Live Nude Poems

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Jeff Weddle

I Loved Lucy The grocery store gave a dime apiece for the pop bottles I collected by the side of the road, righteous money, but I kept one back to hold the wild flowers. The flowers, a Snickers, and a lame knock-knock joke went fine with the sunset. Next day in school you blushed as we passed in the hall.

James Croal Jackson

Thrift Store Sweater Threads dangle off the sweater I’ve worn forever, blue and purple billows all across my torso. I can’t just throw away this salvaged dollar from a Goodwill. A cloth can sheath itself on the body and glide forever, walking toward an inevitable unknown destination. The distance is empty space, jammed with ubiquitous sound. I will sew none of it. James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, Vilas Avenue, and *82 Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Juliet Cook

Stalks This abyss of dark corn fields floods your brain and nervous system with violent effigies, waiting to abduct you. Immerse you in flames then just throw you away. Your un-model hands shake inside this pit of toxic abrasion. Turbulent then blurring. Trapped in the never ending descent. Your spinal column degenerates into a rotting corn stalk. Unwanted. From a pall to appalling. Juliet Cook's poetry has appeared in a small multitude of print and online publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently including "Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails" (The Poet's Haven, 2019), "The Rabbits with Red Eyes" (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2020), "Histrionics Inside my Interior City" (part of Ghost City Press's Summer Micro-Chapbook Series, 2020), "red flames burning out" (Grey Book Press, April 2023) and "Contorted Doom Conveyor" (Gutter Snob Books, July 2023). Later this year, s...

Max Heinegg

Wayfinder In Reykjavik The mother of the goldsmith shows me the rune beside the protective eye of awe near the lava stone & silver necklaces adorned by the carved teeth of whales. She says, Here is the wayfinder & puts it on so I may imagine how it will look on you. Along the walls, she has modeled her son’s creations. In black & white, a grandmother, still beautiful. I hope this is where we will follow, the way an older culture set the symbol to stay in one place, offering something of the earth that skill shaped, clasped with a magnet to hold the rope, so you will know where you are going even when you don’t. Max Heinegg is a poet, singer-songwriter, recording artist, editor, and literary critic. His previous collection, Good Harbo r, won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Press. His second book of poems, Going Therre, came out in September 2023. Born in Cooperstown, NY, he lived in Schenectady, NY before moving to Medford, M...

Al Ortolani

Stopped at the Gate It is easy to forget we are fragile without skullcaps, without sweaters, without television to tell the stories that warm us. In the snow I pee a sketch like a boy. It is a refugee’s boat, medieval, with a shallow prow, and beside the single mast the dribble of all that can be saved in a shipwreck. All that freezes in deep cold. All that melts when it thaws. There’s a rumor that Jesus could walk on water, right through these walls, your iron gate a mirage of fish. Al Ortolani’ s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, New York Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, One Art Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, and many others. His most recent poetry collection is The Taco Boat, published by New York ...

Tarnished, poem by Jon Bennett

Tarnished You can replace things an alternator, a starter but the real skill is in diagnosis you have to keep learning have a passion for it I’m passionate about passion but don’t have much left I drink tea, play the guitar the chord progressions are different but somehow all the same the finger picking patterns never progressed At work it’s the same thing I know what I learned in the first two years but then seized up I’m rebar in concrete old silver fillings rigid, rusting and hampered by a fear of pain these scribbles of a staid teetotaler reflect “Today I brushed my teeth and lost a crown,” I write but there are many things in my mouth that will never come out. Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco. You can find more of his work here and ...