AN ALMOST

by Michael H. Brownstein

and then at the lowest
mind swing and mood
deep in the bottomlands,
I changed lanes into a space
another car occupied.
How do you move from one
space to another
filling a space already occupied?
The driver honked once,
a half hearted honk,
and left me alone.
His car was there and so was mine
and yet what should have been
a body bursting full bodied collusion
fizzed to nothing. Immediately,
I thought of God, and angels,
and God again--the footprints in the sand--
and saw everything as a sign:
I'm not finished here yet,
there's something I'm to do.
and I told this to my son
later and he said, fate
does not work that way.
You draw your own lines,
you fray your own path,
and I told him, yes,
it had to be a sign,
and he said, OK, think
that way, but you are the one
in charge and it is you
who must make his way.
And yet I know an angel
was in that car--why no anger,
why the short honk of a horn,
why did the car vanish
in the dark behind me,
and why on the way home
did one police car after another
follow me home as if someone
needed to make sure
I would arrive there safely.

Illustrated

by Len Kuntz

All those stories stitched into your skin
with their wicked fonts
and buoyant color
are mere camouflage.
The answers hang
like gallows in your eyes,
swaying in shadows while
the ceiling creaks
from the burden of your dead weight.

Dusting Off The Blood

by A.J. Huffman

Do you love the color
of my hair?
Do you miss it
as it turns?
From red.
                To gold.
                              To black.
You hope for gray.
But that’s not the way I rot.
Conventions --
such as life --
shun me.
I don’t belong in any of their light.
And yet I cannot disappear.
I am the slate of a mistake.
Wash me.
Trace me.
Re-erase me.
I rise again and again.
I am a phoenix of misuse.
I dream of abuse.
Not mine.
It is my desire.
To be the devastation.
Without the fire.
Though this dream too will fade.
In time,
I remain:
a stain. 
Unforgotten.
And the ash in your mind
is my sin.
You will hear it calling.
Long after night
has claimed my skin.

Learning

by Rafael Hernán Gamboa

Pressed our faces
taking breath mouth-to-mouth
and our eyes wide
and close enough to blur.

There is a new language
birthing in our hands
taught with the sounds of shivers
crawling on the curves of our tongues.
I’m not fluent in you yet

but I’m learning.

Accidental Voodoo

by Jamie Gersh

Her hands curl and uncurl like kelp,
as too much water to hold fills her, empty
and full in all the wrong places.

She'll drown like you almost did.
Know it even before the water
begins to rise.

Once you would have held your breath
in fearful sympathy
when camera shot below sea level
(when it surfaced again, you'd have to be reminded to breathe).

Sauteing mushrooms in a pan still feels like hurting you.
You on the other side of the world, too far away
to breathe killer allergen air.

Memory is not your effigy,
and yet I fear the needles in it.

Closing Credits

by Rob Dyer

our late slumber, finds us well

as can be, we cue

closing credits

signifying

everything is as it should be

this curious pause, sets the tone

humbled by force,

upward views ask for answers

were you?

did you?

are you?

I existed as a question

and now you want answers?

unfold the creased page and see

an event, trapped in the fractures

of the invisible crystal ball

where lies laugh at us

and missteps haunt the last image

we will never see

Oxy

by Chris Butler

Synthetic junkies
strut down the same streets
as sober rock stars
and peacock birds,
but trip over the crooked
cracks on the
concrete clouds of heaven’s
sidewalk,

while loitering above
bloody floods exhaled from
deviated septums,
until the soaring dopamine
spills their lopsided
equilibriums through dirtied
dollars,

because one does need
a written prescription
for self medication.

You must - a poem for Moscow

by Tyler Bigney

I am here – in Moscow,
rich from smells of flowers,
sea salt, & magic.
A city unrecognizable
from pictures or from above.
You must walk
her streets
in order to know her.
In order to love her,
you must.

Necropolis Streetcar

by Jessica Otto

If she were alive
her name would be Aureate Lion,
Sun-Beast-Rampaging-
Down-Latitudinal-Lines.

On this Saint’s Day
she shines gold,
windows open and flaunting;
she scrawls escapist vulgarity

down the tomb cover tracks.
The masonry cracks against her
and a monument
in the shape of a griffin

topples,
wings broken.
Without hesitation she dives
into the tunnel, pounding

the bones of clergymen
as if she could cut away
the gangrene on the hind legs
of the city.

Your Departure Left Me In Pain

by El Habib Louai

Sometimes there were cries
I hear somewhere long before
They arrive to my open door
On a lonely long empty road
Cries from a distant void
I hear them as they echoed
In the bushes of my dreams
Dreams I dreamed in empty
Curves of a labyrinthine well
Other cries of people I knew
Met them high before they vanished
I saw souls of members dismembered
And I cried alone as you left me
Your face I saw between two wings
It smiled to me before it faded
Will you ever come to me again?
A question formed on a sand grain
Your departure left me in pain
And I wish I could be then
As you wanted me so near
Melancholic, I sit wherever I dare
I count little moments and flick away flies
As time mercilessly in phosphoric bubbles flies
Sister moon comes to journey the night
Again alone just as it did, unceasingly
To somewhere I will never see
Will you be there for me?
Among those weary travelers
Formed in brown scattered clouds
Tinged by curving caravans of dreams
Borrowed from unfinished Arabian nights
Will you be there for me?
To leave fresh parting kisses
On my scorched sweet lips
I beg you as I perpetually did
To have mercy on me
My brown-eyed lady
The only one who walks really
In such never-withering beauty

Forbidden Love

by Jeffrey Miller

Kyung-sook came over on Christmas Day
to get back at her mother who forbade her
hanging out with Western men.

I didn’t know she had an agenda
until the following week when I saw her
coming out of my buddy’s apartment.

She got pregnant not long afterward—
Some other guy made her very happy;
Her mother wasn’t too thrilled, though.

Throwing Dirt at the Moon

by James Babbs

I remember getting angry
before running outside
throwing dirt at the moon
because some girl had
refused to dance with me
and
the moon was so bright
it hurt my eyes
and
I didn’t want to
look at it anymore
but
I stood out there
for the longest time
and
nobody ever came to
check on me
and
I don’t remember her name
but
I wonder sometimes
whatever happened to her

LINENS

by Ana Vidal-Guardia

In my absence
white powder owned the hours
and the minutes were given away free
attached to rented bodies,
ephemeral divine power
exhorted in some filthy hotel room.

The sweaty sheets
begged for laundry treatment,
while the bodies,
choleric trapezes oblivious to mercy,
performed night after night
balancing synthetic life
inside dehydrated fish bowl spaces.

On the long black nights
I waited for you
sewn to the kitchen table.

And anger replaced sadness.
And I wished death would plunge
inside your adulterous bones,
for no diamond
will ever sweeten

the bitterness of your sinful lips,
the same ones you will use
to kiss our children
when tucking them in bed,
the sheets smelling all so fresh

Ice Coffee

by Morgen Streur

I made the coffee just the way you like it
I drank too much last night so I may have thrown a jealous fit
And scrolled up through your sidekick
If I did, I don’t remember
All I know is your love is my November
There are so many thanks to give
For this and that, from past to present

I drove that other girl mad
I broke up with her the night before her birthday
She cried, and called me the worst person alive
She said I always left her, at the worst times
And if I really loved her I never would’ve done that
She’s right and I’m wrong in many ways
She even hired a counselor to keep the thought of me away

I still cause destruction everywhere I go
A trail of broken hearts line the rivers I like to flow
Alone, I’m getting better.
These veins of mine are leather
Forever tethered to an anchor,
Concrete in its nature, imbalanced in its soul,
if you ever find my heart… It may never know

Two Dimensional

by A.K. Jackson

I’m lying on my bed again
only now it is not made up
with my bloodstained, pink sheets
or anything flannel. Its thin
and white like the hospital bed.
I take a shower early in the morning
and my hair is wet with someone else’s
shampoo. I go back to the bed.
I take the game pack out of my gameboy
and turn it upside down.

All the Pokemon come falling out,
growing in the oxygen, leveling up
to be big. They are flat,
like colorforms. You’re flat, too,
just a notebook page away
and I can see your hairline
in the black and white photograph
from high school sophomore year.
I can’t see the safety pin
in the webbing of your hand.
Your hair, red, falls into your face.
Your angle-nose, thin lips,
not randomly generated face.
You have some DNA in you,
have your daddy’s look sometimes.

Maybe I will lift back this sheet white page
to see your face as it used to be:
no scars, no AIDS. Red hair and freckles,
turquoise eyes. I lift it.
The air has made the photograph
too big, the pixels are crosshatched,
your lips blending into your chin.
Your eyes are little black and white shapes––
not even circles. Circles with sharp edges.
This is not you, not you before, not
a single color or smooth to touch line.
I cannot smooth your hair because it is not hair
or you. I stop. I drop the page again.

SHANNON'S OASIS

by Mather Schneider

Shannon was born 4 months premature
to a crack head mom.

She was so small
you could see her heart

like a goldfish
under paper-thin ice.

The hospital lights ripped and ruined
her tiny retinas

and the doctors didn’t give her
a month

but somehow here she is
30 years later

blindly limping toward my taxi on
taffy legs

with Lloyd,
her loyal yellow lab

guiding the way.
Lloyd climbs into the cab,

sinks to the floor
with a happy huff

and then Shannon feels her way
like a spelunker.

When she's comfortable
I drive her to the public pool

where she will sit so peaceful
under her dark umbrella

with an icy coke, moving her hand in
and out of the shade.

My grandmother’s quilt

by Tyler Bigney

I’m watching you sleep,
studying the light brown freckles
on your shoulders. I can feel your feet
press up against me
under the quilt my grandmother
knit me for Christmas.
If she only knew that I met you
hours before
at a bus station
and paid three hundred dollars
for you to sleep
naked next to me
to make me feel
something, or
anything at all -

she’d be disappointed.

Gravel Road

by James Babbs

it’s just the gravel road
where the teenagers go
drinking beer while
sitting on their cars
the music loud and
the girls want to dance
but none of the boys will
and they complain about
their parents and
the teachers at school
and anything else
they deem uncool
and they swear someday
they’re going to
get as far away
from here as they can
the next day
driving past their empties
scattered along
the side of the road
I can’t help thinking
back to the time when
I came out here
surprised to realize
it was so many years ago

Fault

by Abigale Louise LeCavalier

“It was not your fault but mine.”

A line from a song
that brings it all home.

The days passed in pants
and thin man suits,
the evenings reserved
for too tight stilettos
and cocktail dresses.

Creeping around secretly
with the sneakiest of sneakers on,
hiding what could not be hidden.

Though nothing lasts forever.

Like the death of a sunflower
the falsity of it all
came raining down,
in browns, yellows, and grays.

And being seen for the first time
meant loosing everything.

Work.
Family.
Friends.
Lovers.
And children.

Children.

But the creeping around
has stopped at least,
and I finally found the right heels
to go with that cocktail dress.

1969: Curbside Cleanup?

by David S. Pointer

President Nixon’s motorcade
rumbles along Truman Road
Kansas City motorcycle cops
process the street near Cash
Bargain Lumber Company-I’m
the astonished 7 year old kid
holding historic hedge apples-
I might’ve averted Watergate
with one light green diplomatic
greeting missile, misshapen,
splatting up a sidewalk balk
over the smoked glass non-
transparency entrusted with
the gigantic peoples’ planet

Rocky Top – Seoul, January 1991

by Jeffrey Miller

Inside the drafty, smoky juicy bar
halfway up the notorious Hooker Hill
hostesses carry out their trade.

Miss Lee hustles drinks at five bucks a pop
while Hotel California plays for the
umpteenth time.

It’s not really whiskey, but barley tea
you don’t know that with your hands
between her thighs.

You match her drink for drink
until you’ve had enough and watch her
waltz off with another guy.

THE MIRACLE

by Mather Schneider

She was 74 and the plastic surgery
made her look like grandma when
she went skydiving.

I was her 36 year old cab driver.
She insisted on the front seat.
She had just returned to Tucson
from summering in Maine
during which she planted
hubby #4.

At a long red light she wondered
if I knew how hard it was
to find a man at her age.

“Most men think you want to get married,”
she said. “I just want to have
a good affair ”

She looked at me with eyes
that never blinked
metallic cheeks
fish-lips pulled toward
her ears
and jowls
like cheese tied with string.

And then
with the deftness of a 50 year old
she reached over
and squeezed my leg.

The miracle was how I avoided
killing the snowbird in the
blue Lexus.

How I Am Every Second, Minute and Hour of Each Day

by Chris Butler

Last minute…happy,
and this very second…sad,
each hour/day…same.

Life, now

by Cath Barton

The twitches and trembles
of nameless fears
that pepper my days with anxiety
are relieved by simple things:
walking in the hills,
planting bulbs in the garden
and stroking your hair.

When I wake whimpering
from yet another bad dream
I feel your breath, the breath of now,
soothing me.
I realise that fighting
is not the way.
I must ride the wave of life.

Flowers of Love to You

by El Habib Louai

Even when it rains
The feeling is the same
Even when it shines
The feeling is the same
Even when the wind blows
Between its palms carrying
Dry leaves as they drift
Even when the grass sings
Sweet melodies for butterflies
Dancing as they throbbed
The feeling is the same
Quite as redolent sesame, the same
A feeling sensed by a soul
So cheerful as it journeys
To put those lush flowers
On an Arcadian doorstep
For a dear blossoming heart
Only flowers once called
Les Fleurs du Bien
Are to be bestowed

The Bottom

by Abigale Louise LeCavalier

The strain of sobriety,
the glossy look
in my eyes;
reoccurring.

And the plastic
feels like glass.

As I wash down
a few hours of sunshine.

Taking slow, deep, breaths.

Before
the bottom
drops out.

Highest Bidder Hit

by David S. Pointer

The electromagnetic war
mongers roamed a mystical
Marsoid strip where
unintentionally absorbed
lightmail messages
about deep bat taxidermy,
bacterium documentary
biofilms, and wavelength
bombardment had been
intercepted for lightyears
by an unbalanced crew
previously studying thermal
equilibrium and the stress
hormones of humanoids
emitted before battle maze
engagement now focused
and equipped for the war
mongers overrunning to
requisition their computer
chip cryo-files for a rogue
particle radiation researcher
in high planetary demand
for imploding dwarf speed
bubble ships shootouts

Rave

by Randall Rogers

to beer or not to beer, that is the question, ah, each morning upon awakening, then the whiskey, herb, pill and - brace injection(s) question and of course what dosage level especially for the injection(s) size ( big syringe or small, many few one bib daddio, depends on the day the morning the sharp things put away, or not, questions as reading and writing, internet porn with total hand party focus, music and amplified blowém the full watts tonight, or dare i say it, some type of jj cale-rasta-tulsa-take it easy-the joker billy mac being that detective type really nirvana guttural belch of pretty hell sort of. yes i would agree that could sum my nanosecond changing untuned cheap chinese string growl, sometimes, or delta albino sound. always said i was an albino in a white-black man's transgendered or do i love the she/he thing? as one often hears me not described. i could only hope for such assholaids. i do have one fan though. genius that younger man shall we call him? or Beast? none other than my only fan (i mean me a fan of him and even his so-called work, poetry that would be unless ya been off the planet gramdma!!!), the moldbreaker, head spore himself, or herself (i suppose it depends on the night), chris butler. truly a hidden talent as he had the vision insight and scatological imagination to, well, not really ''get'' my poems as if they are at all nor where? ah chris is a genius for finding me, telling me he is a fan (my first and so far only - and surely he'll see through or leave the sheepless flock i shepherd, as heston as moses, in the ten commandos? but left he has not. his genius must has an is/will now flowering into a cultural revolution. all against ts elliot and that interminable ''what's he talkin'' ''bout willis?'' wasteland poem and that assholes ted hughes. the one who murdered sylvia. yes as this younger though much worse - and better - man than myself, he found or emailed and proclaimed him (or her) self a fan, of me, or of my writing i would gather building up to the personality malstruction from there, and than just snapping like a jonestown five-glasser before he, or she, shot that sarah palin jim jones in the noggin (as one should and would not deceive of doing - no many how many voices, how many angela lansburys, as mom? said so? this all too shall be considered though may not whence thyne gesturious fingers...mmm..well print and of course natch get me fame and freer stuff than i already pay for. i think. sound good to you?

One Day All Whores Will Magdalene

by Donal Mahoney

Mind you, now, my brethren,
the Scriptures never claim

one day all whores will Magdalene
and disbelievers Paul

and you won't find in Scriptures
a single verse that claims

one day all thieves will Dismas
outside the castle gates

while financiers Assisi
inside those castle walls,

their sharkskin suits in tatters,
their eyes, their tin cups up.

Whatever

by Chris Butler

I’m an attendee
at my own church funeral,
in a black casket,

just some resident
in the conceived precedent
to those before us,

as the acquitter
towards what life often offered.

Whisper whatever.

I’m the ghost writer,
obituary writing
on the date of birth,

habitually
smoking dope marijuana,
until I want to

feel never better,

but since the grass grows
greenest on the septic tank,
I’m gay for rainbows!

Bottle of Rum

by Michael Frissore

Michael Savage, to me,
sounds just like Howard Stern,
who sounds just like
Alexander Portnoy in
Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint,
which is why when I heard Savage
recommend gargling with scotch
to cure a sore throat,
I should have just used
salt and water like my mother says
instead of substituting rum for the
scotch and pouring straight rum
into my mouth and gagging even
worse than I do if I use salt and water.

My wife sang Yo ho ho and
a bottle of rum for weeks
afterwards and even convinced
me I had scurvy.

SELF-CONCEPT CHECK-UP

by Michael H. Brownstein

All day I look at myself in storefront windows.
None of the news is good.
Everyone follows the grain of commonplace.
I am surrounded by women in dark eyeliner,
Air skunk strong, blonde hair too sunny.
One day a simple tattoo will fold into stretch marks.
One day it will have the texture of grits.
Everyone has a scar, a blemish,
A skin-deep lie. It is almost impossible to tell
Tiger from tiger. But for our smell,
Each of us is exactly alike.

OTHERWISE SUNNY AFTERNOON

by Steven Gulvezan

You are not at their mercy
Ignore them
Reports of their power
Over you
Are misleading
They send
Airships of misinformation
Floating into
Your mantra
Watch them as they float
Past
And out the other side…
Or perhaps you might
Send sparrows
With flaming twigs
Held in their tiny beaks
Flying up
To intercept
The airships…
Hydrogen and fire
Ignite and
Pop!
Oh the humanity!
You laugh…
Only bald liars
Would steal
Your serenity
And attempt to encase you
In gloom

Paraplegic

by Chris Butler

I consider myself to be
an emotional cripple,
even though I walk, talk,
eat and breathe
without the assistance
of a machine.

Sent from my iPhone

by Michael Frissore

I've decided
I'm going to add
"Sent from my iPhone"
at the end of all
of my e-mails

just so people think
I'm cool and
I have an iPhone.