Baton Met

The baton passes from left to right hand, anxious to be passed. With the anguish of the tether on the
precipice, I am thinking the full length of it: the damp, fluffed-out flame.

Still bag-like and sift, the local light of personality waits on the sofa for a soda. The stones tear at my
blue-striped job-hunting jacket, which I remove and throw into a floppy disk drive

The abominable snowmen still don’t know what to do about the lightning. Heads open at the top –
flakes updraft, in the bill-thick half-plops cracking; the neck of the river holds it together, glugs.

How like the moment the quake goes around the equator in no time – its old weight rubbing against the
marble.

2.

A sponge for insight isn’t carbon-quick enough to counter this coolly calculated warmed-up simile. It
grows filaments and forms stone dressing.

Between the collapsed cake of root energies to the tangled halo, its secrets are lodged protectively in
the kidney. The leaves split off from the slice of pizza. The star writhes in the stiffening cheese.

Saddled with moving-day clutter, a stick figure crawls out from the toroid pool. The guitar-hole flings its
garlands of ball-pointed bed springs about. An anatomical torso counters with cash.

Such perseverance and devotion, with face hints in the thicket, that steam up from twigs forming a
shawl-cloud – except where the bottom pool has formed a wheel over the torus (always a torus).

 

 

Ivars Balkits has retired as a writing tutor and  course facilitator at Ohio University whose prose and poetry have been published on various literary journal web sites. He is a recipient of two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, for poetry in 1999 and creative nonfiction in 2014. 

 

 

Charles J. March III is a neurodivergent Navy hospital corpsman veteran currently living in California. His work has appeared in Evergreen Review, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, Sensitive Skin Magazine, 3:AM, BlazeVOX, Expat Press, etc. More can be found at LinkedIn & SoundCloud.

Mr. Wexler Checks On His Garbage  

Mr. Wexler checks on his garbage,  
at the end of a long stone drive.  

Stands over it inspecting the bags for holes.  
Checking and rechecking to make sure
the ties are still taut
before standing with pygmy hands on hips, 
looking both ways down to the end of the street.  

Wondering if there is something wrong with his garbage.
They should have been by already.
He has not forgotten that one time they didn’t
take it.  

He stands and waits for the truck.
Watches over them now.  

Expecting them to refuse him.
Standing a few moments in surprise.  

Watching the truck lumber up the street  
with his rubbish.  

Before rushing back inside to start
all over again. 

 

Curses  

Swaddled and soused,  
the rambling mouth of riverbed curses  
pub crawling along with papa legba garden sluggery;  
Belief just a forger, your superstitions gathered like 
the horizon-absent clouds, chants and charms of 
bedazzled macaw where one would pry open the can
and look deep down for Reason –
what is left around the cauldron is a singular leprosy,
tears in stockinged feet that spill out over lonely mesh:
a spell, a speak, and where your broom to sweep?
Devoid of dark and arts and those who would readily listen,
my ears turned to corn stocks sold at market
by the bushel.  

 

 

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.

AGED

A hermit crab
has taken my skull
as its own,
scooping out my brain
to fall on the wet sand
of the beach
I used to
wander on
as a child
alive with dreams
and possibilities,
manifold paths stretching before me,

a beach I don’t recall
coming to today –
and yet here I am,
somehow – or any day
of my crowded adulthood,
the paths before me fewer,
their surfaces cracked
with weeds one might mistake
for flowers.

 

Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales.  His play ‘Wall’ was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection “Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge” was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.

His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

 

Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom

Mother awakened me in the morning. There was now a lake of ash where there had never been
one and behind it a pair of wrinkled mountains like a giant’s cracked, dusty boots. Birds on a
fence idiotically chanted, “Sh-boom, sh-boom.” I picked up a stone and threw it without taking
careful aim. Some people who were passing would later say the expression on my face made
everything worse. I hadn’t even realized I was smiling.

                                                                                                          &

Life there felt a lot like life elsewhere – steel bars on windows and suicide nets on roofs.
Hatchet-faced men in leather trench coats would grab people right off the street. The last words
of a prisoner were eerily prophetic. “Ah,” he said, “the cows. . .” Work parties threw the corpses
in ovens or down wells, often slaving at rifle point through the night.

                                                                                                            &

The angels were dry-mouthed and sweaty and feeling like they hadn’t slept for days. A rogue
herd of cows in gas masks had stampeded. I stared out at the sign by the church when I should
have been watching the road. Love Like Jesus, it said. Nice sentiment, I thought, as the sun sank
in a profusion of toxic colors, a ship full of chemicals burning intently at the edge of the world.

 

 

Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

 

I Am No Longer Me

Just a worn out shell like a vacant building, that haunts the landscape seen by a random passerby.

Sometimes the sadness can become comforting in the oddest sense.
Like a snail to its shell.
It's simply part of our being.

A hideaway to deaden yourself to all.
Sometimes the pain becomes all we ever need before this nonexistent party ends.

Some view me as something I never was but delusion beats rose colored glasses.

And a dance and death spiral.
Hold odd similarities disturbing and beautiful all the same.

Sorry for my morbid disposition.
But I am no longer the stranger I once knew as me.

 

 

John Patrick Robbins,  is the editor in chief of the Rye Whiskey Review he us also the author of The Still Night Sessions from Whiskey City Press. 

His work has been published in Fearless Poetry Zine, Punk Noir Magazine, Piker Press, San Pedro River Review,  San Antonio Review,  The Dope Fiend Daily Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

His work is always unfiltered. 

“blessing”

god said, enjoy your
afternoon, you deserve it.

thanks, i said, i’ll try.

he shook my hand
and walked away

45 minutes later
i sat in the spring sun
on a poorly painted porch
drinking mexican beer

i got to thinking about god,
how he’d been involuntarily
committed for the past 6 years,
i wondered if he’d be happy to know
i was enjoying my afternoon

then a breeze came by
and i thought about something else.

 

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 appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 10 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press. 

“The Tree”

The tree
prays for
the future that―

leaves flush,
sing hopes,
and
kiss the ground
full of tears of the rising sun―

The tree
prays for
the future that―

hug of recovery
fills the sky,
spreads a pastel carpet,
and
cocoons the ground
in misty gleam―

The tree is gazing at dawn
The tree is shaking
with a blessing

Yuu Ikeda is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, reading mystery novels, and drinking sugary coffee. She writes poetry on her website; https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/
Her published poems are “On the Bed” in <Nymphs>, “Seeds” in <Tealight Press>,“Dawn” in <Poetry and Covid>, and more.

Why Tamper with the Spectral Spoil?

The string was hung above the ground –
31” long and 31” high. Below,
The compost pile, and under that
A primum non nocere agreement
Between the celibate intensity and
Verruciform, bantam network. (My skin
Like microfiche, this property
Anathema to lithium, Athena, random
Miracles.) The seven 1s and seven 0s
Ran above: retaliation’s form of libel;
The postal industry’s falsetto trait in mime.

The ground’s gung-ho astringent, like a
13, cinches the quotidian by its one-and-thirty
Piles of short-and-curlies; and under,
Nociceptors: agriculture’s double-ply
Phenomena, in tandem with celebrity
Intestines; the skein of net worth cruciform.
(The micro-cliché improperly ties
Lythrum to the enemy, the anthem in the killer
Mirror’s ransom.) The seven 1s and seven 0s
Farm retaliation, run aground these billet-
Doux encrusted mines of tried and true.

Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and six pets. Poems of Jake’s have been published widely. Some have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).

Lost Numbers

Abhor the horizon
Entreat pestilence
Empire advert quiet members
Steven is sober on the patio

Delay costs of leprosy
See a llama today
Holy rosy memory
Jesus of the transitional prism

Prize the devolved mass
Key Largo’s armor of nostalgia
Eat the grazing puma
Instant Tang!

Quite legal cement
Impale desperately
Bert, Bert, Bert!
Yosarian, Yosarian!

The last roses of pestilence
Serious horizon
Final natal case
Poor cue of lost members

Hugh Tribbey is Emeritus Assistant Professor Of English. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with his wife Larna.  He has published nine collections of poetry.  His most recent is  One Knowledge from Idler Press.