Live Nude Poems

mike the pilot drinks at the catch-22 bar his face is cherub red and pock-marked a w.c. fields tribute of abuse his belly has grown to a tank of cheap beer it’s been eleven years many a blurry night between us but i recognize him anyway even if he’s not clad in a white short-sleeved shirt with those striped patches on his shoulders the wings pinned crooked on his breast all day on the new york to chicago run all evening taking up a stool at rooney’s pub soused enough to make me think twice about every commercial flight i took mike the pilot drinks at the catch-22 bar with a woman who looks twenty years younger than him looks disappointed and bored as she sits there picking at a bowl of pretzels watching his head bob up and down a man starving for slumber more than conversation and alcohol like mike was never the man who took mona on the men’s room sink and make her cum so hard that it broke right off its hinges and cracked in half on the sticky, piss-...

The Bermuda Triangle Of Pullman Drive people disappear and you can't help but wonder about them around here there was the one my roommate dubbed "The Mad Conductor" due to his constant gesturing and occasional screaming as he walked the streets day and night and then that long-haired dude in the big straw hat who if you encountered him would never speak or make eye contact but would step off the sidewalk into the street and stand still as a lamppost until you'd passed and finally the stooped old man who’d shuffle by every day on his way to the corner store he’d stand in the alley behind our house drink his daily ration from a brown paper bag then piss on the fence before shuffling off to wherever he came from to wherever old men like him wind up Brian Rihlmann lives and writes in Reno, Nevada. His poetry has appeared in many magazines, including The Rye Whiskey Review, Fearless, Heroin Love Songs, Chiron Review and The Main Street R...

Instructions for the Lonely Watching your seasonal morals wilt                                           as the flowers were centered, someone’s been flirting with the god                                                     of arrangement. Someone’s open relationship is coming                                                              to a violent close. Zippers are up. Locks changed.                                Now, there are more of you to grieve the gift of lukewarm hands,           ...

The Cold Is On Its Way; I'm Sorry I've Missed Your Calls I was under a bridge, feeling nostalgic, but the stars reminded me that the lowest form of conversation is, “remember when”. Leaves were applauding themselves in the fog. An indomitably vermilion showcase of the fleeting. If your revelations are only second best, the heavens will call you out. I thought it was a busy night, but everyone seemed to have gone away, everyone except the barley harvester from Milwaukee, whose mouth had not gone dry. We spoke of what had been done too well; the absence of disorder in what we say, in what we think, proves a shallow grave to leave behind. A damn mute of character. He told me that his blue shed was covered with withering grapevines, then mouth-missled Grizzly into the gravel. I noticed that his saliva was webbed with blood, but I didn’t point it out. It was a sign of shadow-teeth, grazing around an indeterminate health. As fickley spread as we are on these frosted gr...

Limerick for Kennewick There once was a kid from Kennewick who longed for a plain friend with benefits. Like trains that couple simply to live —with perfect names to kiss and sit beside—in the sweet tart afterglow of astride he longed for even the shortest of rides, and he said simply this—half to him- self, diminished, and half to the one he plain missed; the one who came through Kennewick. Dennis Mahagin is the author of two poetry collections—Grand Mal, from Rebel Satori Press, and Longshot & Ghazal, from Mojave River Press. He also works with Ellen Parker to edit the online magazine called Frigg, and he owns and operates a music store in Deer Lodge, Montana.