Acceptance

Caught in the mood
closing in with a constant of chaos
everywhere and almost everyone
bent over or bent sideways
pointing fingers in all directions
down and up and within

coughing fits
teary eyes
aching sides
gasping for air
grabbing others
into a fallen crowd

collapsing on the streets
all the land cradling our cries
looking up blinking back
all the days and nights
hanging in our throats
disbelief

dreams and reality mix
can’t help the dizziness
choke for help

and snapping out
sudden return

to where we started
just before

the mood closed in
with our sledge hammer
acceptance.

Stephen Jarrell Williams spends his time between California and Texas…  One extreme to the other in this spinning world going in the wrong direction. He can be found on Twitter (X) @papapoet

Metal Detectors Find Nothing but Iron Maiden 

Trying to stay afloat – don’t want nobody to be my willing Titanic, 
it’s like the convoy system sailing back across the pond, 
all those hours storming the beachhead and metal detectors 
find nothing but Iron Maiden, twin guitars slamming out  
another heavy Mengele riff, knock-off band shirts outnumbering  
the real McCoy almost 30-1, but the passion is always there 
even if the Christ has taken a serious flyer, everyone hoping to be 
redeemed like expired coupons, relying on public transit to  
get home and private confessions for all the rest – 
where I live, the empty in-ground pools almost climb 
back out of themselves, arched spiders of a curious pink back, 
carpet bombing extravaganzas of fallen acorn season,  
long sleeves pulled up like a retractable foreskin  
that cannot stop listening to records that move the needle, 
not the one you put in your arm, no no!  But that original  
turntable giant that built this entire skyline, flew  
themselves around the world and killed it when they got there;  
if there is a history, make it yours and never mine: 
mites over all the aging cheese bricks, 
these freckled Futurist arms on the long reach, 
and yes, so many dark red bottles of our shared  
razzle dazzle late night wine. 

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.

Out of My Control

Here we go.
Who took the rose petals
from my thorn flower?
What is this?
I took a low blow straight
from the depths of hell.

I’m alive,
but I’m fresh out of dough.
It’s out of my control.
My money’s
spent as soon as I’m paid 
for shit bought years ago.

Do the math.
Life is so unkind when
poverty hounds us all.
Go to bed
and raise the white flag high
in the air and retreat.

Hit the streets.
Put up a mansion tent
where there is no rent.
Pay no tax
like that crooked old Prez
and save your money

for rainy days.
Tell the creditors it
is out of my control.
My money’s
run out to pay for shit
bought many years ago.

Luis lives in California and continues to  work in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Fixator Press, and Kendra Steiner Editions.

slimy and naked and bewildered and

heedlessly twitching over the concrete,

born to be disremembered
like the earthworm
escaping the clutches
of the moppet
by vanishing deep
into the soil,

but forever missing this
personal pile of dirt
big enough
to entomb
the jerking self.

Tobias Seim is some guy who was born and raised in Germany. He quit school, learned nothing, and now spends his time reading and writing. At least occasionally. He is the author of to hunt down dreams like rabid wolves. Find more at www.seimtobias.com 

In a Down Economy

Her campaign rests on
hypnotic interventions
& a game of make-
believe that links the
viral envelope with
the virus core. There
is a general embargo
on all belligerents.
Hurt turtles prolong
the lethargy. The
liberal use of indigo
creates ersatz rainbows.

Mark Young has just collated Threescore and Ten, a PDF of the covers he selected as editor
for all seventy issues of Otoliths. It’s available for viewing or free downloading at Sandy
Press, https://www.sandy-press.com/blog/threescore-and-ten-the-images-of-the-covers-
from-otoliths-may-2006-to-august-2023/

He who made a molehill

out of a neglected mountain before turning his eyes and interest elsewhere westward,
staring defiantly at the retreating sun, was never one to mix metaphors with antimatter.
His appetite remains wet. His hunger grows glistening fangs. His pores now pour as his
curiosity peeks. He wonders who baited his breath with anchovies. Alas, there’s no
pudding to proof this claim. It has nothing to do with time’s flying incessant buzz. Or
waltzing on poached eggs. Nor is it a widdle in a haystack or the exact answer to how
many ways a cat may be skinned alive. (See Planck’s area). Or was that a mongoose?
Non possums. It matters not since it isn’t part of any sheep’s pluck recipe. Teeth
optional. Taste buds not needed. Limited synapse transmission a must. Apply within.
That slow train a-comin’ ran you over miles ago. You may have seen the brakeman
waving his red caboose. Even the cowcatcher cared not for your presence, though the
last man to see you did grudgingly acknowledge your inconvenient presence.

Post-Covid, the author has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Vanderbilt Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Misfit Magazine, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, New Orleans Review, & Burningword. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for the symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry. His 200th Prose poem was recently published. 

so humble

the bitches will make a pie out of him

become the media

with tv screen eyes and monitor lips pulsating digital button flashing genitals on the surface of a
plastic moon at minor crescent half past 4am.

hips of guns

staggering poverty against unspoken

lamentation

inflation

Mike Zone is the Editor in Chief of Dumpster Fire Press, co-founder of Deadstar:Control,
manager of the band Tail From the Crypt and producer for the record label Paranormal Vinyl
Cassettes & Hair Xtensions. He 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.

Rich Man Vibes

When I was young, we stole
car logos and hung them
from our necks
BMW, Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce—
trophies robbed from rich men, busy fighting wars in boardrooms and bedrooms
with shocked mirrors pinned to the ceiling
and slaves chained inside glass cubes.
The rich men
wore floral dresses
under parasols in their sunny back gardens on weekends,
struggled to mate in disabled parking spots,
smashed Rubik’s cubes with hammers because their inner child drove into trees.
But us kids were making a statement—
collages of fucked up automobiles,
while standing on skyscrapers in suits with slick hair
because our dads never could.
We snatched the horizon by its throat and drowned it in the Thames, as steering wheels and
car tyres floated on by.

Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Wrongdoing Magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters and elsewhere. He was runner-up in The Forge Literary Flash Fiction competition ‘22. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions ’23. 

Darkness Without

derailment of everything, moments of
ugly truths that emerge out of the
dark waters like the apocalyptical devil;
stories written on an island a crazed man considered
the back of a beast, nothing’s coming
true yet unless you drink too much absinthe or shoot
up too much junk. endless mornings of harrowing pain,
of drowning in the acidic pool of guilt over forgotten
spoken words or erased actions. death in the stream, death
in the ocean, and in the sky; death everywhere. it’s the darkness
of the noon that gets you, the long parade of
nightmarish clowns bearing the signs of a sinful
past residing deep into the emptiness of four
bottles of rotgut.

Currently residing in Greece, George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and is the author of Letters to S. (Storylandia), Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds (Adelaide Books), and Of the Riverside (Anxiety Press). His words have also appeared, amongst other places, in Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.

THE MAXIM GUNS ARE ROARING

The Maxim Guns are roaring,
The bodies are falling like blades of grass in the mower’s own blade.
The bombs are heaved overboard,
The bodies become splinters no bigger than toothpicks.
The hill must be taken.
The town must be overtaken.
Don’t forget to burn it down on the way out.
The wine is flowing from broken bottles.
The blood is flowing from broken bodies.
Another needle stuck in,
Another bayonet at the end of a flame.
Another bloodshot eye peeping through the scope.
Shoot above the shadows.
Keep shooting.
Piss in the street while you light your cigarette.
The poison cloud lowers from overhead.
The lungs expand, contract.
There are rags in your dilapidated boots but
Still the mud gets in.
Your toenails are rotten, waterlogged and green.
That cough is getting worse.
Meanwhile, shoot first and ask questions later.
The rats will feast until bloated –
If not tonight then probably tomorrow.

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/dp/B0C6W2YZDP . fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.