Bill Garvey

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
anything other than earn since I was
thirteen stuffing fliers in newspapers,
blowing inky snot from my nose in
Uncle Ed’s pickup, him handing me
a Coke that never tasted so goddamn
good, or sixteen, unloading mangoes
and pineapples from boxcars where a
snake slunk from a crate of bananas
and slithered through the cool night
as if it was a cove in the South Pacific,
or seventeen, pumping gasoline back
when I’d smile at you as I squeegeed
your windshield. I found a job in the
Midwest with a larger company who
were awfully nice to me, but after they
walked me to my cubicle, pointing out
the Men’s Rooms and where to get coffee
I never felt more defeated in my life
working for just another insurance
company in the middle of corn and soy
which I whispered over the phone to
someone back home. The next morning
a dozen ear of corn appeared in my
cubicle with a cantaloupe the size
of a basketball and two tomatoes as
plump as the faces of newborns. Later,
I sipped wine on the deck of my
extended stay hotel, and for some
reason Uncle Ed entered my thoughts,
as did faces of motorists through
squeaky clean windshields, even
the snake made an appearance, black
and slippery as motor oil spilling into
Springfield as if it had a chance,
and I bit into the best ear of corn
I have ever had, and then, for the
longest time, I just watched the sun
go down and this amazing swarm
of swallows circle and swerve and sign
someone’s name on the horizon.

Bill Garvey's poetry has been published or is forthcoming in several journals including Cimarron Review, Rattle, Nixes Mate Review, Quiddity, New Verse News, Margie, Concho River Review, The Worcester Review, 5AM, Slant, New York Quarterly, Cloud Lake Literary and others. Bill and his wife live in Toronto and Nova Scotia. 

Brenton Booth

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

James Duncan

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 author of Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, Both Ways Home, Vacancy, and We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, among other books of poetry and fiction. You can find him at www.jameshduncan.com.

Kevin Ridgeway

Nostalgia Porn

A new episode of Silver Spoons
brightened the living room after dinner,
my mother in her room passed out
from a long day of work to make the rent,
my older brother in his room in a fierce
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out trance. I was
always outside in the backyard, pacing
back and forth with my hands on my
head like antennae talking in another
language, in a world far away from
the reality of my father being just a
voice on the phone and the promise
of happiness in adulthood when all
the dreams in my head would come
true and make up for the void I filled
with Fonzi, Gilligan, Bill Murray
and my other friends in the box
I wanted to leap inside of and be
rescued, and my family would all see
me inside the box with a silver spoon
sticking out of my mouth and
a million dollar haircut on my head,
in a time when I would no longer
have to survive on just the weary,
lonesome stardust of daydream reruns.

Kevin Ridgeway’s latest book is “Invasion of the Shadow People” (Luchador Press).  His work has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, Plainsongs, Meat for Tea, San Pedro River Review and The American Journal of Poetry, among others.  He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.  

Sam Moe

Night Tide

Because it was cold in the surf and you went off on that dead shark, pissed about the morning when we tossed confetti like rocks, you had grass in your socks and you told me the field, in all its viridescent moodiness, was going to save your life. You didn’t even ask if I could save your life. I have this problem where I think if I just try a little harder, I can do it. I can protect you the way you need me to. I don’t know what that way is yet, but do you remember the day we bent like the oak trees and you had a salt cube under your tongue for the dizziness, and we were mimicking the way branches sometimes move in that way where you think to yourself, I’m not alone in this forest, all the ghosts of my past are here too, and each time they catch me starting to doubt they start shaking acorns loose and those are the days we sit at the table and we say what happened to us, without saying that stuff, we can name things like loss or ache or exhaustion. Half asleep on the patio out back and you bring me a blanket, but you won’t ask how I am doing. When you go back inside, I cry. Anyways, I’ve been meaning to ask if you’re going to bring the shells home with you. I watch as you near the coves, slick grey rocks working as shelter for lobsters and sea glass, you dip your hand in the pool even though it’s February and snowflakes freeze in spores on the surface. I want something to remember you by. I want you to give more than you have, or maybe more than you can. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, and you’re gone, and I think to myself, you’re out there, preferring to tell secrets to jellyfish all lilac and dead on the shore.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, “Heart Weeds,” is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, “Grief Birds,” is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

37

After Jose Hernandez Diaz

Jose, you have opened my eyes,
with the poem about Nick, the
quick, Van Exel. Why didn’t I ever
think about writing a poem about
that team I rooted for since my youth?
Why not a poem about Eddie Jones,
who was smooth and steady player?
His number should have been hanging
in the rafters, if not for Kobe Bryant
joining the team. I would have loved to
wear an Eddie Jones or a Nick Van Exel
jersey, but I could not afford either.
I watched those games on Channel 9
with Chick and Stu announcing. I could
understand why Nick Van Exel was your
favorite player. Come to think about it,
he was my favorite player too. Drafted
37th, such a steal. He played with a chip
on his shoulder for being dissed. He made
his share of buzzer beaters to the cheers
of the crowd. This poem is for you, Jose,
for Nick, the quick, and for smooth Eddie.
In this arena we practice our crossover,
three-point shots, and behind the back passes.
Sometimes the mustard falls off the hot dog
but we keep trying. Someday a kid will be
wearing a jersey with a poet’s name in the back.

Born in Mexico, Luis lives in the San Gabriel Valley in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. He is the author of Make the Water Laugh, (Rogue Wolf Press, 2021), and Make the Light Mine, (Kendra Steiner Editions, 2016). His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Live Nude Poems, Mad Swirl, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Unlikely Stories.

M.J. Arcangelini

Sometimes
“sometimes I think I understand everything
but I know I’m wrong” – Frank Stanford

Age won’t deliver wisdom like a package
To your door, followed by a photo e-mail
To prove it had been left there, just in case
Porch pirates beat you to picking it up.
Wisdom seeps into your foundation like
Moisture beading on cold cellar walls.
It dangles off the ordinary like a frayed
Thread hangs from a favorite sweater.
Not the mere accumulation of years
But a summoning from out of them.

M.J.  Arcangelini, born in Pennsylvania in 1952, has resided in northern California since 1979. He has published in little magazines, online journals (including The James White Review, Rusty Truck, The Ekphrastic Review, The Gasconade Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, As It Ought To Be Magazine, and The Rye Whisky Review), & over a dozen anthologies.  He is the author of 6 published collections, the most recent of which is PAWNING MY SINS, 2022 (Luchador Press).