Digital Doldrums
(US Highway 285)

Sliding up Highway 285 North
In the digital doldrums past Roswell
Lunar glow and headlamps off caliche
Cruise controlled to 80 versions per vision

On a collision course with the Interstate
And truck-stop tourist traps
Crossroads corners – sweeping darkness
The things that crash in the desert

Reflect in my rearview mirror
Like Marfa lights, like disco balls, like fireworks
Scrub brush beneath aerial artillery
They flash

The4y flash as forgotten memories
That I sense but never see
Beyond frontiers and all
The other perceived peripheries

Plunging fast through the digital doldrums
She steers our course, unerring
Mystic, mysterious, magnet, mountain pulling powers
Driving through the night

PW Covington is the National Beat Poetry Foundation’s US National BEAT Poet Laureate (2026-2027).
They live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from where Historic Route 66 crosses the fabled Rio Grande River.

Advanced Student

(Torn) asunder by circumstances
out of your Control…
‘Rotting’ is optional,
not advisable, but your decision.
The contronym
of the word ‘Temper’
lost its Balance…
after I ‘Mastered’ myself,
and bro/ke free from the Chains
of Addiction and Toxicity …
replacing them
with a (Graceful) Inner-Strength.

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” is published by Close To The Bone. Short story collection “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “It Is Big And It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw”, “The Gutter Symposium”, “The Dark Side Of British Poetry” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are published by Hunsbury Press.

White Van Man

I’ve been a white van man for six weeks now,
on my ones and bored with the company,
pestering all my nearest and dearest,
I’m slowly driving myself to death;
it’s self inflicted road rage
at the crossroads of my own sanity.
There’s no lane assist in my mind,
Just a lad helplessly careering off the leisure
lane of the M1.

Melville the Third is a Sheffield based artist whose practice moves between spoken word,
visual art and moving image. His distinct voice features throughout his video work,
where narration and poetry become part of the visual language. Recently, he exhibited
alongside various other exhibitions and projects. His work explores identity, place, memory
and the everyday through a raw and personal blend of image and voice.

SUBURBAN WASTE

Spy satellites pick up transgressive thoughts.
They know you put organic scraps in the brown
bin, not the proper green one (!) And how you
accepted the mailed Indian school dream catcher
and didn’t donate. It’s on your wall now. Doesn’t
the net filter out bad dreams and admit good ones?
Nightmares abound due to your bad postal karma.
Remember the time you pasted a “Lost Cat” sign
over on the mailbox? (The hub of social activity.)
Dogs sniff each other’s parts while their owners
yak above the waistline. Trimmed palm trees see
all. When the world’s end comes, they will blast
off into outer space, protected by capsules,
and take root on a fertile planet; nod and laugh
with each other about foolish humans. Cosmic
decree snuffs people just before they spread
their disease across the universe.

Philip Ash surfs the Dark Wave spectrum in your dreams. His work has appeared in Beatnik Cowboy, Rye Whiskey Review, Bristol Noir and Fixator Press. He lives in San Diego.

Weekless

In a month of Sundays
without Saturdays or Mondays
I can see where I stand–
how I am rolled up
into a ball, clenched fists
and toes.

I can talk to divinities
as if they were neighbors
and chat about decorative
foliage and the price of eggs.

I have heaps of time to figure
out the way things work,
but not my own psycho-sexual,
aspirational, sabotaging, obsessive,
digestive behavior.

I will never figure all that out
even if I
go back to work on
Monday,
rested, restless,
brim full of fab intentions.
unh-unh-unh

Kathryn Lasseter lives in Oregon and has poems in Cathexis Northwest, Blood+Honey, drip, Stripes, Cypress Review, and other journals.

So Many Dollars An Ounce

Method: toss raw ingredients
plucked from misplaced comets
into an oven or a volcano
(an unstable planet with a soft crust
and gooey centre works best).

Flatten with a rolling pin
or a billion tons of gravity
(young worlds are liable
to explode, so take care).

When the situation stabilizes
and there’s a nice golden crust
turn down the heat and bake
for at least 10,000 years,
or until the pie is cool
and you can scrape away the crust
to carefully extract the filling.

Serve warm in a necklace, or baked
into little bars like chocolate. Or here
on a shelf, in your late mother’s
wedding ring.

Ian Mullins bales out from Liverpool England. His latest collection of messages-in-a-bottle is NightWatchMan (Alien Buddha Press) 2024, with more thrown overboard as we speak.

Picker

You picker of seed
in the death of others
picking and choosing

you knowing
your sniffing
of your own ashes

how can you continue
so many years
ignoring

the sky and stars and infinity
in the palm of God.

Are you hopeless
in your own stubbornness

or is it stupidity
that you march
over the cliff?

Stephen Jarrell Williams has been published here and there and in the past of time. He can be found on X Twitter @papapoet.

Even Without Floppy Shoes

Caricature of self
Ridicule ensues
Clown and critic combined

Every precipice
Perilous, the finding
Every edge
In its place

Every clown
So inclined

MH Clay lives and works in Dallas, Texas. He has a poetry page at https://madswirl.com/author/mhclay/.

He has published three poetry collections; sonoffred, Rebel Poetry in Ireland, 2015, Angst,
Mad Swirl Press, and True Believer, Alien Buddha Press, 2025 (all are available on Amazon). His poetry has been published in various online journals, including Fixator Press, Impspired Magazine, and Misty Mountain Review.

                                   Tormented Land

                           Crumbling sidewalks contrast
                             with resplendent buildings
                                in the gentrifying city
                                 of abandoned parks,
                                no longer maintained
                              as the rich go elsewhere
                                       for recreation.
                                    Nature perseveres
                             as long as our planet exists
                                   to recover the earth
                                   until we all perish,
                                    weeds sprouting
                            through cracked pavements
                               in the ongoing struggle
                                    that affects us all
                                   so we barely notice
                                   concrete is fleeting.



Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction, essays and plays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. His traditionally published books include 46 poetry collections, 19 novels, 4 short story collections, 2 collections of essays, 8 books of plays and 16 poetry chapbooks. Gary lives in New York City.

Flash Burn

At times we are too close to anything to realize the absurdity of the situation.

A quicksand promise, a parting note.

It’s always too damn late, and you’re always too fucking worn out to give a damn by the time it is
over.

Within the arms of an addiction is a familiar place to fade a cowardly act, as it is far easier to
recede than ever fight to progress into the nothing your life has truly become.

I have never liked photos, for they are timestamps to poor choices and fatal mistakes born of a
flawed ego’s logic.

I don’t need to ever document my downfall.

For I have a photographic memory.

You never need to celebrate your failures.

For I awake to face the mirror that reflects them daily.

I once met a man who was not there.

So they say.

John Patrick Robbins, is a Southern Gothic writer his work has been published in Horror Sleeze Trash, Disturb The Universe, Spill The Words Press, The San Pedro River Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Cold Rambler and Here at Fixator Press.