ditto

dancing gentle on broken glass
shards of trickle a reminder smudge
of my still alive continuing

did a muffled dream breathe isolated
or was combination itinerant scribe
nature presenting elementary grasp

nobody knew i played in dangerous
why discard compensation ongoing
endure dependent relies on silent

it was murky rain on shattered past
that spelt me your eyes meant truth
only a fox smiles of not eat fresh kill

they must realize decades
of knock us down bred pointless
achieved their angst and our win

i’m no real poet of anything actual
a lame assembly devised as nomad
became art form notorious slap

would the cluster believe joyful grows
from non-adherence be normal
essential queer chime takes final bow

ditto answers all when constructing
sliding chapters in pandemic scale
decades taught me heaven belief

(Originally published by Pif Magazine, 2020)

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. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

Night Comes

Night comes with its dark cape.
It envelops the tree in the yard 
and its branches and leaves.
It feeds on the tree’s sap. Night
comes to touch everything in 
sight and never apologizes for
its darkness. It will walk without
feet. It will make one blind and
conjure the dead. Night will come
like a perfect stranger. It is born
as the day goes to sleep. Night 
will lean on you with all its strength.
There is no fighting it. Just fall asleep
and let the darkness do its thing.

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

My Brain is not a swim up bar

They say
if you smile
it actually makes
you feel happy

So when I drink
I pretend to be buzzed

When I’m on
vacation
I pretend to relax

I lean my head back
and say

“Boy, Howdy
is this relaxing or what?”

Behind the scenes
my cells
are doing major
reconstruction

excavation
demolition

feasibility studies
gearing up for inspections

catastrophic failures

But I still daydream
that my brain is
a swim up bar
instead of
general contractor
of a mixed use
zoning site

Melanie Browne is a poet and fiction writer from Texas.
She has been published in various anthologies including
This is Poetry Volume IV: Poets of The South and 
Cowboys and Cocktails: Poetry from the True Grit Saloon

Free World

With heads bowed as in silent prayer, but fingers locked behind our necks as if we were under
arrest, we knelt facing the wall in a coldly lit corridor of Lakeside Elementary School, safe, they
said, from the blast wave. We didn’t object or question. We didn’t admit fear or doubt. It was
enough to be told throughout childhood that we lived in what they called the “Free World.”
When minutes later the air raid drill was over, we marched in an orderly line like soldier ants
back to our classroom. The world is still a funny kind of free. Whereas in Mexico they say
“whiskey” to get people to smile for a photo, in the U.S. we say “money.”

Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

Mirrorground Fair Narcissus

(To Steve Sassmann)

In the funhouse mirror, stuck
in those infinite births,
I see the distortions of me.

Fairground grass eats my ankles,
so do
the ice follies and other narcissus.

I touch the glass; it gurgles, streams
a river of whisky;
under his distilled breath the ticket man
says that I can cross it
but for that charges will be extra.

This year too, I may not dare.

The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

Sunny

Sunny was a giant water turtle
living on the wide bend in the river.
Someone said he was shot
sunning on a rock.
Others heard he was stuffed
and displayed in a museum.
Some even say he was captured
and lives in a tank in a rich man’s mansion.
Everyone misses Sunny,
especially the children
dreaming of riding on his back,
as he swims the river of light.

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write in the middle of the night with a grin and grimace and a flame in his heart.  He can be found on Twitter @papapoet.

MY DAUGHTER

Is only three feet
Long and now older
In years than me

She wakes me
Each morning
And nibbles my ear

Gently taps
Me on the head
With her paw

Stares at me
With what most
Of us all lack

True & unconditional
Love

Her eyes
Telling me
That she is
Real

In an unreal
World

R.M. Engelhardt is a poet, writer & author whose work over the last 30 years has been published in such journals as Thunder Sandwich, Full of Crow, Rusty Truck, Writers’ Resist, Dry Land Lit, Rye Whiskey Review, Hobo Camp Review & many others. He currently lives & writes in Upstate NY and his  books of poetry are entitled “DarkLands” (Published By Whiskey City Press 2019) & “We Rise Like Smoke Poems Psalms & Incantations”  (Published by Dead Man’s Press Ink 2021). His new book of poems is entitled “RAW Poems By R.M. Engelhardt 2023”

All books available on Amazon.com

Bee Balm and Lemongrass

Our blooming back yard is bursting with color.
The roses are lining the fence and smolder like a small fire in bright oranges and reds.
The white ones, however, are my favorites.
The birds thieved the blueberries long ago.
The possums have been through the tiny pumpkin patch.
The neighborhood cats will piss on anything that doesn’t move.
Clover springs up everywhere.
I remember last year when you flung handfuls of seed into the air.
Were we celebrating something?
The humming birds come for the Bee Balm and stay for the Aphids.
On this mild May evening, I smoke a cigarette then pull up a stalk of lemongrass.
It has a vaguely sweet aftertaste.
I lounge here at the back of the house, my thoughts leaving me alone for a moment.
Soon, the insufferable mosquitoes will arrive wanting to get drunk on my blood.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry, prose, reviews and collages published around the world.
He has edited his own poetry journal, FEARLESS for the past thirty years. He has authored sixteen
chapbooks, including Incessant Shining (2011, Alternating Current Press).His latest books: Cease To
Destroy, Just Another Small Town Story and The Mirror Masks Nothing, a co-authored book with John Patrick Robbins published by Whiskey City Press, are now available on AMAZON.

Postcards

Downeast our last resort 
to turn a deaf ear to the past, 
yet the windup of our twenty-year swim
finds us stork-legged and shilly-shally. 

Our old seaside junk shop 
sells impossible bottle boats 
and postcards of Edwardian holidays—
youngbloods of Brideshead revisiting the sea

their tea-colored eyes consumptively
fixed on the white-and-red-striped puppet booths,
until they can scarcely look out for tears
as Punch and Judy slap sticks and cross swords.

Knees bared, you applaud
the bathing machines pulled by horses 
up and down the beach like swimmers
synchronized with the rising and falling tide.

The sky is post-office red. 
The sea cracks the siltstones 
and the waves, gleaming like hedge-sparrow eggs 
spill and pool and tint the sand.

We pull our rigging 
through the guide holes
slyly questioning but never knowing how to reply—
our boat punchless in impossible land.

Damon Hubbs is the author of the chapbook ‘The Day Sharks Walk on Land’ (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His latest chapbook, ‘Charm of Difference,’ is forthcoming from Back Room Poetry. Recent poems have been published at Lothlorian Poetry Journal, South Broadway Press, Eighteen Seventy Press, and Book of Matches. Twitter @damon_hubbs.  

I Grew Up in a Brewery Town 

I grew up in a brewery town. 
A third of the population worked for a single employer. 

A fleet of trucks lined up at the back loading docks each day. 
All the suds shooting off down the highway. 

A production and distribution hub for many twist cap destinations. 
Many friends had family that worked at the plant. 

Employees got a free case of beer each month. 
Along with a well-paying union gig.  

When the Molson plant closed down, 
there was a depression for many years. 

People survived, they usually do. 
Getting jobs down in the city an hour’s drive away, 
so that the brewery town became a commuter town. 

Everyone had to pay for their beer now. 
And they were drinking more than ever. 

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.