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.

Temporary Shoreditch

[Breaking… apart… from]… Bookends
… Pollard Oak & Green Leather
dimmed his Enthusiasm for Endeavours
… the word ‘Derivatives’…
shoehorned [Much Needed] Depth
… and, one must never forget
that there is a waiting Lynch Mob…
only a Copper’s Whistle… away.
[Hit ‘em with the gorgeous taste
of Welsh-salted buttered crumpets.]
Why ‘That’ dress?… for Christ Sake!!!
… eye-roll on Aisle No. 5…
and the best thing about being ‘Single’
is the lack of Repercussions….
and your own ‘Clock’ in everything.
Although, when we hold-hands…
and sit just like this… I understand
the language of Woodland Waterfalls.
I am leaving the Big Smoke [Choke]
and the City Ladies… far behind…
to British Rail ‘Today’ into ‘Tomorrow’.

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. 

Canning Rings

A granite staircase switchback of exposed combs
leads to views of Sand Beach and the Gulf of Maine.
Ladders and rungs rock scramble the queen cage
like casket bier pins —the mortician of bees in blue.

You’d wrap your knee
as if you were going to hike
but we both knew you’d say
the old tennis injury was too much.

You could’ve just said you didn’t like heights,
didn’t like being exposed, naked for the cliff
face to gape at, for the falcon to see through.
The honey wasn’t worth it

and you preferred blueberries, anyway.
Picking a bushel in Machias
and dancing barefoot in the kitchen,
canning rings around your wrists
the jam bangling on the stove

both of us forgetting to stir
forgetting the bees in blue;
our love already breaking down
with years too thick to remember

Damon Hubbs: film & art lover / pie bird collector / lapsed tennis player / his latest chapbook, ‘Rimbaud’s Lighthouse,’ is forthcoming from Naked Cat Press 

Lying on a Pillow in the Valley of Death

You would hardly turn your best guesses to hazards   
of my present relaxation, bettering each of these pudgy slingshot years   
lying on a pillow in the valley of death, that deep electric hum   
of fingers through the mud: the marriage, heart, head, money, life lines   
all on neon palm reader’s sabbatical, that scathing basic bitch teal you find   
everywhere these days, in the pleated refutations of week old socks and   
under thousand year old trees;  
I could never truly live with another if that meant a complete   
and utter surrender of the words –  
I made an agreement many lifetimes ago;   
there are many moving parts, but the promise is simple as churned butter   
which should explain why I remain so relaxed in the enterprising trenches,   
my hands behind the head I was born with,   
tingling toes over the side of a bed that once took almost 14 months   
to pay for on the installment plan. 

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.

beneath the frosted full moon glow

One man, with a dying name,
walks along a dead end street.
He watches as dried autumn
leaves drift across his path.
He listens to their music, to
their fleeting fallen song. And
as the wind drags them across
cold concrete, they disintegrate
into broken pieces, tiny splinters
that can never be whole again.
He thinks of his own life, once
so young, once so whole, now
just fragments of yesterdays and
yesteryears where ghosts pass
through like a revolving door.
And tonight, beneath the frosted
full moon glow, walking around
alone has never felt so all alone.

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world.  He has authored twenty-five chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including Cleaning the Gutters of Hell (Zeitgeist Press, 2023).  As editor of Between Shadows Press, he’s curated two editions of the notorious journal, “Haikus, Nearkus, Fauxkus, Fuckyous.”  

Rebuilding the Submarine

I replace the
periscope
with a bottle of
sweet & sour
sauce. The conning-
tower becomes
a library, an un-
subtle homage 
to Borges. I turn
the engineroom
into an aviary—
the hovering of
hummingbirds
provides propulsion—
& the ballast tanks
are given over 
to travelling 
exhibitions of Persian 
miniatures. I shall 
fill the torpedo 
tubes with large 
cigars once the 
embargo against 
Cuba is lifted. Radar & 
sonar will become 
just dolphins’ names.

Mark Young’s most recent books are with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish,
published by Sandy Press in May, 2023, & a free downloadable chapbook of visuals &
poems, Mercator Projected, published by Half Day Moon Press in August 2023.

GO FOR IT

The monster pulls my hair out
by the roots.

He abandons me in the desert
where it’s so hot,
my eye-bulbs burst.

And he turns the night on me,
makes it so dark,
I disappear.

He has tied me to a tree more than once.
And jabbed my body with spears,
just above the heart.

Opposites.
Opposites.
Opposites.

They say we attract
but, more likely,
we learn from one another.

If I were a monster,
I would do all this to him.

If he were me,
he would take it.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a queer poet and performance artist. Former editor of  Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.

TEN-YEAR-OLD KILLERS

They were two young boys
down by the river’s edge,
tossing rocks at birds, at squirrels.

From the high ledge I saw them,
shouted down “Stop that!”
but my voice was lost in the heavy foliage,
the mix of white and gray cloud above.

The chickadees darted out of harm’s way.
A crow flew up to the highest branch,
loudly cawed its horror at the newest generation.

But one squirrel, half-way up a tree,
was not so lucky.
From the cheers down below,
I knew the one with the tousled blonde hair
had made a direct hit.

I was too far away to make a difference.
A scramble down to where they were
would have taken a half hour or more.
By the time I arrived,
that same crow could be pecking away
at its latest, unexpected meal.

I find hell in strange places these days.
In wilderness.
In children.
In unnecessary death.
In my inability to act.
Even my high vantage point has no true claim to heaven.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and California Quarterly.

Now!

I should have seen this coming
years ago during the age of hippies
and UFOs and toxic wars.

I step now with sand in my shoes,
squinting up into a sullen sky.
Birds disappearing into the clouds.

The bone-dry desert
seemingly endless as if a dream.

Age has taken in some ways much,
but it has given an eternity quest
much more than I ever thought.

The moon a signal
of an upward way to escape,
a staircase to the the bowing of stars.

Hurry now!
The evil ones have much power,
but less than they think.

Keep your composure in your belief.
The deserts here are more
than we see.

Birds now landing in the clouds,
waiting for us to take a deep breath
and fly.

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write and paint and can be found on Twitter @papapoet.

Our Generation

Each generation includes a melody
For the few to safeguard accounts.
Moreover, medallions fade from the
Looks that impede a note from nary a
Shield of allocators. Over currencies,
Seasons use space in consideration of
 
Actual facts, so that specimens record
Dictates for general execution. Senses
Are diminished by advocates who
Vet once-taken and unmixed suspense
Moored to memory. Facility shifts from
These times and these points, and once
 
More affords silence to the counsel
Concurring with one punter in promo.
After all, the coequal force is devised
From estimation, and happens to
Require a foreign body to conclude
That motives translate to a public wish.

Steve Armstrong is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara and lives in San Francisco.