A line from J. P. Donleavy

Sometimes you’re not the same
person. Maybe you don’t miss the
old versions, are glad they’ve gone
away. No condolence messages,

but these days most people think
they tend to be overdone, that
they’ve lost any sincerity they
might have had. & even though

you agree with that, occasionally
you turn a corner & meet some stray
thought or image moving towards
you, to remind you of your past.

Mark Young’s most recent books are synecdoche, published earlier this year by Sandy Press, &
a recent downloadable pdf, Curtains, from Neo-Mimeo Editions. A collection of visual pieces, In
the Key of G, is due out later this year.

Cigarette burns

(for Britt)

Bushido cowboys- out in the open

Smoking opium long pipedreams

Dangerous configurations

Mystic transition

Blowing smoke rings across a body in outer-space fantasy while waxing poetic nightmare-esque
sequences in a Saigon jail…

Transfixed by the glowing cherry of a cigarette

Nicotine sweat makes skin glow like cotton candy

Be kind

Rewind

It’s an analog mutant mixed madness kind of way

Where nothing is as it seems

Reality but shards of fragmented collections

Elvis mugshot from DEA agent daze under Vegas lights

Nocturnal hawks descend

Wet copper descent

Ash pressed into red skin

Encircled

Blood moon eyes

Long night goodbyes

How I wish

Keeping window shut

Could prevent us

You and I

With our smoking sensual ventures

From going out

Everything burns

Mike Zone is the author of: Wonderful Turbulence, Fuck You: A Fucking Poetry Chap,
& The Earth Was Shaking For Days and Shedding Dark Places (almost) along
with being the co-author of The Grind and Razorville. A frequent contributor to: Alien Buddha
Press and Mad Swirl. His work has been featured in: A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Horror Sleaze
Trash, Better Than Starbucks, Piker Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Synchronized Chaos and Cult
Culture Magazine.

As the best man

At his wedding
I quoted Byron,

“We’ll no more go a roving
so late into the night….”

Forty years later,
at his funeral,
I was speechless

Alan Catlin has several new books, Work Anxiety Poems (Roadhouse) The Naked City, related short stories, (Anxiety Press and Still Life with Apocalypse (Sheila Na Gig Editions.)

Redneck Shaman
for ron whitehead

i think it was bill hicks
who said fuck the dali lama

the world is on fire
& i can’t hear what you’re saying
over the clanging
of clammy beer bottles
& i wonder if i’m supposed
to be enjoying myself
the only thing
i know for certain
is that your beard
looks cool.

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.