VIDEO CASSETTES

Emptying the particle-board cabinet
That housed our prehistoric VCR:
VHS cassettes of high school commencements,
Grainy wedding receptions,
Caroline in Oklahoma!, 1986,
Vouchsafed to us in sacred trust,
Even without a means
To live those hours again.
We could, I suppose, have them
Put on DVD,
Assuming there will be a means
To live those hours again.
If not, who will ever know
What her children looked like,
Crawling on the floor,
In New Castle, Delaware,
In 1999.

Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other
Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. He is a retired school administrator
with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four
months of the year.

L’ANGE

I found haiku in my chocolate
I was the first on the rope swing
I woke from the mummy’s bandages
I smiled as the city burned
you all know me well
librettos written in my honor
pop songs tattooed to the cortex
of the reptilian subconscious spy
there’s a toy to be crafted
of each actionable moment
find them at the dollar store
a millennium in the future

Jay Passer’s work has appeared in print and online since 1988. He is the
author of 12 chapbooks, most recently from Alien Buddha Press, The
Cineaste, 2021. A cook by trade. He shares his apartment with a calico
named Bird and a spider plant. Passer lives and works in San Francisco,
the city of his birth.

FAREWELL LETTERS

Begin here.
With a blank sheet of paper perhaps.
And select a pen,
one comfortable in your hands enough
to obey instructions from the head and heart.

Start with a word.
“Dear” will do.
Not “octopus.”
Not “inflammable.”
“Dear” is noncommittal
and pleasant to the eye and ear.

A name is where it
gets tricky.
Forgo the cherished pet one
for something more formal.
Go minimal perhaps.
An initial may look like
a speck on a shirt
but its reader
will know who you mean.

That’s the hard part over with.
The rest of it should just flow.
It helps if you have the
first letter you wrote
five years to the day.
Just change the synonyms to antonyms.

When it’s time to sign off,
anything will do.
“Yours” won’t hurt,
though you’re now not anyone’s.
Then comes your signature.
Slow and dignified,
not your usual quick scrawl.
It will show you’re paying attention.

Then leave it on the kitchen table.
Right there beside the one that was left for you.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

It Doesn’t Add Up:  A Fable

Once upon a time,
in a time when such a thing was still possible,
a man handed the cashier twenty dollars
and went out to fill up his gas tank

The car needed only
seventeen dollars-and-change worth of gas
The man went inside to get his change
and decided to get a coffee
that would cost a dollar-eighty-nine
The cashier had no idea how to subtract
a dollar-eighty-nine from the two-something change

If the cashier didn’t have a co-worker
the man might still be there

Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) and has two more full-length books, Euclid Creek Book Two, and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in the publication pipeline.

I’m (Too Far Out)

Inside an ocean

ball of infinite bounded

spinning cycle consciousness

shifted into high resolution

immediate playback warp drive

word spacing double clutch

kaleidoscope-faceted

diamond sapphire ruby

emerald quartz rose

image magnified

zoomed a quarter century’s

time embedded

sizzling

in a mushed out brain, man,

freaking out.

Randall Rogers is a writer from the US Midwest.  He is intensely concerned with the little things in life.  Makes him tough to live with.  Even the plants are rebelling.  He prefers ground up to top down.  Do not worry of the little people, Randall says, “little folk will survive.”  Randall stands 5′ 5″ after double hip replacement surgery.  Says Randall “Short people do have a reason to live!”  He lives at home with his tall wife and dog.  He often intones “height challenged is bliss.”

A Rose To Merry Memories

Empty wine bottle, spent cigarettes and music playing low.
Kentucky bourbon and then there’s the real vices like the near misses of lovers past.

It’s a dream that reminds and a nightmare that forever lingers just off shore.
A triumph’s ride hell knows angels and the trips taken can never prepare you for those that mark
our last.

The roses are beautiful for a moment’s time.
The needle in place the sands escape from the hourglass.

Perfection is in the fragments of moments.
Please allow them to linger.

If only for seconds at a time.

John Patrick Robbins, is the editor in chief of the Rye Whiskey Review and Black Shamrock Magazine. He is also the author of Death, Rattle & Roll from Whiskey City Press. His work has been published here Fixator Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal,  Fearless Poetry Zine, Medusas Kitchen, Piker Press and The Dope Fiend Daily. His work is always unfiltered.

A TOMB OF UNEASY NIGHTS

As we locked down some had mansions and
Gardens to lose themselves in but I had a
Room, a single narrow room built of my
Own ill-repute and sometimes it was fine but
Most of the time it felt like the harsh reality
Escaped those making the decisions and for
Days, weeks, months, hell a year it was yesterday
And it’s just got worse. So bad in fact I’ve
Begun resenting my old favourite place where
I would spend hours snug beneath those sheets
But now I just glare at my bed as it’s become
Nothing but a tomb of uneasy nights as I lay
There counting down the damnable minutes
Until daybreak when I can start in all over again.

Bradford Middleton writes in Brighton, UK.  He’s had hundreds of poems published in the literary underground, including here at Fixator Press, across blogs, zines & reviews.  His four chapbooks are sold-out.  Follow him on Twitter @BradfordMiddle5 for updates on his writing & rants about football & politics..

Finding an Old Notebook

“Everything adds up to
Horseshit and hairpins.”

The homeless guy told
me during an episode of
sleepless strolling.

“You can make a trophy case
for all the hairpins you collect.”

“While feeding the girlies all
the bullshit you can muster!!!”

Those were heartfelt nights
in the early 2000’s

Wandering around Worcester
City Hall Park…

At 3 AM.

Jotting all the advice
The ghosts would give me,

on a variety of subjects—

relationships, war, death….

Many…so many one night
thrillers that never
showed up again…

Just want you to know

I saw, I heard, I was there
to record your last
Statements.

Your deserved epitaphs,
only fed to me.

Relived through a green, floppy
notebook.

Which I found a week ago,

skimmed,

then threw back into
a closet—that I’m
scared to open
anymore.

 

Dan Provost’s poems have been published throughout the small press for a number of
years. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife, Laura and dog, Bella.

an ankle injury

Several marketing campaigns
later, the snake reappears on
the bathroom floor. The point
guards of a controversial
doomsday cult get their uni-
forms ready, hoping to capture
the seaside ambience of the
Greek Islands. Like all invasive
species dependent on face-to-
face transactions they prey on
other species despite inclement
weather which often forces the
site to close. Now, sitting beside
a fireplace built from corflute,
with the sound of rainfall &
flowing creeks shutting out most
other things, they are considering
an electric option which will in-
clude a gourmet barbecue & be
surrounded by lime stabilization
of the subgrade to keep the cohort
in the undeclared zone safe & able
to continue to study medicine.

 

 

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

A subdivision morning,
In the part of Virginia that is not really the South,
In the part of March that is not quite spring:
Slivers of sunlight angle around clouds
In a sky of washed-out blue,
A dull glint on slate-gray waters (not a real lake).
Master Sergeants keep their boats here.
Pines, some ice-snapped, some in arabesque
Before a solitary daffodil, tinged with frost.
Frances and Paul (not their real names) are packing to move again,
Up the interstate, an hour farther north.
Children of a waning American century,
They carry little furniture but lots of sweaters, compact disks,
Wedding gifts in boxes they came in,
To a warren of townhomes,
Each with a shallow-rooted tree
Set in soil fortified with fratricidal blood,
Where the builder’s shovel has turned over Minie balls,
Pieces of bayonets, buckles,
Belongings of other sojourners
In this now accentless land.

Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other
Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. He is a retired school administrator
with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four
months of the year.