that’s not good for you,
you’ve had enough.
She asks,
What are you eating now?
Didn’t I ask you to stop?
and my mouth is full
or I just then took a large swallow
or grand food stains are on my face
and I tell her—
sometimes still chewing—
I’m not eating,
I haven’t touched a thing,
I’m just smelling
or something like that
because the only time I lie
is when I’m lying about food.

The Feeling of Mountains or Your Body

by A.K. Jackson

Beauty makes me feel trembling and small.
This morning I lay like an infant, clinging
to the safety of breasts but was a woman
again by the time I fully rose.
I held your soft fistfuls and felt a closeness,
as if blood was running from one girl
to the next. You are the beautiful things
in the world. Your heart beats all
the plants and animals into my brain.

And now I am leaving you, driving
through mountains that fill me with fear.
Life is such a fragile moment, pressure
in my ears and a long way down.
But I see your shape in the landscape,
mountains peaking like a girl on her back
and danger is suddenly as safe as comfort.
There are new birches growing, saplings
springing from cracks in the rocks.
They start out soft, and pale green
some to bend and some to snap.

Evil Twin

by Mathew Richard Carter

The day was darkened with
the presence of a demon.
It felt like I was being
followed by Hell itself.
Tortured in jest
behind my ignorant back,
by some kind of child
who mirrors my image
but not my intentions
and lurks within heavy
crowds. His evil eyes
are darkened with purple rings
of pain. His clothes are chameleon
with the wood mulch park where we play.
I stay close to mother, asking myself:
do I need to be so clingy?

Soon, I venture from the safety
of her grasp. I haven’t seen him
in awhile, thinking
he has disappeared from the vague
and general scenery of playground
jungle gyms and vibrant parkas.
Buried among the sea of children
where he blends and
hides and waits
to devour
my soul.

Raspberry Hives

by Donal Mahoney

The ancient man with raspberry hives
on his cheeks since childhood
will live alone no longer.
He will marry, he says,
the first woman who’ll have him.

Till now he has wanted to die
as he’s lived, alone in his room
with the radio playing,
with the water in the bathtub
dripping.

The drone of hours, however,
has become the drone of years
and the ancient man with raspberry hives
on his cheeks since childhood
fears death will convert
his hives into pocks,
take his body but reject his soul.

Now he believes if he weds
the first woman who’ll have him
death will have reason,
for the first time,
to do the job right.

untitled

by Lynne Hayes

if I had have moved softer
arranged the flowers with finesse

wore the cobalt blue you liked
tilted my head to the east
and licked my bottom lip
slowly,

you may have
stayed for a cigarette and brandy.

In Honor (Hopefully Remembrance, Soon) of the Appalachian Rollergirls' "HARMORY" Floor

by Jordyn Coats

Not quite like a marble,
nor a mud slung tire,
or a failed caught Frisbee on dirt.
Resonances of silence
want to make themselves known,
but they know it's like
trying to keep static away
from inside a modern day living room.
No matter.
They keep on
and on,
leaving traces of echoes
on the slippery corners we all fall
while rounding, low and slow.
Reverberations,
here and there,
everywhere,
dancing all around...
dispersing, causing chaos,
looking for solid ground to roll on-
to work on-
to stand on.
Eventually, time forces change
and we must move on.
The skids and echoes left
are only testimonies of what will be-
what will become of us and of me.

Youth

by Rafael Hernán Gamboa

We stood together under doorways,
under moonlit autumn skies
and pregnant winter clouds
waiting.

We waited in mediocre restaurants,
in long, rickety trains
and car rides we both remember
for reasons we’ll never really understand.

We waited mere feet apart
in magnetic lock
and all those places looked the same,
painted for the blind by the echoes
of reluctant goodbyes
we each hoped would get the point across.

What were we thinking, I wonder.

We, standing there,
staring
and waiting.

Consciousness Dilates

by A.J. Huffman

Don’t look down.
The sky is falling.
And the floor is gone.
And a shadow is all you have left.
Too bad it’s not yours.
Too bad it’s not mine.
Too bad it’s not safe
to say its name to the wind.
It would save you.
But only for a shelf.
Its sin needs a shell.
that isn’t afraid
to force a nail
into and through
a crack
your eyes didn’t even realize was there.

Small Bombs

by Jamie Gersh

Kitchen floor, eyes
wide with terror of drawer's closing.

Curled up, set off; can't
stop you running out
the back door. You can't
help but bring it with you, that weight
that you carry, that I carry now too.
If only I could reach you:
lover in child, child in lover.

But between us there's a minefield
exploding in hurtful bursts
with each misstep. Get out of my house,
bitch! and I'm leaving, wish I'd never been

here! and wanting love, we destroy
each other on the sharp, metal seeds like bb gun
pellets planted by hands not our own.

Destroyed, you and me:
all the un-set, healed-over bones heal up

right this time. Clear the stage of wreckage,
make a path for us to walk without pain.
This growth is ours even if we never
asked for it.

Let's teach it to be
kind.

Underbelly

by M.P. Powers

A beggar with dreads and bloodshot eyes

toothless
except for a fang
raps on the window of my truck. "Goz any
change?" I look in the console, shake my head

no... He trudges

off. The light changes. Miami is a different
beast
for everyone, at any given time, but today,
on NW 27th

Avenue, the beast seems only evil.

I see it in the three
grimacing faces at the bus stop,

dark faces

like "rainbeaten
stone," and the heavy stormclouds.

There's an old
Spanish
mural pealing, and a place where nothing
grows: the one-story motel
under
the railway, a soulless
agglomeration of no-frills
fuckshacks
overlooking a glorious
empty parking lot.

As I pull near, I imagine
some of the dark secrets
those rooms

know. Make up a few scenerios of my own.

And then a door opens. A skinny white
crackwhore
creeps out, barefooted, hair a mess, purse slung
over her shoulder. She limps
up the sidewalk,
bony jaw
working, eyes, wild. A man howls
something
at her
from up on the trestle.

A train shears by. 11 a.m.

on a Monday, and the naked
light jiggles.

Birds of agony,
rise.

Earth moves
softly in its soiled wingless
mystery.

The Words

by Shawn Misener

When there are words going constantly
they start to feel worn we are
bludgeoned with them on the TV
and radio by the crowd comment
streams in our heads

So when we start to write
it feels like scaling dead trout
or grabbing at clouds or making love
to dirt or emitting one long continuous
groan that never ends but scales back
into infinity where it bounces off
the eternal cervix and comes back
as reckless garbling and surreal
poetic nonsense

Oh bless me Calliope
and excuse me for your belch
that I take credit for and one day
hope to feed my children with

Wormwood

by Jessica Otto

She has black dirt on her face.
The ruins of a garden plucked
for winter stain her hands.
She has scratched that greenery free
and bathed in the empty
soil, praying for next year’s harvest
with touches
of bare arms and thighs.

She rubs the flesh of the earth,
places stones in her mouth
careful of her teeth
though she knows
this is ritual.
Her tongue rolls in the grit,
Hips turn the ground like a spade.
She says, “I will starve myself for the gods
so I can grow poison in the spring.”

The sea in Tangier

by Tyler Bigney

Tangier coastline bathed in sun.
I soak it in.
The bloods the same
in all of us.

Maybe somewhere
over there
is a place
to call home.

Oh Nature

by Rob Dyer

oh nature, what storied tones I see in you

much sought in pen, the eye catches all

your shaded sepia textures, often clouded

by days broken light

caught between a cold hell and death's warmth

revelation, is for those in pause

oh nature, where should I force my limits on you?

a fleeting touch to cherish on stained walls

or my hands clutching your throat in fear

perhaps a hammer blow, with my cotton lens

oh nature, never are we far from meeting

I shall pass in your time, unknown

as you touch the soils of heaven

perfected by timeless hands



oh nature, can you see I am watching you?