John Dorsey

A Long-Handled Spoon

the big lost river
is still your body

the old fisher king

there’s water
in idaho

the hand of god
exchanges rain.



The Desert

this town
a little good dirt

dad caught a train
into manhood
& jumped off.



Little Kids

stripped
moaning
hands in pockets
the shouts
the beatings

a wine jug
of hot win

In Pocatello

embree haunts the cold railroaders
stoned by local magic
a beer that no one touches.

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017),Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) and Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022).. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Drew Pisarra

Eros Thanatos Brutus

Am I sick? And does sobriety mean
this body will walk without knots
while soaking up life’s crassest joke?
Who does that? Again, am I sick?
And will I take to a healthy bed
where I’ll have the courage to act sick
at night and attract neo-kink-isms
fostered by some sister spirit that fists
and fingers a long-misnamed disease?

There is a crime of illness in your mind
that I need to know better and more:
along the way I promise you beauty,
I promise you warmth. But first, desire:
Tell me why are you so hard-headed,
so hard-hearted, so hard-pressed, so hard
that you should have me on repeat:
for here are six or seven me’s hiding
faces and phalluses in the dark.



Mourning the Crown Prince

Grief doesn’t linger. It sticks. It makes the hands
fumble and the throat gunge up. Time doesn’t heal.
Time inserts itself within the pain. The clock
is crueler than the calendar. Eventually the hour
hand lets up. In the almanacs charting the past
20 years, I fear I’ve failed big time from afar.
My record is one of gross inaction. You’re dead.
Dead and buried. A perfect specimen stored
away for some wiser, curiouser version,
of who we’re failing to become at this second,
to find. They’ll unearth you and restore you
to a world better than the one we’ve haphazardly
given and thoroughly botched. You weren’t
cremated yet the loss still burns. It burns,
and lately I alternately reproach myself
and numb myself to avoid fuller recall.

Drew Pisarra is the author of You're Pretty Gay (2021), a collection of short stories, and Infinity Standing Up (2019), a collection of sonnets, and The Strange Case of Nick M. (2021), a radio play commissioned by Imago Theatre. He is also a literary grantee of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation (2019) and Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators (2021).

David L. Williams

Homework

Dylan’s desk did not stay vacant long,
Though I know it got stared at emptily
A short while, till it got reshuffled back
In line with other daily absurdity.

He’d been a quiet kid, and had no friends
That I could tell, but of the pleasant kind
Who did his homework, stayed out of the way,
Polite enough in ways we teachers liked.

I never got to know him very well,
Grading his papers, making pleasantries
That daily went by virtually unnoticed
As Dylan did, almost in secrecy.

Not bothering others, he got left alone,
So it’s no big surprise that no one knew him,
And none of us knew much about his family
As we discovered sadly on that day.

Administration promptly filled me in
Before the first bell rang, and now the kids
Had filed in, edging around his desk,
Then sitting quietly, and so I guessed

They’d heard the news, at least from one another.
Surprisingly, there wasn’t any comments.
From what we knew, there wasn’t much to say;
Eerily gone, with his entire family.

His empty desk seemed awkwardly out of place,
And in my usual routine taking roll,
I made note of his absence, hurrying past
From what that morning’s headlines had disclosed.

Some family had been away with friends,
But Dylan’s dad had gone out of his way
To call them home, and got them all alone,
Convening them into a single room

As for some secret, solemn family conference,
With consequences unbeknownst to them
Until he stepped out, came back with his gun,
Then shot them dead, saving a final bullet

For his own head. I’m still not sure
How anyone found out, or even when;
The unknowns that had most befriended Dylan
Now followed him, even beyond his end,

And as before, he keeps to his own self
Concealed in some small space, as an unseen
Enigma no one ever asks about
And no one assigns homework to find out.

David L Williams retired 6 years ago after 34 years of teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since he went to college there in the 80s. Almost all his poetry has been written since May of 2021.  He’s managed to publish half a dozen poems so far, in as many journals, but others have been accepted elsewhere for the near future. This will be his first poem published which is not a sonnet. For inspiration, David enjoys sitting on the two steps leading to their patio and looking out back. He shares home with his 30 year living partner, Mary, who unknowingly models for some of his poems. More about David and his poetry at http://classwords.com.

PRYING, Jack Micheline, Charles Bukowski, Catfish McDaris, a Review

Roadside Press

$18.00

https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/prying/71

Limited Edition of 69

The three poets nesting cheek by jowl in this fetching 2022 reprint of the 1997 Four-Sep Publications chapbook Prying from small press dynamo Michele McDannold's Roadside Press will be familiar to anyone paying attention to even the tiniest of the outlaw poetry scene in the last 50 or so years: Charles Bukowski, Catfish McDaris and Jack Micheline. Bukowski and Micheline need little introduction; their long shadows hover over the outlaw poetry world even now years after their deaths. And the third, the only living poet of the three within, Catfish McDaris, has been building his own small press reputation with considerable success, for nearly as long as the former men. Illustrations are from Scott Aicher.

It's most fun to talk about the living McDaris. He appeared and appears so widely it's difficult to keep track and critique, or not, but as his portion of the cover copy says, he doesn't give a rat's ass anyway. We do, though, and the short prosaic pieces within are in turn ribald and rough-hewn, made to order working class historical pieces. McDaris gives you what you've come for even if unsure of what this is exactly. His work may not transcend yet like his two compadres, but who's to say whom the prevailing poetic winds will favor in the coming years? From 'If This is Love I'm Not Happy.'

I am a rainbow, Jack the Ripper's knife, a tumble weed, the petals of a rose, a worm drowning in mescaline, Van Gogh's ear, the Statue of Liberty, Hendrix's guitar. I am now. I am free. I am.

The Bukowski poems included here from the early- mid-70s when Bukowski had passed the first peak of his career and moved steadily upward and forward in reputation. in 'extant,' the first poem, Bukowski begins to riff on a melody only he can hear.

        the victim is the dog of man

        the victim is dog the man

        the victim is the dog man

        the hot dog

It's easy to fall into that loping rhythm, which poem is otherwise filled with non sequiturs amidst confessional moments amid the gristle and sinew of the tough guy, the beer drinker, womanizer, prophet mode Bukowski tries to live in. Still, it's Buk. You know what's on the label.

Micheline is another matter to me, a poet of various strengths deeply associated with the 50s and 60s beat ethos, if not a beat himself, who writes a headlong neo-beat or offbeat causative poem, long of line at points, next to several one-word lines. While his poems don't resonate yet like some of his contemporaries, he's due for a cultural renaissance soon, and if you can find it, pick up his selected COCKYMOON, from Zeitgeist Press edited by William Taylor. In the meantime, you can revel in these energetic lines from 'My Philosopy:'

        I was born on the street of lost fools

        on a sunny winter's day

        howling naked to the sky

        with a pair of bright eyes from a crutch and an anchor

These outlaw poets retain their attraction well into this century. The beats and neo beats are now getting their just deserts with Corso's last three years of poems coming out soon and the world slipping ever so rapidly into the next decade. It's a tall order, but these small books, the festschrifts and anthologies and chaps from some random wahoo in Albuquerque to this psychotic reviewer here in Revere MA, need to publish more, review more and spread the love more. There are so many deserving poets–all poetic modes can work, said Paul Blackburn, if you work them right–to choose from, and we can talk about them till there's no blink left in your eyelids. Long live the limited edition chapbook.

David Centorbi

The Magic was Amazing

It felt me up.
And I was confused.
So I asked the sparrow with the broken wing,
“Why does magic feel so cold when it touches my skin?”
But all he said was, “Please turn the channel to a new episode,
this corner of despair is taken.”

I laughed because the cold started
scratching down the middle of my back.
“Can you hear that?” a voice from the dark asked.
“Hear what?”
“The sad silly song I’m playing down your spine.”

I closed my eyes and listened.
Sure enough, I heard it–
something like the whispers in between
a mummer and a whimper.
“Is that what magic sounds like?” I asked.
The voice from the dark just sniffed at my question.
“Are you deciding if it smells good enough to answer?” I teased.

Then the chill got colder. I felt my limbs tighten until I fell
stiff as a soup spoon onto the floor.
All around me the sniffing sound, the cold getting colder,

but I started to feel warmer and warmer,
“Until the cold will burn you away,” said the voice.
All I could find the strength to say was, “Thank you.”
Which I guess was the magic word that broke
the magic cold that bound me,

and I sat up in my bed
and looked at the cage where Charlie the sparrow
sat on his perch, and heard,
“Looks like this time you have blood in your tears," so I say,
"you’re getting close to the truth."

David Calogero Centorbi is a writer that in the 90's earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Now, he is writing and working in Detroit, MI.

 

He is the author of  Landscapes of You and Me, (AlienBuddha Press.)

AFTER FALLING INTO DISARRAY (Daily Drunk Press)

 

He can be found here on Twitter: @DavidCaCentorbi.

Blog: davidcentorbi.blogspot.com