Live Nude Poems

Fired I remember being called to the office of the vice president of human resources with the consultant hired just for this occasion, who looked nothing like George Clooney from that movie and who told me I wasn’t a fit in their future which made axing me as legitimate as losing my designated parking spot. I wasn’t allowed to gather personal things like family photos or simply saying goodbye, but when they took my Blackberry (despite it holding the details of everyone I knew) I felt stripped of more than that job but every job I ever had. But let me be completely honest with you, dear reader, I fired myself. I hated that place and most of the people who worked in it. I hated stepping up the worn marble stairs to my third-floor office with its view of the iconic New England town and its square which was actually a circle but I digress. I worked for the money. I never harbored lofty dreams, had no causes I believed in, no aspirations to do

School The day Magic Johnson      was diagnosed with H.I.V. I punched James in the      face in the high school playground for calling      him a faggot. I saw James 5 years later on      Darlinghurst Street, muscular and tanned,      in tight white jeans, aviator sunglasses,      and a hot-pink singlet. His arm lovingly around      another man with similar clothes and build. I      smiled, "Both he and Magic have somehow      made it," I thought as they continued along      the road. Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared 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

Affliction with no subtle pageantry the small rodents of the natural world descend from the trees to devour green chestnuts on the front steps, cascading detritus and chewed husk in all directions, delighted consumption, basking bright in the summer sun as within I wither away in shadow, looking upon the world through a window shade of blue, replete with disease, my slow recovery in solitude amongst books in neat piles, fastidious organization and humming fans billowing my sick room as I wait and watch the local rodents celebrate another season without finance or time-cards or weaponry or nuclear codes or advertising money or corporate executive officers or the empty rooms in an empty house where children once played, now ghosts that haunt dreams and makes one wonder what else waits beyond the veil as recovery crawls through the veins and cells and daydream hopes within me, sitting by the window in this summer of contagion James H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and the au