Live Nude Poems

Shelter to Cinder I tore apart the tweaker’s shack now, firewood for the winter my little way of getting back at them, when they burnt their shelter to cinder their field mice escaped to bunk with me assuming they were evading flame yet all I’m doing here: waiting for the half-sane human being to earn my heating a reason to learn the discipline of a controlled burn Gabriel Hart lives in Morongo Valley in California’s High Desert. His literary-pulp collection Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell is out now from Close to the Bone (U.K.). He's the author of Palm Springs noir novelette A Return To Spring (2020, Mannison Press), the dispo-pocalyptic twin-novel Virgins In Reverse / The Intrusion (2019, Traveling Shoes Press), his debut poetry collection Unsongs Vol. 1., and the Pushcart-nominated story "The Maid and the Maidens." He's a regular contributor at Lit Reactor and Los Angeles Review of Books.

Centuries More Alive In some dirty old bookstore in downtown San Francisco I found a copy of Hustler Magazine from 1976 featuring an interview with Charles Bukowski. He was in his mid-fifties and just reaching the height of his fame. In the photographs he's got a bit of a snarl on his face, a smoldering in his eyes. He comes off as somewhat nasty and full of himself, but reading it felt like a brush with livelier times. He said some things that would have buried him now, things that would never have made it to print. For the better, you might say, and fair enough but there was an energy there, some moxie, a kind of ragged joy that feels largely absent from the present times and I'm a bit wistful about it all. I miss the 20th century. I miss porno magazines and Charles Bukowski.. The day at hand feels beleaguered and half-alive, just wanting to lie down somewhere and be done with it all. The poet is long dead, and the young girls ...

Hydrangeas with my arm around yours around mine a garden grows into meadow of petals each day a field a boundless entrance to tomorrow's tomorrow hydrangea petals floating even through the rare rains one white petal for each new year that sings through time to land inside your hand enclosed in mine James Croal Jackson (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. He has two chapbooks (Our Past Leaves, Kelsay Books, 2021 and The Frayed Edge of Memory , Writing Knights, 2017) with one forthcoming: Count Seeds With Me ( Ethel , 2022 ) . He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, PA. ( jamescroaljackson.com )

Five Dollar Dress I’ve seen forever dancing in the kitchen in her bare feet and her thrift store dress. The sweater on her shoulders was left at her place by some past Tom Sawyer of a lover (it’s some kind of a test.) If we don’t have a car, we can ride the bus. If we don’t have money, we will still have us. We could really use some money, and some better days to come, but I’ve seen her dancing in the kitchen in her bare feet wearing her summer dress. It won’t always be like this. Something will come for us, Come in the future or come from the past, Tom Sawyer for his sweater, maybe, or money we have to have and haven’t got - but until then we have right now, and we have enough for the wishing well, five dollars for a dress. a pencil for a poem, and whatever for the rest. Steve Passey is from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the collection Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock, (Tortoise Books) the novella Starseed, (Seventh Terrace) and many o...