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Kevin Ridgeway

The Last Time I Saw My Father's Face

My father was bearded and zoned out on psychiatric medication he could not pronounce behind the glass from us in county jail, where he awaited trial. He and my mother argued over why he did what he did until he could only slur insane gibberish. The guards treated us so much like shit we could still smell it on the drive home, when we both agreed never to visit my father in jail or prison again. Neither of my parents were there when I got locked up in the same madhouse that swallowed my father whole, but it choked on me and spit me out in a demented miracle no one prayed for but me.

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press) and nine chapbooks of poetry including Grandma Goes to Rehab (Analog Submission Press, UK). His work can recently be found in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Trailer Park Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly and The American Journal of Poetry, among o…

Stephen J. Golds

4:48 In The Morning R.I.P Sarah Kane
It arrives
like a yellow taxi swerving into a parking lot with warped flickers in the windshield.
An insect crawling mindlessly up a concrete wall with five legs and the sixth dragging broken behind it.
The small stone trapped in between the tread on the worn soles of sneakers that are too tight.
The clerk behind the counter of the liquor store with the eyes like broken street lamps and a smile like a street fight.
The doctor in a Christmas sweater with a handful of pills but a mouth with no answers.
An empty coat on a hanger hung in a darkened window in the apartment building across the empty street.
A broken umbrella, it still seeps in, soaks and dampens these fragile fabrics at 4:48 in the morning.

Stephen J. Golds was born in London, U.K, but has lived in Japan for most of his adult life. He enjoys spending time with his daughters, reading books, traveling, boxing and listening to old Soul LPs. Glamour Girl Gone his debut novel will be released by C…

Chad Parenteau

Working Misanthrope Versus Pandemic
They stole my singularity. Back to being among, not of.
I played. I lost. I want to leave. No ball back. Home already here.
#meetoos #neveryous both rejoice, tap on my glass bubble.
No more I-love-you-don't-touch-mes. Hell is other people calling you back.
Chad Parenteauis the author of Patron Emeritus, released in 2013 by FootHills Publishing. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tell-Tale Inklings, Queen Mob's Tea House, What Rough Beast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street, Molecule and Résonance. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. He has hosted the long-running Stone Soup Poetry series in Boston since 2004. His second full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, is forthcoming.

Susan Tepper

Drip

A drip from the eaves into the gutter has kept me awake most of the night it's been raining my pillow is wet. I dreamt Bobby Darin came back after forty years of silence. What would Sandra Dee do finding him jigging to Mack the Knife in her living room? I miss you. Even though we never had a single intimate moment. Would you notice if I slipped away quiet for forty years.

Susan Tepper is the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry. Her two most recent titles are CONFESS (poetry from Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019) that was shortlisted at American Book Fest. Other honors and awards include eighteen Pushcart Prize Nominations, a Pulitzer Nomination by Cervena Barva Press for the novel ‘What May Have Been’ (re-written for adaptation as a stage play to open in NY next year), shortlisted in Zoetrope Contest for the Novel (2003), NPR’s Selected Shorts for ‘Deer’ published in American Letters & Commentary (ed. Anna Rabinowit…

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

To Ann’s Typewriter for Anne Menebroker

Will you tell me HERE, typewriter, what you miss most about Anne since she’s been away? She’s with you still, you say. Are you SERIOUS?
The words remain. Someone still reads them and finds joy. Will you tell me more? My ears have perked up. Let it all out in typewriter speak. I am down. Tell me more. I am right here. Drink in hand, I feel so peaceful like if the ocean was outside my door and the mountains on the other side. Will you go on typewriter? The sky is crying. Rain is falling down. Can I come back again someday? You’re a lovely LECHEROUS MACHINE. Like Ann said, with a slow and greedy excitement,
you find a way to end one’s days.
Luis has lived in California for 45 years. He works in the mental health field in Los Angles. His poetry has appeared in Ariel Chart, Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey Review, Unlikely Stories and Yellow Mama Magazine.

Simon Perchik

A single page, barely room
tries, almost fits its envelope
the way splinters already there

know exactly where your hand
was trying to reach - at the end
her name, all else is doubt

though once face down even you
will stare at the wood, half table
half crate leaving a place

- the letter will get used to you, stay
festering between your fingers
through no fault on their own.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge,Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8