parallels on wane

dithering can
wobble stationary
if facial quips remain focused
as they call more is necessary
so i crawl in blizzard slam shock
to make my point we are nothing
without believing real
is invalid here

i digested prayers
from dying dreams
between sly flutter we smiled tears
yes i know doctrines promise deliver
but i’m inclined to believe silent truth
offers twice removed faith message
given life panics
when being declines

ok that wasn’t noted
clearly even at all
but if you dissect behavior of tempted
you like they will see hopeful falling
is no less certain than parallels on wane
for gabble relieving or not collected exact
is what is sought after the fact
sinks heaven silent

Stephen House has won many awards as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. His chapbooks “real and unreal” and “The Ajoona Guest House” are published by ICOE Press. His next book is out soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

1000 Square Feet

I don’t know much 
about the family in 13 B
where they’re from 
or how long they’ve lived here

but I do know that I’ve cracked 
a few cervezas with the father
and have eaten homemade tamales 
from the mother that I swore 
made me see the face of God

I do know that I’ve been greeted
by both abuelos passing by 
and have seen all six children 
playing with the other kids 
in the apartment parking lot 

I even know that I’ve watched 
them raise the American flag  
from their balcony railing 
higher than some eyebrows 
they received

this family 
they all live together 
inside 1000 square feet 
making room where it counts.

 

 

Cord Moreski is a poet from the Jersey Shore. Moreski is the author of Confined Spaces(Two Key Customs, 2022), The News Around Town (Maverick Duck Press, 2020), and Shaking Hands with Time (Indigent Press, 2018). When he is not writing, Cord waits tables for a living and teaches middle school children that poetry is awesome. His next chapbook Apartment Poems will be released by Between Shadows Press in late 2022. You can follow Cord here: www.cordmoreski.com

The Waterfall Effect

The tricked eye perceives
liquid banks slipping past
a petrified stream,
the railroad station
continuing retrograde
from the frozen train
until the clockwork mind
corrects the senses
to their settled duties.
Rivers flood.  
Exiles disembark. 

Chris Bullard lives in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Wilkes University. Grey Book Press published Continued, a poetry chapbook, in 2020 and Moonstone Press recently published Going Peaceably to the Obsidian Knife, his chapbook of environmentally themed poetry. Main Street Rag has just released his poetry chapbook, Florida Man.

overflown indices

The problem with hair is that it’s not
a static thing. Calculating lights in real-

time is too heavy for the current hard-
ware. The game crashes. Thus the

lighting for anything that is not moving
during gameplay is prerendered. Not

quite as simple as taking a snapshot of
a plant or the centerline on a road. Push-

ing a load by using your own weight to
assist is far less stressful on your body.

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. He has been publishing
poetry for more than sixty years, & is the author of around sixty books, primarily text poetry
but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His most recent books are The
Toast, from Luna Bisonte Prods, The Sasquatch Walks Among Us, from Sandy Press, &
Songs to Come for the Salamander, Poems 2013-2021, selected & introduced by Thomas
Fink, co-published by Meritage Press & Sandy Press.

DEPARTING FLIGHT

A mechanized beast
steams with red eyes
in the dull brown dusk air
of an early Denver evening
at the airport in an Uber,
dropped off in the same place
where I first met her, when
I thought I was going to fall in love.
It was a slow climb up the escalator
I originally came down with a hope
I managed to burn down in a
heated couple of weeks
I can barely remember
and that I deeply regret,
a sting everyone saw me feel.

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of “Too Young to Know” (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and “Invasion of the Shadow People” (forthcoming, Luchador Press, 2022).  His work has appeared in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, River Dog, Misfit and The American Journal of Poetry, among others.  He lives and writes in Long Beach, California.  

Gold Leaf

They claim less is more.
And that may ring true in most cases, aside whenever my mind reflects upon you.

Hints of happiness left spilled upon the canvas that embraces my emptiness for seconds at a
time.

A tear traces the lines, as the blood mixes with my mediocre soul.

Love is always a double-edged sword.
I signed the canvas that was our moment forever frozen in time.

John Patrick Robbins, is the editor in chief of the Rye Whiskey Review and The Black Shamrock Magazine. He also has a new book out with Kevin M. Hibshman. The Mirror Masks Nothing from Whiskey City Press. His work has been published here at Fixator Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Piker Press, Lothlorien Journal Of Poetry, San Pedro River Review, The Dope Fiend Daily and Fearless Poetry Zine.

His work is always unfiltered.

Sitting Squarely

Beach chairs are so uncomfortable.
I was sitting squarely for a while
now I’m squirming around
trying out new positions
without success.
I look down at you with envy
lying there.
“Let’s have a change,”
I say, “you try the chair”.
But there’s no budging you
from your comfort zone
and really,
I don’t blame you.
You were right,
we should have bought two beach mats.

First published in Nine Muses Poetry, August 2020

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Journal, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

plucked chicken blues

you don’t need a lamp
to see that cynicism
is just realism
with a higher
Scrabble score

and while you’re at it
behold an old man
telling you to
get off my lawn
and out of my sun

Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (nominated for the 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award) and Salt Holds No Secret But This.

Joy, Not Enjoy

Ladies free before eleven 
like some misguided  
Cinderella. 

The town  
forever out on  
the town. 

Joy, not enjoy. 
To feel more extreme. 

That handsome browbeat cowlick 
battening down the hatches. 

Expect rough waters  
on the open market. 

Crisis counsellors  
with a face full of $2 dollar drinks 
that go down easy as company  
quicksand. 

That gooseflesh on my neck 
brought back to gaggle. 

The veiny doorman with anger issues  
slamming down some pearly close shave Guido  
over a hipster foosball table kicking cans  
down the road, 
by rote. 

And the giraffes all on stilts. 
Long lines for the bathroom 
on safari… 

I want a feeling I have never felt. 
Some wild-danced aloneness  
that has always been mine. 

In the silent giftwrapped distance. 
A way to breathe again that cannot 
be boxed, beaten or taken. 
Sinking down into the couch. 
Like the captain of my ship, 
a personal scurvy. 

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, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

A Place I Imagined

pulling a suitcase
of clothes from the tube
station entrance. and this
is late august.
2012 – I’ve just
moved to london.
two weeks in some
busy hostel room
full of strangers, the air
strangers breath, the bed-
clothes their bodies. time
to find a flat; some place,
I’ve imagined near
camden. I was 22. somebody
yelled – I am blocking
their stairwell.
tired, full of travel
and buses to london,
and trains. the sky
was wide blue,
full of pigeons and other
grey garbage.
suburbs surrounded,
like rings in a broke
open tree.

DS Maolalai has received nine nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).