Mrs. Tinsley Calls the City by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Mrs. Tinsley Calls the City

The cars are parked too close to her house.
Her neighbour is feeding the raccoons again.
Right from the hand, against local wildlife regulations.

Mrs. Tinsley calls the city.
Kids out on the street at all hours.
Surely there must be a curfew.

And on a school night.
Their parents not securing their garbage
as per municipal guidelines.
That comes with a hefty fine.

And the noise from the party house down the street.
Last time came with a warning.

Mrs. Tinsley has been put on hold.
They will surely hear about this as well.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Fixator Press, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

To Those I’ve Wounded by Howie Good

To Those I’ve Wounded

What I didn’t do
I should’ve done,
and what I did do
I shouldn’t have,
and now I can’t
escape my own
history, a stench
like dead-flower
water in a vase.

Howie Good is the author most recently of the poetry collections Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press).

After I die I’ll be dead for a spell by Gale Acuff

After I die I’ll be dead for a spell

let’s say, let’s say six months after I’m dead
–what will I look like then deader than dead
if that’s possible? Sure, my body will
shrink some and in, say, seven hundred years
I might be indistinguishable from
nothing at all, as if I’d never died
and was never buried although fossils
are a Hell of a lot older. Bowing
before some old dead sucker’s headstone here
in our churchyard cemetery I want
to see the person, what he looks like now,
what rags or jewelry might remain and hair
and belt and shoe buckles and wonder if
any life is left that he might lend me.

Gale Acuff has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.

Between Me And You by Randall Rogers

Between Me And You

Everything you do is
determined
not by you
but by something
through being you
fits in with the manner
in which the puppet master
has you acting
because there is no free will
and everything you do
from the slightest scratching
of your nose
is preordained
you are a raggedy-Ann doll,
a floppy-disc,
already imprinted
way before birth
therefore what to do
except identify
the cosmos as you already
determined
go with the flow
call it a good day’s
warble
and continue the dialogue,
for sanity, to be sure,
is tentative.

Randall Rogers is a writer from the US Midwest. He is intensely concerned with the little things in life. Makes him tough to live with. Even the plants are rebelling. He prefers ground up to top down. Do not worry of the little people, Randall says, “little folk will survive.” Randall stands 5′ 5″ after double hip replacement surgery. Says Randall “Short people do have a reason to live!” He lives at home with his tall wife and dog. He often intones “height challenged is bliss.”