Corrective

Pain anointed its impression sooner
than I could synthesize its import.
As age embraced me
I learned to paw my way
to the lair of liminal space.
Not far from
the lollipop man of childhood.
Lor, making oneself scarce
is an infelicitous thought.
The finer course
is to accept the affliction.
Welcoming it is the antidote.

Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry. His poems have been published in over thirty-five countries and have appeared 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 in the UK. He lives in Mumbai, India.

X @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems ||

To My Knowledge

Business is a perk affording 
hubris as debris. Debride the nearest
epiderm. A berm. Welcome aboard
and room in lower case.

Do you impose yourself
in absencia? Pop (poof) goes 
proof of chase. Of purr. 
A rounded cat. A tat. The calico half fact. 
Good at fractions. 

Each might picture surgical disruption.
A bus ride versus clean glide 
in sterile steel glass 
rubbed clean.

A brief history of independence: 
Leisure mood, a mode, a modular homing.
Craved once ceased to crave.
As equals. A raven grave. A graven rave.
A culture in the throat. 
Insignia to tell others oaths.

Sheila E. Murphy has a book forthcoming from Lavender Ink: Escritoire. Her home is in Phoenix, Arizona. Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy

Owed Nothing

I cut the world’s sunflowers. Bind them
In rubber. Hide them in brick and plaster
Heads reaching.

I trash paint cans, kitty litter crystals
Trap solvents, absolve my laziness.

Am I owed nothing or something or
Choice. I shove

Bottles into hands. I work for those hands.
Raising a future without me.

The world owes you something you think

But caterpillars chew
Butterflies stretch
My lantana is watered
And waiting.

Krista Puttler has been fortunate to call many places home including the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, Japan, and a stateroom on an aircraft carrier. Her writing has appeared in As You Were: The Military Review, Collateral, Intima, Cagibi, and Cleaver Magazine, among others. A medium-roast coffee gal at heart, she is pleasantly surprised by how much she loves Italian espresso. She lives outside Naples, Italy with her husband and three daughters. You can read more at kristaputtler.com 

Witch Hazel

When this hemorrhoid
is finally vanquished,
it won’t be
the pain,
the blood,
the itchiness,
the dryness,
the insomnia,
or the weird prickly sensations in my thighs and dick
that I’ll be
glad are gone:

Even though it
soothes me,
I’ll be glad 
to never have
to bear the
stench of using
Witch Hazel hemorrhoid pads
ever again.

GARRET SCHUELKE is a writer, podcaster, and musician that currently resides in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of the GODAN series (Bakunin Incorporated), Anamakee
(Riot Forge Studios, 2016), Whup Jamboree: Stories (Elmblad Media Group, 2017), and three
ebooks.

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.

OBJECTS MAY APPEAR…

He sat a few seats in front, on the top deck of the bus,
holding a mirror that was made for looking backwards –
a sparkling, scarred wing, pulled from a wrecked van.

From his well-worn carrier bag, the neck of a small,
stringed instrument stuck out – as if to miss nothing;
but when he alighted at a stop in Newhaven Town,

failed to spot, on the clear-roof shelter above his head,
a zipper-case, in which was neatly packed, a shaving kit
complete with curly-tailed cord ~ a would-be gift, unfound.

 

Award-winning poet, Janina Aza Karpinska, draws on many influences and writes in a variety of styles, with work published in London Reader; Magma; Ekphrastic Review; Drawn to the Light; Synchronized Chaos; Raising the Fifth; Sein und Werd, and Cold Signal amongst others. She lives on the south coast of England.
 

The Dying Deserve a Larger Alphabet

in portsmouth ohio
the cool air
reminds you
it’s raining
in kentucky
just across
the river

the sign for the cancer center
reads something like c n c r ce t r
the building itself
in failing health

the remaining letters
dangling
like loose teeth.

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.

Chance And Gamble On The Downward Turn Of The Wheel

Dud Sixpence Endeavours
… brassic, and fuelled by
‘Inflammatory Rumours’
… uNeVeN release.
“Your ‘Pride’ won’t
feed the kids, Jesus…
I’m scrubbing toilets,
and choking upon
my Mother’s Warnings!”
Three wishes?
I’d only need the one
… a Premarital
‘Time Machine’…
I’ll take care of Future
‘Avoidance’ all by Myself.

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 books “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration” and “It Is Big And It Is Clever: Book 1 Of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” are all now available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

F Bombs

Filling our fists
before finishing
the first,
feeding our faces
with feral, filthy
foodstuffs.

Doug Sylver’s writing can be found in Drifting Sands, The Sun Magazine, The New York
Times and Fixator Press, among other publications. He is a recently retired public high school teacher and lives with his love, Monica, in Seattle.

Shopping Around

A Coles shopping trolley
inside a Woolworths trolley.
Very wrong but …
I happened upon them,
fully engaged on the verge.
Wolf and German Shepherd,
buffalo and a milk cow,
American and Russian President
caught out, in (out/in out/in)
an unholy tryst,
a moment of lust.

Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada who now lives in Allover, Australia. Coincidence.
He has published poems in 20 countries. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled ‘My Photos of Sicily’, was published by Ginninderra Press. It contains no photos, only poems.