Taste

Drifters eat grapes
in parked cars stacked with books,
while bathing their feet
in pure mountain streams.
Women feed babies
soot from their nails
to alienate their friends
who sing heavy metal anthems
in karaoke bars.
Socialites eat soup
with mafia dons
and cry like sopranos
when boxers spill blood.
Myself,
I eat at night,
behind tinted windows and shades,
so when the moon devours the sun
I can blitz my stomach
with armour-piercing rounds,
then cook pepperoni pizza
laced with vodka and knives
and feed it to my boy,
because I’m taking him down with me,
while cleansing my pallet.

Tim Frank’s debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24)

Twitter: @TimFrankquill

Penchant For Dissipation

I do not do ‘Goodbyes’,
neither Walk nor Run
… I Disappear.
Cheshire Cat grin
lingering mid-air
whilst sleight-of-hand
fixing Escape Routes.
I Borrowed only
… I’m Investing
in each footfall
… Away.
I love (term loosely)
the Weightlessness
of ‘Past Tense’
… and the Fresh Air
of Open Doorways
… ‘Fond Farewells’
are for ‘other people’
… I’m all
Temporary Transactions.

(C-ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya)

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”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry book “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration” are all now available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

Born in Mexico, Luis lives in California and works in Los Angeles. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press. His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, Pygmy Forest Press, and Unlikely Stones.

pipes

andy is
an old geezer

he’s hitting eighty-five

andy makes the rounds
from library branch to library branch

just to have something to do
in between trips to the dollar store

he greets the staff
likes he’s doing a roll call

oh, there’s darla!
oh, there’s jake!

andy votes republican
and smokes pipes

he likes it when we show him
pictures of rustic pipes on computer screens

only andy wonders why
the color of it on his printout
isn’t as vibrant as the one there on the screen

andy walks around the library
vexed by the complexity of the color wheel

oh, there’s samantha!
oh, there’s dave!

then he’ll fall asleep in one of the chairs
waking an hour later in a happy stupor

wanting to see the smooth pipes online

before he heads home for lunch
or to the dollar store

for a box of lemonheads
or maybe something sweet.

John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections, three novels, and the novella Wolves of Berlin Play Amateur Night at the Flute and Fiddle Pub (Alien Buddha Press 2024). He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Who? What? Why? (Where’s Your Evidence?)

I will start this off, but then move to afar..
“Where is my wealth,
just what is the problem, who can I turn to?”

Well, confront this mirror,
take a long stare, and what do you see?
If you lie it’s to thee;
you cheat at solitaire and
pretend you don’t see;

like letting your children always come first,
by fudging the board,
then hitting the world straight into a door 
that is usually open, but they still can’t afford.

“You’re the wrong class, your money’s too short,”
the banker sniggers, as you state your retort:
“I have what I have, just loan me some more”
“Password and email, how long have you lived there?
And can you remember. .your five previous doors?”
“Think it was S6 something, something..”
“Sorry, sorry sir, but that just won’t do..”

Andrew Portman is a sometime poet and writer based in Sheffield, England.

Undressed Gardens

Bells pause stick figure ennui
in the clouded vestibules of
another bonfire ragamuffin
sentry engulfed in yacking
standardized marble rye. Eek,
dripping like a mangled tome
carrying excited ventricles
throughout comatose car wrecks.
An abysmal squid, drunk, also
sauntering, mainly verbally
opaque.

Transparency would not taint
our fuselage dipsticks unless
tarantula humming were left
beneath the trailblazing jets
slowly sinking. Wanton, used,
catching streaks of permanent
staplers. Once, revoking globes,
the tiresome affidavit did a
granular spit take. Nervously,
another flyball corpse shouted
into the socialist void lipstick
avalanche.

Within our diabolical trends,
newly appointed surgical runts
basked in the enigma of a glue
sniffing rainbow. Smirk. Jump.
Narrow, though frolicking. If
our stamp collections could
speak in tongues, we’d bury our
microphones in the makeshift
cherry sequences.

Irrational lungs squelch yawns.

Misstated futuristic uncles spraying
fertilizer into the nostrils of paint
can hurdles. Desiccated shoehorns
maintain impervious ear canals
while shrugging. Into the fire,
out of the hovel, before an otter
has time to look up.

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer. He is a member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of O! fragmented glories (Argotist Ebooks) and Prismatic Fissures (C22 Press). He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com

Yea

Never followed the

Na,

Forged,

Failed to find the keys

The place where fable blended

w/ fury.

Tears abound when I said

Who claimed their goal

Heavens.

A former collegiate offensive lineman and football coach for 26 years, Dan Provost’s poetry has
been published both online and in print since 1993. He is the author of 15 books/chapbooks. His
latest, Wolf Whistles Behind the Dumpster was released by Roadside Press in November 2022.
He has been twice nominated for The Best of the Net and has read his poetry throughout the
United States. He lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura, and dog Bella.

Who’s Out There?

i hate it
when i look
into the night
and see
nothing but darkness –
no twinkling stars
and crescent moon
or porchlight
for me.

but contrary to
hoping for
a light
at the end
of the tunnel –
i’d rather not
meet
the face
of the killer
(jagged-toothed,
sunken-eyed,
blood-thirsty)
that i expect
to see
every time
i pull back
the curtain.

Megan Diedericks writes poetry and fiction, everything from meek to macabre can be found in between the lines. Her debut poetry collection: “the darkest of times, the darkest of thoughts” is available on Amazon. Find her on Instagram: @meganreflects, or visit her website (bit.ly/megandiedericks) for more information.

Congress of the Dying

if found
a kite
we’d sprout

faded
a floriculture
wouldn’t

wilt
if thought
bloom

affirmed
shine
freesia

arranged
radical
shade

Brian Le Lay is a multidisciplinary writer and sound artist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in places like BOMBFIRE, Sledgehammer Lit, dadakuku, Password, Unlikely Stories, Scud, and re-mediate.

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.