Karl Koweski

retaliation

it was two weeks
after you returned
from rehab, dad
I found the first
vodka bottle,
a Smirnoff pint,
stashed beneath
the driver's seat
of your Ford.

I propped the
empty on the
dashboard like
a bobble-head.

I didn't tell you
this then, but...

going into my room
and leaving my
dog-eared copies
of Penthouse on
my pillow next
to the Vaseline...

that was a
pretty good comeback.

Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Day now living in a valley in rural Alabama. His latest collection of poetry from Roadside Press "Abandoned By All Things" is out now.

A.S. Coomer

black coffee blues

all the cups we carry
the sloshing of pell-mell life
like drunks on the last ferry outta town

montage of deja vu
whipping neck down
to check steam rise

the careful setting
of the same vessel
of the same sun & moon

backdrop drips indigo
a river of black coffee
drought stricken
gone too soon

A.S. Coomer is a writer & musician. Books include MEMORABILIA, BIRTH OF A MONSTER, SHINING THE LIGHT, THE FLOCK UNSEEN, THE FETISHISTS, & many others. He runs Lost, Long Gone, Forgotten Records, a "record label" for poetry.

Robert Witmer

 Business 101

 

When I was a kid, I built an ant house. That was before I ever saw one of those ant farm contraptions. I made everything small – the chairs, the tv, the Bible on the end table, even the room where you do number one or number two. After I finished, I showed it to my dad. He kind of laughed and said something about my mom’s goofy sister, Aunt Esther. That night, I put my ant house out on the patio. I kept looking through my bedroom window, waiting to see them arrive. First, just one or two, to check the place out. Then more. Until finally the place was on the map. Of course, we couldn’t let everyone in. We had to be selective, keep an eye on the bottom line. Reputation, after all, is everything.

Robert Witmer is an American who has lived in Tokyo, Japan, for the past 46 years. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals, including Lily Poetry Review, The Main Street Rag, Bacopa Literary Review, New Verse News, Parody, Shot Glass Journal, and Stone Poetry Quarterly. His first book of poems, "Finding a Way", was published in 2016. A second book, "Serendipity", a collection of prose poetry pieces and haiku sequences, was published in March 2023.

M.J. Arcangelini

TED KACZYNSKI'S CABIN

As my country goes collectively more mad

every day, I keep thinking that Ted had the right

idea with that cabin; get away from everyone,

live off the grid, quietly, in the wilderness

with only that which is required for life,

that which gives one pleasure and sustenance,

then see to it that no one can get to you.

The bombings are where he went wrong.

He could have continued living securely

in his cabin if he hadn’t started killing people,

if he’d been able to settle for writing about

the rising evils of technology and what he

thought needed to be done about them. But

writing it all down was not enough for him.

Ted's dead now, suicide in a prison hospital,

his cabin no longer tucked away, decomposing

in Montana. The FBI has carefully dismantled it,

like London Bridge, then reassembled it at their

headquarters in Washington, DC; a trophy,

a stuffed marlin, a mounted stag’s head, antlers

to hold hats and coats, Mardi Gras beads.

ELEGY FOR LAMB CHOP

How perverse of Shari Lewis to

call her cute little hand puppet,

her alter ego, Lamb Chop.

Was it some kind of sneaky

memento mori for us

unsuspecting kids? Hinting that

we too may become someone’s

favorite dinner some day?

Did that really fly right past

the parents, who should have

known better, who should have

protected us but probably

thought it simply cute and

didn’t understand Latin anyway?

Or were they just not paying attention?

Why did it stop with Lamb Chop?

Why not a pig puppet named Bacon?

Or a cute cartoon cow called Hamburger?

Let’s teach the kids about real life,

not hand puppets and cartoons but

wars of bloodsucking greed, despots,

corporations christened as persons

by a collaborationist supreme court,

legally sanctioned rape and plunder

endorsed by your favorite religion.

Why not teach them that?

The fist clenched within the sock puppet.

M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & 6 collections, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press, 2022.