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.

Karen Cline-Tardiff

 Friday Night

I’m gonna smoke all your cigarettes,

  Make you go crazy trying to

  figure out if I’m really that girl

  in the album liner notes

  of your favorite band.

You pour your beer in the trash,

  refuse to drink the backwash.

  But hell, it’s Friday night and

  there’s more than leftover beer

  in your future and mine.

We think about fooling around,

  but the couch is full

  of passed out hippies and

  covered in cigarette burns,

  and shit, it isn’t even our house.

I bum your last smoke

  but your lighter is dead.

  Kinda like tonight you joke

  and I give you a pity laugh.

Karen Cline-Tardiff has been writing as long as she could hold a pen. Her works have appeared in several anthologies and journals, both online and in print. She founded the Aransas County Poetry Society. She has a Kindle book of poetry, Stumbling to Breathe. She is Editor-in-Chief of Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

Rebecca M. Ross

To The Thinking Camel Cricket

That bent-legged audacity
compelling your
jumping cockeyed bravery
to cross thresholds,
climb silently through
damp basement spaces
to enter darkened dwellings
only to receive a
post-shriek boot to your humped back,
a trigger-forced splash of spray, or
a body glued immovable--

Once I understood your
blind defenselessness,
seemingly random leaps meant
to terrify your
own larger fears,
my unease around you
lessened

Still, though
take your crooked-bodied friends
and

get out of my house.

Rebecca M. Ross is originally from Brooklyn but currently lives, hikes, and teaches in New York’s Hudson Valley. Rebecca’s writing has recently been published in Uppagus, Whimsical Poet, Streetcake Magazine, The Westchester Review, Soul-Lit, and Peeking Cat. She has poetry forthcoming or published in Last Leaves, Pif Magazine, and The Metaworker.

Brian Harman

To the Priest Who Stole the Eulogy
I Wrote for My Uncle’s Funeral

Standing, kneeling, sitting on repeat
on a front row pew at a church
in Riverside, California, with welled tears
in my eyes after my heart was gutted
the day before at my uncle's open casket
viewing, I was in shock when I heard
the priest plagiarize to family and friends
in mourning, the eulogy I had written
about my uncle, that I was about to
deliver minutes later, that the church
strangely requested I email to them
earlier that morning, so they could get
an idea of who my uncle was, which
I blasphemously learned the real reason
was so the priest could thieve my words,
my sorrow, my full on sentences as if
it was his own sermon, and when the priest
stammered and ad libbed “Carlos loved
Pepsi… Pepsi is life… ” I couldn't help
but shake my head at the absurdity,
and I looked around and saw my cousin
did the same – yes, my uncle loved Pepsi,
he drank a liter everyday with extra ice
to the very top, yes, Pepsi was a big part
of his life, but I wouldn't go so far as to say
it was life itself, unless I worked for
Pepsi or I was in a Pepsi commercial –
and my family sat sadly bewildered as
the priest made up some other random facts
about my uncle, the only consolation,
I guess it broke the ice of heavy hearts
hanging in the air, but still, what the fuck
happened to the sacred covenant, oh
father of snakes and bullshit, the eighth
commandment, Thou shall not steal,
you holy fucker.

Brian Harman is a poet living in Southern California. He received his MFA in creative writing from Cal State University, Long Beach. His work has been published in Chiron Review, Misfit Magazine, Nerve Cowboy, and elsewhere. He is the author of Suddenly, All Hell Broke Loose!!! (Picture Show Press). He loves craft beer, creating music playlists, and writing poetry into the night.

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.