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.

A Fundamental Pause

Trenches, teeth, and jagged witch’s hats march
In a red neon ribbon across the EKG screen.
Puffs of air ruffle the mustache
Grey lips open past a silent scream

I silence the beeping.
My thumb rests on the plunger’s plastic ridges.
I raise my eyebrows; he nods.

I press the plunger to the hilt,
Unscrew the empty, screw in the flush, press again.
Medicine courses from vein to liver to heart.

On screen
Trenches fill, teeth grind flat
Line from left to right

This is the moment God shows up

Then I let the monitor sound again

Krista Puttler has called many places home including the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Japan, and a stateroom on an aircraft carrier. Her writing has appeared in Under the Gum Tree, Cagibi, and Fixator Press, among others. She lives outside Naples, Italy with her husband and three daughters. More at kristaputtler.com

Lost

Words do not grow anymore
like cherry blossoms in spring.
They pour like tropical rain
on dense foliage and weep.

Wet vapours fog the forest.
The light has lost its sheen.
The wait for the mists to lift is
endless. Saudade serenades.

Songs disappear before
they can be heard. Antonyms
of siren songs lead words astray.
Nothing forms. No magic appears.

I wait endlessly for sunrises
that start at midday.

Mitali Chakravarty lives in a tropical island with her family. She has three books of poems and is widely published online and in anthologies. Her poems can be found in Daily Star (Bangladesh), Zest of Lemon (Volumes 3 & 4), Literary Yard, Medusa’s Kitchen, Lothlorien Journal among other places

frayed reins

The lengths of crossing loops are
a limiting factor that is becoming
more frequent & severe now that
all orders are processed in Denmark.
Network vulnerabilities arise. One
only has to read this year’s cyber
security report to see how easily
they can be exploited by a malicious

actor to compromise security. Else-
where the Sixers are building to-
wards their best as the finals race
heats up; but it seems that the 76ers’
fatal flaw, a brittle health, will again
threaten their championship chances.

Mark Young’s recently published books include Balance, from Neo-Mimeo Editions, Nualláin
House, Monte Rio, California & From the Cave’s jukebox, from Sandy Press, Santa Barbara,
California.

 

Unreachable And Unbreachable

… and you will ‘Better’
the backhand gifted you.
Rise sturdier
inside of yourself
after each temporary fall.
Attrition from the shadows
will have the opposite
effect, giving you a public
platform to Shine Brighter.
The tables will turn
on the saboteurs,
the mockers will reap
the ‘egg on the face’
they so deserve.
As you advance
along a destined pathway,
they will fade behind,
(failures) ‘Ruined’
by their very own hands…

 

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “The Dark Side Of British Poetry”, “It Is Big And It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are all available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

 

I know what you’re thinking

It really is hard to figure,
how all these moving parts
stay well-coordinated enough,
to get me from the kitchen
to the dining room.

Especially since as they say,
deep down it’s mostly just space,
which is so easily misdirected,
jarred, blown about, whisked
into different shapes and sizes.

The suction of a quickly opened
bedroom door opens the bathroom door
alongside of it, which significantly
disturbs the cobweb in the corner,
at the other end of the apartment.

I know what you’re thinking.
He’s worried about the space
between his protons, and how suction
may affect his walking while he
has a spider camping in the living room.

 

 

Craig Kirchner is retired and living in Jacksonville. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. Craig’s writing has been published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, The Modern Artist. Fixator Press and dozens and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. Craig can be found on Bluesky.

 

I WOULD HAVE LOST EVERYTHING

I was walking these streets again
&  found myself outside that place,
That goddamn place that kept me
Down for so long, so many years,
But feeling a bit hungry I walked
On in.

The bare metal shelves lay empty
But something had me so on I
Prowled. I walked to the end of
The first aisle and over to the
Beer & wine and the entire store
Looked as if it had been stripped
Clean by an army of organised
Shop-lifters and so, still hungry,
I walked on out but as I passed
The check-out I spied the first
Member of staff. He stands at
The check-out plain-clothed
& with a look of total horror
On his face and I merely turn
Say ‘Thank you’ and walk on
Out knowing that if I still worked
There I’d have seriously lost
Everything by now!

Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on England’s south coast. Recent poems have
been, or will be shortly, published at In The Veins, Dear Booze, Horror Sleaze Trash,
Mad Swirl and Broken Teacup. His most recent chapbook, his fifth, was published by
the Alien Buddha Press in 2023. On Twitter/X follow @BradfordMiddle5

 

Naked Helium

Someday, opinions held privately in the mind,
will float like balloons to be seen boldly by
all as a banner of naked helium.

Then, fall like prayers dripped into the dark
of a damp drain where it will blanket itself
in shadow. The ground under our steps, knows
its importance even as we trample. It bounces
back but remembers the feet that pressed it.
For someday, what is underneath will be all
there is in the forefront.

The open, flat, or unoccupied will be searched for
and fought over. Clean will be counted as a past
notion studied at university as part of lost history.
Movement will be demanded to marry itself
to some kind of “calling” or be banished.
The branded push to rule as the unmarked
become listed as criminals; their voices left to
shout at locked keyholes deep within a hidden
desert.

(First published by Aurum Journal, 2022)

Beverly M. Collins, author of, Quiet Observations and Mud in Magic. Her works appear in publications based in USA, England, Ireland, Australia, India, Berlin, Mauritius, Lebanon, and Canada. A Winner Naji Naaman Literary Prize in Creativity (Lebanon), 4 times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and guest editor California Quarterly.

 

THE MORNING OF A FORMER MIDDLEWEIGHT

He wakes up
shadow boxing invisible opponents.
The morning air gives
as good as it gets.

He makes coffee.
The warm black rich liquid
gives his insides
a much-needed rubdown.

A photograph of
pretty mother and two young girls
looks down from the wall.
Without that picture,
he’d have no memory.

A bell rings somewhere.
He smacks the wall
instead of picking up the phone.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.

George Clooney

Driving west from the beach,
it could have been George Clooney,
head and shoulders draped
backwards over a chaise,
napping and sunning at the pool –

if it weren’t for the bus stop bench
identifying itself as Bus Stop
and the Winn-Dixie cart
full of worldly possessions
sitting along-side –

instead of the coaster glass top table,
the morning bloody-Mary
and the designer umbrella.
George could most certainly
look this content,
snoring, feet up, as though
he had a Golden Globe
and owed himself this decadence,

if it weren’t for the holes
in the muddied boots,
the grease stains on the cargo shorts
and the distinct need for a shave.

It seemed poignant that
the high-end condos just behind George
most assuredly had the same sun,
clouds and blue sky,
as well as the same choreographed
‘v’ of geese flying north overhead
as his siesta stopover.

(This poem was originally published by Gas Blog, June ‘23)

Craig Kirchner is retired and living in Jacksonville. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. Craig’s writing has been published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, The Modern Artist. Fixator Press and dozens and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. Craig can be found on Bluesky.