What to do (when the nematodes swarm)

You have to start somewhere. We all
knit with a different technique. Cooler
paint colors help the walls to recede.

This breathing room is crucial. It serves
as a practical resting spot for extra fluid,
explains what the five love languages are

in a language that isn’t one of them, a
general phenomenon that has nothing to
do with the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Lack of sleep can make staying in bed
tempting, trying to gauge how long before
the concierge starts to admit the crowd
gathered in the lobby waiting for words
of wisdom from you, or your autograph.

Recent work from Mark Young has appeared in Home Planet News, Utsanga.it, Moss Trill,
Synchronized Chaos, dadakuku, Half Day Moon Journal, Mad Swirl, Scud, The Prairie Review,
International Times, & Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

Daydreamer

Captured in a car seat
Driving in the city
The gasp of praying trees
Chiselled out of glass
Dashboard speaking neon
And headlights
Dipped in brick.
I see pixelated stars
Like vintage video games
Tangled in my mind,
With fire inside my fists.
I’m a menace on the road
As I drive in rusty chains—
Crashing comes so easy
When I’m steering through the clouds.

Tim Frank’s’ debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24) His sophomore effort is, Delusions to Live By (Alien Buddha Press ’25) 

Ambush

What the eyes do not
always see
are kaleidoscopes,

refractions falling into
the beautiful or
just wreckage, and

brick by brick
some graffiti is also
adornment, but then

obfuscation – or simply
too much pure horror
ambushing from the ground

Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK. His most recent poetry publication is the erasure collection the aran aphorisms (Red Ceilings Press, 2024)

small pleasures

disarray bustle as they group slide off bus
treading quickly holding useless bundles
spouting too many words to register as real
carrying reasons unrelated to time as is
into blend of light rain and cars too loud

a laugh or shout or scowl binding a pinch
as truth unfolds while spilling into veins
of pathways and roads for next attempt
at situation that could easily go unnoticed
in body mass of many separating in light

and me in my after-covid fog no better
clutching at strongest black coffee found
relishing seat at too wobbly outside table
trying not to return to thought of sick bird
flapping in my over-grown back garden

another bus stops and out they fall again
and i become locked in why happenings
the corner fight between two meth-heads
my partners kind eyes when concerned
and has bird already been killed by cat

a guy asks me for a cigarette and i jump
and instead of sorry mate or i don’t smoke
i nod a feeble decline and he mumbles off
while i gulp coffee aware of small pleasures
crowds on buses and a dying bird’s plight

Stephen House has won many awards as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. He has had many plays published by APT and two chapbooks published by ICOE Press. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

⁙

our entire lives built upon
staggered
concentric
intersections
to utilize spaces between

strategically placed
pixel-decimation
planting patterns

hybrid fractal beings
nestled center
transient flesh and bone

temporary meat suits
on an organic spaceship
yet we still
can’t get along

Gonzo Journalist, Poet, Artist, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Cajun Mutt Press. James D. Casey IV has been published in print and online by several small press venues and literary magazines. The 2016 La Voce dei Poeti, La Catena della Pace International Poetry Contest gave his entry “Warriors of the Rainbow” a critic’s choice award, and his poem “That’ll do Pig” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by New Pop Lit in 2019. He is also the author of eight poetry collections.

Mind’s Unseen Home

My opaque mind is a terrace
of a single-storeyed house,
with buildings
on two sides—abrupt, rising high;
walls with clinging creepers—
shapes grubbily espied.
Shadowy forms of humans and events—
looming and flickering—
at the front, phantasmagoria faces
the road, the back
akin to clinched teeth, always obscure.
Memories leave their footwear—
o, their eternal adhesiveness;
at one end, a seat always empty—otiose,
perhaps an endless wait for
the unnamed one, bright and refreshing;
a makeshift screen hosts images,
temporarily, that flare and dwindle,
walking the path,
swipes clean like lost murmurs of dreams.
A blooming flower peeks,
from its hidey-hole,
appears like a sudden
consciousness from the accumulated
cognizance, on the liquid concrete floor
of the windless terrace.
All over the sky—up here, there, or across the way? —
the Sun breaking out in its usual glory—
forever out-of-reach,
while a buzzard of sensibility
circles above, with abortive efforts,
houses itself with the sky.

Sreelekha Chatterjee is a poet from New Delhi, India. Her poems have appeared in Madras Courier, Setu, Verse-Virtual, Timber Ghost Press, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, among others. Her poems have been published in over 11 countries and translated into Korean and Romanian languages.

Routine

The white, ancient land
lies flat before our eyes.
Something lurks beneath the ice;
something – behind the heavy, grey water;
something – inside us,
shaky and changeable.

It’s a difficult thing – to be human.
The horror of organic existence
walks side by side with us
all through life.
We came here by helicopter,
and now
please,
please,
let’s take a look at the samples
we got.

The white distance
and the barking of dogs.
It’s ultimate and simple.
Beyond this whiteness there are no ridges,
no abandoned cities
under the water.

We’re just standing on snow,
and we have new equipment
for drilling.

Kate Efimochkina is a writer and graphic artist. You can see her works in The Turning Leaf Journal and Outside the Box Poetry.

Raw

As a general rule
I never take a dump at work
preferring to defecate
in the morning
in the sanctity of my apt.,
no coworker rapping on the door,
no lingering stench left by a colleague
too lazy to refill the soap dispenser,
no cut-rate toilet paper
drawing bright red blood
from a 53-year-old asshole raw
from decades of bending over
and spreading my cheeks for the man,
whose current emissary
drives a $150,000 Porsche Carrera
and owns a condo in the Caymans
but can’t spring for a lousy tube
of Astroglide
much less show me the courtesy
of a reach-around.

Ben Newell dropped out of the Bennington Writing Seminars during his first semester before resuming his studies at Spalding University where he earned an MFA. He lives in Mississippi and works as a bookseller and freelance writer. 

Osmosis

When the paintbrush
cuts a rug on the canvas,
it informs
of a maelstrom in the mind
of the artist.
Piebald lineaments persuade.
Whenever you meander
with whoever you move,
it matters not,
as you influence the fountainhead,
of my métier
and I’m euphoric
about its rare steam
like the monochrome before me.

Sanjeev Sethi is an award-winning poet who has authored eight poetry books. His poems have been published in over thirty-five countries and appear in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He is highly commended in the Erbacce Prize, UK, May 2025. He lives in Mumbai, India.

 X @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems ||  

Poem for Andrea Gibson

we never met
but i thought
we were made
of stronger stuff
you & i

i thought we would
yell our words
down the throats
of caves forever
& that they’d echo back at us
with twice as many riddles
i thought we’d find all
of love’s hidden places

but this morning i cried
on the telephone
cancer & a failing heart
& a brain turned to mush
& you aren’t here
it turns out i was always
the stuff of soft clay
while your mouth
was always full of grit

if someone sends you a message now
there will be no reply from the dead
no final fight song
no morning gossip
disguised as a prayer

there will be
so many things
that get left unsaid.

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.