Frank O’Hara

i once read his words
while standing in front
of a painting
of his face
most of
the witticisms
were in french

no wonder
the steelworkers
in pittsburgh
just go
to the movies.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020),
Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023), 100 Mornings, (Sacred Parasite, 2025),
and Trump Stamp, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2026).

Intermission

Every morning the curtain goes up
I open as a young man,
with frequent and worsening infirmities,
medication for blood pressure, cholesterol,
blood thinners for AFib – and coffee.

The senses are atrophying like the limbs,
I avoid any strenuous activity,
rehearse, find a seat and avoid mirrors.

New is what is important, entertaining.
The past, time, young, old, even lately,
are not issues, as youth projects itself
into the next, the space directly
in front, today’s stage.

My parents were old, now long gone,
don’t preoccupy my day any longer,
but they are visiting lately in dreams.

Jergens eases the contention of the parts,
and Visine takes the paste out, so I can see to
move out of the way of the now,
the tip of the pen – read today’s lines.

The curtain goes down, even the vibrant
need a nap, there is a faint applause
from the rear seats in the balcony,
and a reminder to take an Ambien.

(Originally published by Constellations, December ‘24)

 

Craig Kirchner has been nominated three times for a Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. He’s been published in Chiron Review, Fixator Press, Main Street Rag and more than 100 other journals. 

You Know I’m Right

You could work 900 years if you wanted.
In some of the worst hells in the land.
Toiling away like busy magpies.
Gnarled hands and shrivelled hearts.
Shoveling shit for some big-time shit farmers.
And never once complaining, didn’t the Stoics find idiot peace
in such silences? I’m sure they did, like broken latches
on dirty lunch pails. Work a thousand years, hell, make it
two thousand just for kicks!  I’m telling you now,
it won’t make the least bit of difference.
No one gets ahead.
They simply get older and die.

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.

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.