Dennis Mahagin

D’S BLUES

The backyard
was sun-kissed,
better than death.
a sun
kissed lawn always better
than death.
and he came back on the way
he had left.
He came back in a way

he had left.

It was hard, but the sun
was better
in this yard.
He came back, he came back
the way
he had left:to take
the Kiss
stay

away from death.

Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state. Many of his poems have appeared online, and in print, via two published poetry collections: “Grand Mal,” and “Longshot & Ghazal,” Dennis also serves as the poetry editor for Frigg magazine.

Tohm Bakelas

something they call home

For a few hours, white snow
fell before nightfall; then rain
came and washed it all away.
The lone streetlight on this
dead end street, the one that
often makes the poems, makes
me think of Weldon Kees and
his porchlight coming on. My
neighbor, a miserable man who
never waves, whose name I will
never know, called the electric
company about the streetlight’s
stutter, about its blinking off
and on, from dusk to dawn.
They came and fixed it when I
was at work, when I wasn’t around.
And now, it’s just a well-lit beacon,
birthing brightness upon this street,
guiding lost souls, wet from rain,
towards something they call home.

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He has authored twenty-five chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including Cleaning the Gutters of Hell (Zeitgeist Press, 2023). As editor of Between Shadows Press, he’s curated two editions of the notorious journal, “Haikus, Nearkus, Fauxkus, Fuckyous.”

Instagram: @flexyourhead

Charles Rammelkamp

 Doped with Religion, Sex and TV

“Working class hero, my foot,” Darleen spat.
“Pampered British rock star’s more like it.
He don’t know nothin’ about no working class,”
she sneered, “and that Jap witch he married.
She’s probly the one who put them ideas in his head.”

Darleen and I worked on the assembly line
at the Capitol Records plant, putting fresh-pressed LPs
into sleeves, the packaged albums into cardboard boxes,
the boxes onto pallets for the forklift guy
to take them away to the loading dock.

“I used to like some of them early songs.
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’
but you can have this stuff. Working class hero!
Who does he think he’s kidding?”

I stuffed my impulse to defend Lennon,
point out his poverty in postwar Liverpool,
the broken family, the absent sailor father;
mainly offended by Doreen’s naked racism,
pitying her for the misogyny she’d absorbed

from generations of farmers on the prairie.

I was a college student, working part time 
while carrying a full course load.
She was a farmer’s wife, supplementing 
the household finances; in the same boat, really;
only difference was I read books and she didn’t.

What do they say? 
Never argue about religion, politics, or music.
“We got many more Plastic Ono Bands left to package?”

I asked, ignoring her diatribe.
I’d like to take a cigarette break.”

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also recently been published by BlazeVOX Books and a collection of flash fiction, Presto, has just been published by Bamboo Dart Press. A collection of poems and flash called See What I Mean? will be published later this year by Kelsay Books.

Daniel Edward Moore

John 1:1

In the beginning was the word and the word was tired,
but even half-conscious I was seduced by
the slurred speech of the holy.

Oh, Christ the carbohydrate
chased by twelve shots of whiskey,
take me to thy church.

Be gone from my lips, oh, demon expresso,
oh, CPAP hose making love with my airway
to keep my oxygen happy.

If the word becomes flesh, something I can kiss,
with a glassblower’s flaming tongue,
summon me quick, so the dead in me

may rise from the heart’s silent ruins.

Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems have appeared in Phoebe, Southern Humanities Review and others. His work is forthcoming in Action Spectacle Magazine, The Meadow Journal, The Chiron Review and Delta Poetry Review. His book, “Waxing the Dents,” from Brick Road Poetry Press.

Paul Ilechko

 Inheritance

A lack of paperwork
an emptiness of filing cabinets 
a distinct lack of manila envelopes

 
he was born unwanted 

learning at a pre-verbal age 
to tolerate the hot-potato shuffle 

his budget plywood crib
cheaply painted with angry rabbits
following him from house to house 

the aunt with oversized teeth 
would peer for a time 
from above a severe absence of chin 

and the very next day 
the hairless uncle who lacked even eyebrows 
would fail to appear surprised 

he didn’t care much where he went
as long as he was fed 
his taste in adults supremely inclusive 

but at some point in time 
the ball had to finally stop rolling 
and life then settled into an equilibrium

but everything now is upside down again
all interested parties reappearing 
as lawsuits drag anxiously on

an inheritance contested 
the entire clan eagerly awaits
to see how poor or rich he might be

and every last one of them
is prouder than they ever were before
to be recognized as his kith and kin.

Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has also published several chapbooks. 

Mike James

 The River’s Architecture

for Louis McKee, d. 11/21/11

The river has a shape you follow with your

whole body: shoulder, footstep,

and ear-

those who know how to listen hear how

river wind is like breath, alive in lung and line.

Mike James makes his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He has published in hundreds of magazines, large and small, and has performed his poetry at universities and other venues throughout the country. He has published over 20 collections and has served as visiting writer at the University of Maine, Fort Kent. His recent new and selected poems, Portable Light: Poems 1991-2021, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His last collection, Back Alley Saints at the Tiki Bar, was published in April by Redhawk. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, TN.

Agnes Vojta

Tattoo

She stands like a statue, arm raised, her wrist
rests on top of her head as the artist draws
with black marker on her naked body.

The tree with the dragon will cover her side
from breast to hip. A friendly dragon,
she had insisted when they looked through the sketches.

The needles of the tattoo gun etch
art into her flank. She bites her lip. Closes
her eyes, thinks it will be beautiful.

Heart felt

I put the laundry in the dryer
and remember the day we strolled
through the town after lunch,
not ready to say goodbye.

The years of absence
had fallen away like dust
in a breeze. Confidences
came easy. We wandered

into a store that sold soaps
and wooden brushes. A glass jar
with felted dryer balls
stood on the windowsill. I told you

how the dogs had claimed
my old one as a toy. You picked
a ball with a rainbow heart
and bought it for me.

I watched your car disappear
down the road. We forgot
to take a picture. But I smile
and think of you when I open my dryer.

Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T and hikes the Ozarks. She is the author of Porous Land, The Eden of Perhaps, and A Coracle for Dreams (Spartan Press). Most recently, she collaborated with eight other poets on the book Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press, 2022.) Agnes hosts the Poetry at the Pub reading series in Rolla and is associate editor of Thimble Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines; you can read some of them on her website agnesvojta.com.