Mark J. Mitchell

Marrakesh Espresso

All the men left when she reached the rooftop
leaving behind quickly cleared cups. She watched
her city, inhaling spices rising

off thick, black liquid. Her wandering thoughts
roll forth and back. Slow tides. Hot coffee matched
her warm skin. His lost warmth, still lingering

like ginger and pepper in her huge cup.
Other roofs stay empty. Two palms touch
in afternoon breeze. She’ll sit till evening

proclaims prayer. One more cup before she stops—
just teasing her mouth, like his kiss. It’s her much
to ask. Let slow steam rise like singing.

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collections are Roshi San Francisco (Norfolk Publishing) and Starting from Tu Fu (Encircle Publications). He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, he’s looking for work again. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and four full length collections. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.

Dan Provost

Not Quick Enough
(Retort to Neruda’s You Start Dying Slowly)

Sorry Neruda.
My demise is a fastball.
Improvement of self-esteem has
dwindled to muffled applause for leaving
the bedroom.

Habits cling to defeated prosperity,
as I stare out a window—eying nothing
but lost children, looking for their parents.

My paths are impounded.
My colors have always been dark & banal.
Self-deprecation or an existence
in torment.
My eyes are dead.
Soul has kept sadness intact.

Dreams, just false, internal slop—feeding
off my fears & inadequacies.

No Pablo,

My death is almost here.
A gift from the demons who laughed
just outside my touch.

Kicking.
Ridiculing.

Found on every
journey I failed
to complete.

Dan Provost’s poetry has been published both online and in print since 1993.  He is the author of 15 books/chapbooks, including the upcoming Wolf Whistles Behind the Dumpster, which will be available in late 2022, courtesy of Roadside Press.  He has been nominated twice for best of the web and has read his works throughout the United States.  He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife, Laura and dog, Bella.

Thomas O'Connell

Our Ghosts Do Not Say Boo!

They are screaming
In attics
Rattling the chains
Which keep them tethered to the floor

I lie awake
Listening
Out of courtesy
Though secretly wishing for sleep

And then sometimes
Like children
When taking a nap
They will suddenly go silent
And I will wonder, and worry, if they are all right

Thomas O'Connnell is a librarian living on the banks of the Connecticut River in Springfield, MA. His poetry and short fiction has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Hobart (online), and Blink-Ink, as well as other print and online journals.

John Tustin

The Doe and the Buck

The doe dreams of jumping
into that leaf laden forest
to nibble and nibble

The buck dreams of jumping
the doe

The lioness dreams
they both jump into her mouth

and the lion dreams the lioness
will bring him her kills
and he will jump her
after they’re full

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

Tony Gloeggler

Dylan & Baez, You & Me

I’ve heard old broadcasts
of Joan introducing Bobby,
her silky soaring voice
blending with his crackling
croak, seen a photograph
of him smoking a cigarette,
strumming a guitar, leaning
into the microphone, her
standing, a few steps behind
with her head bowed, hand
stroking the back of the voice
of my generation and I think
of your phone call, the night
after Christmas, asking to walk
in the falling snow, walking
all the way to my couch, my bed,
returning two nights a week
for nearly two years, how
you filled mixed tapes
with music new to my ears,
Neko Case, Josh Ritter, Ryan
Adams, artists I still buy tickets
to see, memorized my poems,
all the sad and sexy ones,
brought me a black and white
thick shake the afternoon
of the night your boyfriend
proposed, eventually moved
to Austin, gave birth to three
daughters and as far as I know,
never played Diamonds
and Rust on your cello for me
while I sit, try to write
poems that don’t always
say the exact same things.

Tony Gloeggler is a life-long resident of NYC and managed group homes for the mentally challenged for over 40 years. His work has appeared in Rattle, New Ohio Review, Book Of Matches, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy. His most recent book, What Kind Of Man with NYQ Books, was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize and long listed for Jacar Press' Julie Suk Award.

Kristin Garth

Only Love

Traverse the woods, your hands clenched in fists
to rap upon air you are convinced harbors
the portal to an alternate state in which
he returns to the object of your ardor
instead of your hate. They say it exists,
some women in town, between two oak trees,
discernible by fingers and sound. It
empties the heart of its guile, all enmity.
When you walk through its invisible frame,
you are set free of the past, the weight of
wrath-riddled bones. You smile at a name
without any pain you’d once known. Only
love is admissible in this dimension.
You’ll knock forever to get there again.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Rhysling nominated sonneteer and a Best of the Net 2020 finalist, the author of a short story collection You Don’t Want This ( Pink Plastic Press), The Stakes (Really Serious Literature) and many more books. 

Jeff Weddle

The Truth About Cats

It is just as you
have always
suspected:

Cats compose poems
in their heads
most all the time,
poems so beautiful
we could not
hear them
and survive.

But they are wise enough
in their indifferent love
never to share them
with those who
provide food

while dogs
poor things

think of nothing
but baseball
and magic
and don’t give a damn
who knows.

Jeff Weddle loves cats but is more or less happy they do not recite their poetry to him. He teaches at the University of Alabama. 

Steven Croft

War in Iraq in Seven Vignettes

Diesel exhaust from snow-topped Humvee,
revving in winter darkness to leave Al Asad Marine base,
ice crystals on the mouth of the turret gunner,
blowing water vapor through pulled up black neck gaiter.

We stop in traffic. I look left down a dusty street of houses.
On the curb, a man with a thick black mustache bends to kiss
a shamefaced girl-child on the mouth. She's held forward by
extended armsof a white-robed man in red-checkered headdress.

Cheerful medic cleaning the meat of a soldier's exposed bicep,
exploded out like an anatomy diagram. Soldier sits in sand in pain,
rolling the back of his head against the metal tread of an armored carrier.
"You'll be fine," says the smiling medic. We all truly believe him.

After the shock of IED blast, in an upturned vehicle four slack bodies
with unconscious faces are slowly consumed by licking fire.
We watch through the smoke-fogged, unbreakable bulletproof glass
of combat-locked doors. If only one was awake, could unlock a door.

Nothing visual says "this is war" like this bright blister of pointed tracers
splitting night's black curtain. Their battered Toyota truck racing from
the sound of Apache helos nearing, in night vision we see gowned
figures with AKs bail in backscatter of dust from glorious Gatling rain.

All the uniforms stink in this close press around the regulation boxing
ring outside the PX. Under the glow of generator lights, our potbellied cook
is in the Friday Night Fights, hit again and again by the taller, heavier Marine.
Until, Jones starts punching, punching. Jones wins, my battalion erupts.

With packs and weapons, we wait in twilight. C-130s always fly at night
from Baghdad International, to evade enemy fire. In my last night, I listen
to faraway gunfire. When the call comes, we gather packs, hustle in a loose
line. I plant my left boot on the tail ramp's metal, lift my right out of Iraq.

An Army veteran, Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. He is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020).  His poems have appeared inThe New Verse News,Misfit Magazine, Live Nude Poems, Quaci Press Magazine,So It Goes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ariel Chart, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist

Often, I sit in my swivel chair
looking out the window,
while jazz, country, or rock music plays.

This pleasure goes on for many hours
a mystic trance of sorts
streaming—the glue maintaining my soul.

I turn the best songs into playlists
(once we called them mix tapes)
puzzling over the perfect order.

Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World”
kick off my latest list
or make it the big soulful closer?

And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in
the set than “Summertime?”
That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet!

“Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you
are climbing a tree to
count all the leaves or tapping to beats.

These are the joys that bring inner peace
and balance (to a cold
universe) lifting spirits skyward.

David Oliver Cranmer’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine, The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. His debut chapbook, Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen, is now available. He’s a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter.

Max Heinegg

Anamnesis

1.

I pushed off with permission
from the Electric City to Brooklyn.

Broome’s green & dying sedan, Big Ed,
rolled out of the slush, down I-90.

Familiar roots dozed while winter sun
lured me to a chastening,

back to the city of my childhood
from which to remember.

2.

- For R.

In his cups, my roommate, the professional dancer
could grab a subway pole & pull parallel
to the ground. He pocketed women
& vested pleasures, secreted smokes,
& taunted subway strangers with drunken melodies.
He taught himself to drum just to join the band.

For a week, he’d leave for Africa, returning with curios.

He kept his room in a way I did not understand,
owned an iron & several pairs of shoes.
19, I didn't decorate as much as find places
to deposit myself.

The day we met on 172st, we passed Washington Heights,
& the hospital where a cop was killed, then drank
good whiskey with ice. I plotted from a window how to start my life.

When we went for Chinese, we forgot our wallets.

His roommate, who granted me a couch,
listened only to Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing.
“Ironbound” grew on me.
Addled, I wore out Alice in Chains’s Dirt on headphones,
drawn to Staley’s snarl while they slept.

That winter we traipsed through the beehive
of the East village, lost, from the Bank to Brownie’s,
earshot from pleasure, next door to debauch,
lining up the powders of Alphabet City.

All along, I was instinct’s passenger,
pointed towards the sun,
a guest who cracked his nest egg
for breakfast with the city.

3.

- For H.

Hey you old junkie, where the fuck are you?
I'm guessing Florida
& nowhere near the LES.

Where's TJ, the mustached singer of 32 Tribes,
with his penchant for divorced white ladies:
"Are you saying your man won't wreck it because he won't, or
because he can't?"
“Because he can’t.”
Damn.

Where's Gordon, king of the heroin queens,
& Gilbert, our dapper manager who held court during Cafe con Leche
fellating the staff. At Mr. Fuji's Tropicana & later, the Fez
Under Time Cafe: Chris Robinson handing out $100 bills
eavesdropping on Shudder to Think, bringing drinks to the Mingus Big Band
& to Charles’s widow, admiring towering Johnny Cash, diminutive Johnny Depp
his chain-smoking belle Kate Moss, hanging with Jeff Buckley
before his Columbia debut, playing his Telecaster in G before the show,
meeting Jennifer Charles in the Elysian Fields
getting chastised for not refilling water fast enough
for the “actress” known as Duff.

In time, I left Harmony to his Kids,
& the Honeymoon Killers
to sole possession of Clinton St,
& you to what befell.

I left you there because I could.

4. The Busboy Notes

To use until use became the sustainer
was my path to doll-raggedness,
then the anarchist was henpecked
& I slept all day in boredom’s blue chair.

When Fellini and Phoenix fell
on Halloween, I was waiting to catch the F train
to get to 2nd Ave and cop,
to pick up my pressed shirts & walk to work.

The bones of my feet envied birds
making tips on the ground floor of the Fez, NYC.
The actual fez hung above the bar
that I fed ice & fresh juices, sitting regal,

as I broke through sweats, changing kegs
racking glasses, learning Spanish, trading
shifts, snagging any fallen bills.

The angel was the unexpected: Patrick
the Irish cook from the LES
who walked from a decade of powder
to poke a sober finger to my chest
saying never never to my always.

Offstage at the Fez, the Nuyorican poets
ashed out their mouths while I changed ashtrays,
returning hourly to the restroom
to ash myself out, on the banks of Lethe

after I closed the bar, I took my shift drink,
a velvet screwdriver, young teeth sweet to rot.

Tipped out in the hour of the scavenger, I walked
token in hand to the subway station,
nodding lightly
beneath a trigger of moon.

5. CBGB

My ego courted its own disgrace,
the A&R guy out the door,
my 58 in a Daltrey lasso,
dropped to signal fire,
the soundman pissed.

My curly Mohawk flopped &
The Hounds played on, fitfully
from Brooklyn to the Bowery,
swiping at the indie crown that John
Spencer only needed a finger

to gather, giving the theremin
the come-hither, as The Blues
Explosion’s drummer decimated the room-
& Foetus, that ginger satyr, joined
in, w/megaphone to command

the yearning crowd to assume the position,
climbing aboard in the dust
I haunted to possess but left
that sojourn in the country, blue-
grass, blues & other musical forms of the underground.

6. Like the Pearl String Cut

I awoke in the bed of chance
violently ill.

After my defiance was crushed
under its own pressure,
I saw we were boys then
thoughtless until the chastisement.

We met at work & soon
were skinning our knees on Ave. C.

We’d sit on his bed listening
to Frank’s Wild Years,
until the height of nights
rended us paper men.

Now I consider myself lucky
to sit in the white nutcracker,
whittling dreams from husks,
through March streets like the pearl string cut.

6. Bowery to Burnside

Lean on the image too hard
& it will cave,
even the frozen branches
content to cast shadows,
not be leveraged into the sun,
snap in spring.

A forced toast, then:
hard to feel free when you’ve always been,
so from Bowery to Burnside the choice begins.
Teach me the inside workings, the traps, poorly
painted rooms, the chipped locks, the sorn
windows, so I will want to get out.

The young & affluent erect their stages,
read their lines from addiction’s pages
these jagged actors with chip-stone jaws,
lofty shoulders like marionettes.

In the city, the winter teaches cold maneuverings
from the stupor of a Williamsburg loft party,

from the Bowery to Burnside
when the young return to hometown contrition
& awake from attic slumber to
walk old corridors
gait fashioned to a sleek Mastroianni
tipping a water glass before an unpolished vanity
no effervescence in the flute
safely back through the hallway to a music
headed, not heady

the black veneer of this darkness
lit less by Eros than by fear

7. Monday Morning

Off Church Ave, old men do cartwheels
on the asphalt of a middle school playground.
When they begin their Tai-Chi, they remove
jackets, & smooth the wrinkles out of the air.

I come courtside with Anthony, tarnished skills,
freshly inflated ball. We lay our coats & keys
on the fence beside our water & any pride,
trying to recall the form & follow through.

Our opponents are ourselves, until three
ten-year olds demand a game. They talk smack,
have handles, rebounding elbows, cursing
like those they’ve observed, but play hard, fair.

A good shoot-around follows, as pigeons, the color
of the court, flock loudly, pecking gravel for candy.
We pick up our coats & keys, the old men
put their jackets back on, smiling broadly.

They walk in time with temperament, each step
a rest, but without their hands, the air returns to
what it was before: jagged breath, these lines whose
ridges crease, whose lack of ease cuts furrows.

8. January’s Beggars

Winter off the F train, rehearsing with shadows
a closed mouth opens: morning.

I walk through Brooklyn’s neighborhoods
so close together that in a jaunt I can get
Russian, Chinese, Jamaican, or Italian food
but it’s early, so I get a bagel and coffee and the deli.

Here at Church Ave, sitting out on our porch
next door to the laundromat run by old women
I light up with Jason, freshly awoken

We watch old men pace the street-corner
in plaid caps, also smoking
who watch the local homeless, courting pigeons,
gifting words to the din of the wind.

Later that day, taking Amtrak out of the city
for the weekend, I saw a man skating on the half-iced Hudson
if he disappears, I thought, he is asking for it.

Stepping off the train, home to visit my parents
I am waiting to be combined with circumstance.

January waits with me,
palms open for what it may receive.

9. Revision

This white moth that slept
conspicuous on the trees,
bitten by the birds
is now brown as bark,
indistinguishable.

I slept soundly in the city
weaning from security
with a taste for the night's offerings
until I saw the birds circling
& could only hold the tree.

Apparently there was better prey,
or my safety net was closer.

I walked back to collegial shade,
& learned by leaving
what should remain.

10. Left Standing

Why did I ever assume
I was hollowed out
for the wind to sing through?

The wind needs neither
instrument
nor harmony.

If I had chosen to crawl
I could have come
to calmness sooner
but there was time

so I fed awhile on salvages
& waited on my instincts.
They never came.

I had only learned
what I could not remember,

so I waited,
a passenger
assuming later trains.

11.

We took few pictures then, even
wrote letters to chart our dalliance,
playing at amor fati.

I sing the surprise that every seed dies
where I drop it, failing to sink
to my knees to change the ground
of its planting. That the dark & light
birds gather, picking their way to a thorough
feast, on a morning when the spring
taunts summer, I recall and then remember,
as if it was always known

to peel at the years, from the budded
strident ego, from selves several,
to pluck at the crown until stem remains

the unconscious finger of disagreement,
the pleasurable nod, the wheel of music turned
the lover to her side, the fall into
tenderness, where we discover ourselves
in our gentle waking state, hours in the familiar song

all the vestiges and costumes, the props of the ensemble
the ambitious and fearful lies
the single, scraped, streaked, shelled,
splintered self.

Where are you now, on the kind of night I longed for
but never dreamed would arrive, the artifact
of my own splendid peace.

Max Heinegg is an English teacher in the Medford Public Schools and the co-founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company.

His first book, Good Harbor, won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize from Lily Poetry Press. His records, poems, and criticism can be found at www.maxheinegg.com 

(Early versions of some of the parts of these poems appeared in Two Cities, Blazing Stadium, and GAS.)

Brenton Booth

The Pianist

At the piano recital she
started tapping her fingers
on my shoulder. I thought
she was measuring the
bars until I noticed the
articulations, glancing at
her hand. For the rest of
the concert she continued
in time with the virtuoso
soloist: never missing a
note. Tears filling her
once hopeful eyes, thinking
of what could have been,
before he broke her finger
a few weeks after she was
accepted into the famous
music school in New York.
To stop her from leaving.

Brenton Booth Lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared, or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Chiron Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Van Gogh's Ear, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press. brentonbooth.weebly.com

Corey Mesler

 I think of you tonight, my Beats

I think of you tonight, my Beats,

and I am grateful. 

I walked the narrow lanes of

Academia and never

felt at home. There were men

and women in the flowerbeds,

their heads full of theorems

and poems. There were

teachers who could lift their

own weight in prose. 

I was lonely. I was too loose. 

I was a lad from the faraway

country of Smarting. But I had you

as so many before me. I had

you and I knew secret things.

I could count on you like a percussion.

And now I want to say: I love you. 

If not for you, what? I want to say.

If Allen Ginsberg did not exist

it would be necessary to invent him. 

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain, is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

 

 

Internal Suffocation, poems by Juliet Cook

 Internal Suffocation

I'm an adult so I'm allowed to watch

as many horror films as I choose.

Some people say that has a bad effect on my brain.

I do sometimes have violent dreams, but

the last disturbing dream I had based on a movie

was re-seeing the rape scene from Boys Don't Cry,

which was based on a real life hate crime.

Sometimes I like some extremity in movies and art

because I can turn them off, turn them back on,

re-interpret them, revise them, re-analyze them, 

do whatever I want with them. 

Other times I can't control

what my own mind sees

or what happens to me.

Sometimes my mind exaggerates things.

Other times it blocks things out.

Sometimes my brain cells discharge 

uncontrolled electrical activity.

Sometimes it's not up to me.

When it is, I'll watch whatever I want to,

whether it's based on real life or exaggerated make believe.

Internal Suffocation 

I know what's starting to happen.

I've heard this before, this wooshing

inside my brain as the room disappears.

I sit down on the floor and shut my eyes.

Then I'm suddenly back up on my feet 

and confused about what day it is, 

what time it is, what I was doing,

how long my seizure lasted and why

I wrote a bunch of people's names

on a sheet of paper. Why I rearranged

rows of clothes in my closet and piled

rows of books in front of a suitcase.

I don't remember doing any of this.

I don't remember where I thought I was going to go.

I do remember who I am though. 

Demolished flesh that nobody wants to look at.

Least of all me.

Shaking around out of control,

groaning a low guttural moan

that dries into a hiss.

Acidic vomit drips

from a vulture's mouth. Clotted

saliva is mixed up with blood then rots.

The good parts get eaten up and shit out.

Haggard Hooded vulture woman

with nothing better to do than grunt and swallow

her own semi-digested dead heart.

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 "DARK PURPLE INTERSECTIONS (inside my Black Doll Head Irises)" (Blood Pudding Press for Dusie Kollektiv 9, 2019) "Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails" (The Poet's Haven, 2019), "The Rabbits with Red Eyes" (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2020) and "Histrionics Inside my Interior City" (part of Ghost City Press's 2020 Summer Micro-Chapbook Series).

Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, “Horrific Confection", was published by BlazeVOX. She's also included in a full-length collaborative poetry book, "A Red Witch, Every Which Way", with j/j hastain, published by Hysterical Books in 2016. Her most recent full-length individual poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2018. 

Cook also sometimes creates abstract painting collage art hybrid creatures.

Find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Three Prose Poems, by Howie Good

 Meds

Four gray gulls paddle about like ducks, the sky above the bay rapidly changing moods, darkening, then brightening, then darkening again, while I make my own path up the shoreline, careful despite a brain half-paralyzed from new meds to step around the conchs and horseshoe crabs stranded at low tide, too many for saving, a massacre, the water rushing away over the pebbly sand whispering to me, as though in consolation, shush, shush, shush.

 

Interview Questions for a Job Yet to Be Invented

Have you ever demanded, received, or paid a ransom? Seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe? Spent a night in the gorilla cage? Bought a human skull on Etsy? Shared an elevator with the eighteen smallest dwarfs in the city? Laughed so hard you dislocated your jaw? Asked Alexa the actual color of the Red Sea? (Intense turquoise.) Been bound and gagged and stuffed in a wheelie bin? Visited a parent in prison? Shrieked like a peacock or impersonated a disreputable poet with a pointy beard and long wool scarf? Dreamt you were dreaming? Put a smiley face at the end of a sentence? Hummed while performing cunnilingus?

 

Life Story

At birth I was given a name I wouldn’t ever have chosen. The trick is not to care. I was still in school when my parents died within a year of each other to make more room for the future. And I remember people throwing their hats in the air in jubilation. What they thought was the light of dawn was instead the light of fires, the stench of burning eventually so bad I couldn’t breathe. Until then, I too wanted to bury everything that came before. Now I pass through crowds like a vague rumor. There’s only one story but a million ways to tell it.

Howie Good is a poet and collage artist on Cape Cod. His latest poetry books are Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).

Shae Krispinsky

 CONNOQUENESSING CREEK

 

Two days after my father died, somewhere in Center Township,

we pulled off the interstate to get closer to the waterway 

whose name for years I held between my teeth

like a wrist, like a prayer.

 

Connoquenessing means for a long way straight. The creek 

twists and curls and crawls from the Beaver River

through the Oneida Valley Reservoir then back to 

the Beaver River some fifty-seven miles later.

 

Train tracks hemmed the creek where we stood, a nest

of rusted railroad spikes at our feet. Connoquenessing means

for a long way straight. The current flowed without shame. Cars 

passed over the nearby bridge. The late afternoon light hung

 

hazy and thick, a chiffon shroud. I bent down to touch 

the water as one always must. The shock of the cold

didn’t shock me so much. In the water

I felt nothing. I stepped back defeated.

 

Connoquenessing means for a long way straight.

How often does meeting our hero disappoint us? It was too late 

to keep the creek a dream; with touch it became real. Three days 

of losses. Three days of never getting that back. Once listed as 

 

one of the most polluted waterways in America, but not 

any longer. Had the creek been cleansed or had other rivers

become more polluted? There are multiple ways to lose the crown. 

Connoquenessing means for a long way straight.  

 

My father’s death meant grief, meant freedom, meant no longer 

having to face how much of a disappointment I’ve been: 

unbeliever, leftist, artist, seeking adventure. Had I been cleansed 

or had other people become more polluted? Connoquenessing 

 

means for a long way straight. I didn’t want the crown. I left it 

there on the bank of the Connoquenessing. This time I would

father myself. This time I would pardon myself and I 

pardoned myself: dropped my sin and went a long way straight.

Shae Krispinsky lives in Tampa, FL, where she fronts the band, Navin Avenue, whose sound she describes as Southern Gothic 70s-arena indie rock with a pop Americana twist. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Connotation Press, Thought Catalog, The Dillydoun Review, Vending Machine Press, Sybil Journal and more. She is currently working on her band's second album and a novel.

Mike James

 Some Things I Know 

after Villon 

I know the corners where good times are found 

I know how to pull a hustle with a dancer’s grace 

I know how to lie when I grin 

I know how sunglasses hide the inward gaze 

I know to say please if a collar is on 

I know how to hold a rosary, say Latin prayers

I know how to argue with the priest about sin

I know everything, but myself 

I know to walk straight with cops around 

I know restaurant dumpsters, when they serve 

I know thank you can be a way in

I know how to make a friend for all he’s worth

I know which body parts to cover with cream

I know the sunrise by calendar 

I know how falling in a nightmare ends

I know everything, but myself 

I know exits in all the places I’ve been 

I know the romance stories strangers share 

I know suits by the cut, can guess wearer’s age by tie 

I know every bench in the park and the trees nearby 

I know charm is not an always luxury 

I know some plan for tomorrow as if it will last 

I know Richard and Michael and how they met 

I know everything, but myself 

I make these lists so my head stays clear 

I make these lists to know what I’ve touched 

And to measure all my distances 

I know everything, but myself 

Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee. He has published in numerous magazines, large and small, throughout the country. His many poetry collections include: Leftover Distances (Luchador), Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), and Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog.) He has received multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.

John Tustin

 TODAY MUST BE THE DAY

 

It’s still mostly dark

And I can hear the rumble of the bulldozers

That are coming to cave in the walls.

They are distant but coming nearer.

Today must be the day.

A jet takes off from a secret location,

Armed with two missiles – both bearing my name.

The bedroom door vibrates as the first light comes in

And things start to fall from the dresser.

The bathroom sink gargles in anticipation of its death throes.

Today must be the day.

This place will become a clapboard house toppled,

A graveyard soon paved over without a marker of remembrance,

My voice to be drowned in the noises of complete obliteration.

Today must be the day.

I get out of bed, make a cup of coffee

And look for a pair of socks to put on,

Preferably neither with a hole in the toe.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

 

Michele McDannold

 rather than being accidental

 

pretty sure the best laid plans

mean nothing

to the sharpie

on your name tag

to the misfitting sweater

and the comes in a package underwear

you are chipped nail polish

broadcast-live

crucifixion

unfiltered by design

the seed of doubt

mother nature uses to

reclaim

the broken

but there is no clean break

there is only sleeping at the wheel

bent

a contortionist running metal

burns one thing for another

the shelves are stocked

with gas ovens

and bottomless drops

 

take your pick, kitten

your secret is safe

with me

Michele McDannold has organized poetry events and/or performed poetry with a bunch of unabashed free-thinkers across this great United States, most happily by roadtrip but sometimes by plane, train or coincidence.  She currently resides in Trinidad, Colorado and spends most of her time producing and publishing books, when she’s not out killing miles with her magical jeep.

Frederick Pollack

 Call

An office as tenuous

as fog. Someone unpaid

except in their own youth mans

the phone, the computer.

Never enough

money, time, ventilation, coffee,

understanding or patience,

though the latter is total.

Even the word “client” marks

a defeat somewhere

in deep time, a failure of

relationship. 

Lawyers have clients, but law here

is the opponent in a perpetual

judo. And is 

the one crying

or barely verbal on

the phone, who is bleeding 

(“from wherever”), evicted, hungry, 

to be killed for “honor,” 

guilty since birth, a client?

Doctors at least have patients,

but how to diagnose

one who calls without power

while the one who answers 

has no power but answering?

I who don’t belong here, tired

of Grand Hotel Abyss, wanted

to praise heroes,

and am immature enough

to imagine an armed, confident

man. But all I found,

all anyone can find

are mice in the granary of suffering,

and the advice of Lenin

that, finally, revolution

is an affair of clerks and accountants.

Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Two collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology, Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Live Nude Poems (2021), etc.