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.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.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.

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.

Corey Mesler

 The Party of Special Things to Do

The Band was singing Kingdom Come.

Freddy was there with his colored balls

and his glass half fulfilled.

Judy took off her blouse. Randy

took off when the cops arrived.

There were other women suffering

things our eyes hadn’t seen before

or since. Jay had a jay the

size of a carrot, diamond bright

like a night with Angela.

The party wound down when the

Catholics started chanting like

airport saints. Rich asked me if I

wanted to see Robin’s underwear

but that bird had flown. And

that meant I was sleeping in the bathtub

again; my prayers would be filled with

cleansing like the ethnic washday.

I love you, I told the woman I woke

up with. She turned slowly to salt

and I used a pinch of her in my bloody

Mary, which I had with the eggs

from the communion tray. All day I

replayed the party like it was Safe

as Milk. All day I was a sucker

but I loved myself almost as much

as I loved Meghan’s tights, and

her gams, lush like the fields of the Lord.

COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 45 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, Cock-a-Hoop, is from Whiskey Tit. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis. 

Drew Pisarra

 Pillow Talk

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med.

I think I’m quite sick. I’ve got a bad flu

that’s warping my thinking, that fucks w/ my head,

a sickness that makes me wish, I were dead.

An illness can plant such an idea inside you.

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med:

a plain pink pill; a capsule half yellow, half-red;

and one other one, two distinct shades of blue.

“That’s warping my thinking. That fucks with my head,”

I tell him. I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.

He holds out the glass. I know what to do.

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med

then patiently sits on the side of my bed

as I pop the four pills then drink up. My temp is 102.

That’s warping my thinking, that fucks w/ my head.

There’s a stain on the pillowcase where I’ve bled

‘though I’m less sure what’s caused this bad bruise.

My boyfriend hands me some necessary med

that’s warping my thinking. It fucks w/ my head.

Drew Pisarra is the author of two poetry collections, Periodic Boyfriends (2023) and Infinity Standing Up (2019); two short story collections,You're Pretty Gay (2021) and Publick Spanking (1996); and two radio plays, Price in Purgatory (2023) and The Strange Case of Nick M. (2021).