The Testament 

I hadn’t felt the keys move
Under my fingers
For so many years.

I had originally rejected 
Your request although
I’m not sure I was so clear

It’s difficult for me to
Communicate now
So I politely twitched my face

I can’t describe how 
Vital it was for me to hear
Those keys move underneath 
The pressure

But I knew the expression would
Collapse upon my face eventually
And I would make the best smile I could

You invited and I accepted 
I knew I had a chance
And only this one 
To feel young again

So I played
And I played well
And I couldn’t tell you
How much it meant to me. 

 

Jack Milton is a poet based in Sheffield, England, and has been writing poetry
for a number of years. He has recently began submitting his work to underground publications,
and is also a regular performer on the local Sheffield poetry circuit.

The Ghost of Maggie Thatcher Exits Stage Right 

Being the frontwoman of Iron Butterfly for so long
has taken its toll.  Elvis may have left the building, but the Iron Lady
has left the country, this world altogether.
Take a bow, Lady Brighton.  The flightless seagull armies are squawking for you.
And the roadies begin to take things down.
The ghost of Maggie Thatcher exits stage right.
Ain’t no Lady-Gaga-On-Pita. Once you get away from all
the Ritz and glamour.  And why do barbers always have the worst hair?
Something about being shearer over sheep,
more bully than wooly.  Ain’t no sham in that, surely!
And I know what you’re thinking, 7 clairvoyants on the payroll
and I still can’t dress for the weather.
I’ve seen that look on your face before.
The sagging laugh-less rot of condemned buildings.
Its dinner guest asbestos and tilted gravy boats
in the stairwell.  Ignore those many signs of danger.
Ignore the clappers and the trappers.
Their garbage means nothing.
It is a landfill built upon a landfill.
Riding lessons for Superman, all aboard the Eastern Express!
Did you know the Man of Steel was allergic to horsies?
Refusals are hard to take.
And the woman in my hopeless brown Barcalounger
begins to growl – I start asking about flea collars and intruders,
arsenic-hungry Napoleon inside Mother Russia,
shopping for trusty Babushkas on the sly.
And the climate is changing into something more comfortable,
did you know that?
After 10, 000 years of glacial inactivity.
May have something to do with that lying ass Pinocchio
with the fifty-foot dong.
Doing doughnuts in front of glazed windows.
I see that any sense of humour
has left you, how long have you been single?

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.

À / propos of / the philosopher’s stone

The number of people living in
cities continues to increase, esp-
ecially since le clown Grock a fait
rire le monde entier. Never under-
estimate the power of a twisty
tiny top! We’ve already agreed
on 17 goals. We are now an urban
planet with a high percentage of

wood flour, & incessant noise knock-
ing at the gate. Mainly from street
sport — graffiti, hopscotch, parkour,
rollerblading — but also mayhem,
queued up waiting to emerge as
a central trope of modern culture.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North
Queensland in Australia. He is the author of more than sixty books, the most recent of which
is with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, published by Sandy Press in May, 2023.
A free downloadable pdf of visuals & poems, Mercator Projected, will be published by Half
Day Moon Press later this year.

Phase 3

Dockyard green, more rupture
than relic; green scars
cracking concrete, green fists
punching back the tide.
Even six feet down
an embankment of mud
green roots fester
and cling. The fouled salt
of the river only serves
to toughen their grip:
the tide washes green
downriver, quicklimed
to the sea
where I cups it in my hands,
my face a green mirror;
baptising new eyes
a darker shade of dream.

Ian Mullins bales out from Liverpool, England. Collections include Laughter In The Shape Of A Guitar (UB, 2015). Almost Human (Original Plus, 2017), Masks and Shadows (Wordcatcher, 2019), Take A Deep Breath (Dempsey & Windle, 2020) and Dirty Sweet (Anxiety Press, 2023).

An Autumn Sonata

for a summer through smoked glass,
darkly, all the empty lawn chairs,
deserted chaise loungers, blackened
cooking pits, wrought iron rusting amid
scattered ashes; all the metal hoops
of the abandoned croquet court:
wooden mallets, striped balls, painted
stakes signifying the end and the smell
of low tide by the Sound. Mother's last
cigarettes still burning in a glass ash tray,
the dead floating in Styrofoam coffee
cupping dregs, milk scum and spent
stick matches; the smoking, matched sets
of horse hair recliner chairs, canvas covered
gliders and rattan end tables on the screened-
in, against the elements, porch; all the black
holes of the frayed oriental throw rugs,
generations old, the scattered piles of
living room leaves, burning refuse, cracked
sticks and wadded newspapers, Sunday sections
and all the other days of the week kindling
for the lasting fire of her days and nights
here, working on a new classic repertoire
for two hands, piano with sprung wires
and disconnected pedals, broken chopsticks for
that infernal night, when smoke gets in your eyes.

Alan Catlin has been publishing in the small presses, littles and university magazines since the 70’s which, basically, just makes him old.  His next book is How Will the Heart Endure from Kelsay Books about the life and times of Diane Arbus.

Hera

Ashamed.
Your desire
is my humiliation.
Weighted by this anchor,
drowning in the cross-currents,
I profess no needs of my own;
I live in blind obedience,
delving inward to escape.

Sarah Daly is an American writer whose work has appeared in twelve literary journals including Umbrella Factory Magazine, Synchronized Chaos, The Olivetree Review, Blue Lake Review, and elsewhere.

Fate Is Fate, Mate

Huxley’s Four-Tenths of a Gram
… from Study Room…
to Mind-Voyager… the Path
is Serpentine and Flexible
… we never Emerge from
Chapters the Same as on Entry.
Slipshod… as long as Results
can Speak for Themselves…
I barely ‘Scratched The Surface’,
and couldn’t Scattergun, even
Loosely, without… Succeeding.
Carson McCullers, FAMOUS
for her Southern Gothic…
appeared to me as I was coming
around from Surgery in 2022
at Derriford Hospital, and said
“You haven’t kissed ‘Her’ yet
… your Changing has begun…
opening wide like a Jeobseon.”
I pothole ‘Reality’, when Alone,
I do not ‘Dwell’ or ‘Stagnate’,
you just Can’t… after Returning
from those Doorways… Brighter.

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.

Box Inaugural

This isn’t the box
I was in
When I closed my eyes
Or, maybe
But from the outside now
Inside was constricting
Concluding
I admit, also apprehensive
I mean, not the box
But I
Now, still “I”
Eyes open
Affixed on box – outside
Aware, unbound
Beginning
Now is the time
To see what’s next
To turn around

MH Clay lives and works in Dallas, Texas. He has a poetry page at
https://madswirl.com/author/mhclay/. His poetry chapbook, Perhaps This Rain, was
published in 2007 with a second edition released in 2010. He has published two poetry
collections, sonoffred, Rebel Poetry in Ireland, 2015 and Angst, Mad Swirl Press, 2016
with a second edition released in 2022.

Early September Poem

drizzle everything outside wet
yes, welcomed by many
too dry for a month or two
now a few brown leaves curl up in their exile
cornflake wet
those leaves slippery to the foot
the car window beaded with drops
sky gray
enough light to still inspire the day forward
instead of going in
shutting one's self
in the computer
all the news THEY want you to see
too limiting that mode of thought
better to get a little wet
to glory in the hibiscus
beautiful orange on a gray day
the grass early September green
the mind filled with its own drizzle
and it whets the appetite
for life
still on the branch
green
though the season's change is coming
the fire of reminiscence will light
the shorter days ahead

Dan Cuddy is currently an editor of the Loch Raven Review. Recently he has had poems published in the End of 83, Broadkill Review, , the Pangolin Review, Madness Muse Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, the Rats’s Ass Review, Roanoke Review, the Amethyst Review, Synchronized Chaos and, Gargoyle.

Statues come to life

statues come to life in distant lands,
horned agents crawl out of sinkholes;

somewhere someone’s living his dream, others perish in brutal nightmares.

nightingales disappear, sparrows are shot down,
no one’s allowed to rise up but the pigeons swarming the squares.

staring down the bottomless pit, the poker table set with one chair empty.
reserved, thank you very much; the dragons still soar over

flaming meadows—where’s the butterfly net, the desire for the great hunt?
under the bridge all dreamers vanish; self-inflicted exile for those
born too late and too early. wrong time, wrong place—story of too many lives.

silent tears and murderous statues, palaces crumble down to pieces,
skid row turns into a mansions-filled graveyard—no one’s left to shed a single tear.

we’re still here, everyone’s still around; even when the sky fell, we remained.
flames extinguished and dragons murdered with one simple word
no one ever heard.

harrowing grey mornings and nights of knee-deep snow; welcome to

whatever this is, nightmare or dream,

as another hole tears the ground open and from within leap
infernal flames and a familiar voice come on over, it’s time.

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 in various places, such as Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Fixator Press, Outcast Press, Piker’s Press, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.