Internal Decapitation

Temptation shall always dance upon the precipice of desire and all too sudden disaster.

Pain and the ever-forbidden lust is a freedom, and repression is a cancer that should be
abandoned with an archaic set of rules that should be buried along with its beliefs.

As the denial of light is the acknowledgement of man’s truest nature.

For fear of anything, is unnecessary.
An end we all shall acknowledge by force as sometimes there is no grace of choice.

For there is only a command of time, and understanding this is but a momentary existence,
fragile is the coil ever so easily severed from this plane of existence.

To spit in the winds of fate’s mock acceptance in damnations’ glee.

I bask easily in the acknowledgement that I am cursed for I was born.
As I thrive only to spite God’s denial in the embrace of all that is wicked and self-serving.

I understand my demise is inevitable.
I just don’t care for whom I corrupt.
I will gladly embrace hell.
If only you hold my hand.

FROZEN IN PLACE

Frozen in place
and the phone’s bell doesn’t ring.
There’s a comfort in the layers of dust
that blanket every surface of the room
except here and there
where you take your meals,
walk to the bathroom,
sit at the table and read.

Sadness holds out a cup –
a steaming potion like in the old movies.
You take it and prepare to drink.
The curtains hold the sun at bay
with its wan light showing the detritus
and the dust in the air
doing its casual and flimsy swirling dance downward.

Frozen in place.
Sorrow holds your hands in sympathetic mourning,
makes sure that the mirrors are covered
and the preparations are made.
Sorrow kisses your lips –
first familially,
then deeply and importantly,
as your most frequent and your final lover.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection from Cajun Mutt Press is now available at https://www.amazon.com/dpB0C6W2YZDP . fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

Begin

So you go wild

in the crystal orb

of grief, fragile as

a scorpion’s tail.

Your mother used to

tell you about the

one she killed in

Nicaragua where she

worked as a nurse,

about how she kept

it encased in resin

as a reminder.

The animal you love

catches his paw in

a metal snare, screams

until you slip quietly

into the hellmouth.

She tells you now

you must get up.

And then you free him.

Donora Shaw (née Hillard) is the author of the poetry book Jeff Bridges (with illustrations by Goodloe Byron; Cobalt Press, 2016) and several other books and chapbooks of poetry and theory. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and children and can be found elsewhere at www.donora-ann.com.

Franchise

It’s 1914.
My grandmother is born
into an America
without universal suffrage.

It’s 1848.
Seneca Falls is abuzz with ideas.
There are grievances to declare,
signatures to collect.

It’s 2004.
This is my first time voting.
I have never lived in a world
where such a thing was impossible.

It’s 1920.
Finally, an amendment.
White women may vote.
Others—we’ll see.

It’s 1896.
Black women gather to no avail.
They will face poll taxes,
literacy tests. Violence.

It’s 2025.
We have twice failed
to elect a woman president.
Disenfranchisement is rampant.

It’s 1913.
Women march in Washington, D.C.
Their voices loud, hearty:
we believe we will vote someday.

Caitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Their work has appeared in Dunes Review, The Magnolia Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Vagina: The Zine, among other outlets. Most recently, their poetry has been published as HELL, a chapbook from Luchador Press.

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, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Fear Nothing

Fear nothing.
Mad birds speak your language.
Paradise is lost.
It has taken flight on tattered wings.
See nothing.
Plucked eyes in the mouths of mad birds.
Fear nothing.
Darkness is the home you live in.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in Los Angeles. 
His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Fixator Press, Impspired, Mad Swirl, The Rye Whiskey Review,Unlikely Stories, and Yellow Mama Magazine. His most recent poems have appeared in Four Feathers Press.

fluvial

from dry soil
of the eye’s corner

wet warmth
surfacing a disguise of silence

& filling an invisible phial

when:

laughter of flowers
& phosphorus stars
are a threshold

minerals crawling to surface horizon
crashing against glass oxygen

their nutrients contained
flowing between her ten naked toes

draining into this wooden floor

to become long ago

Jonathan Hayes lives in Oakland, California with his wife and their cat.

A Loose Pendulum

a fear of flying
through windows
the human dream
pushing & yelling
through bloody feathers
& groggy slow birds
at the foot
of the bed
dreaming
one in a million
one in a million
in hundreds of ghosts
i am left with heaven
i am my hands
in the winged mountains
half fire
half draft dodger
i can translate
the dream
the dark part
of the leaf
the port authority is gone
my blue jacket resting
the poor are sound asleep
against each other.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020),
Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis
Chronicles Press, 2023) and Dead Photographs, (Stubborn Mule Press, 2024). He may be
reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Stephen Jarrell Williams is always ready to write at any moment, always ready to let the words speak as they will.

OLD ROCKS

my vanity
remembers me,
sitting with introspection
on old rocks
that blocked
the sea-
choking insurrection.
i had bought claret wine,
but had to save it, for another time
that never came to me-
after nerves and mischief,
conspired with those divine
to hide the corkscrew
in a drawer’s cemetery.
at the bottom of belief,
our compound, compromised and withdrew
back into what it knew-
with old rocks,
and the tick-tock sound
of two invisible clocks,
sitting on the ground,
together,
but apart-
forever
in the same, silent, wishsongs heart.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, 
England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x4 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.