Fog

This noise is taking me away
from the moves
that quickens me.

The guffaws don’t annoy:
This combat
is with me, myself.

Remember, there are others
who buck more sorrowful
summons?

Those unheard stories
will never disembark at the shore.
Is my stanchion secure?

Sanjeev Sethi has authored seven books of poetry. He has been published in over thirty
countries. In December 2022, he edited Dreich Planet # 1 for Hybriddreich, Scotland. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the prestigious National Defence Academy. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Jacques LaCey is an amateur racket maker, a wordsmith of questionable talent and a modern day acid casualty, currently working from Spahn Terrace.

I Live for the Hunt

I live for the hunt
chasing dreams
racing goals.
Blue haze, orange desires
never knowing the wherefore.
My fingers curl around the sun
pulling down fire from the sky.
Burning, blinding
grail of life.
I seek green
youth of dawn.
Crumpled paper holds my truth
roadway to the stars.
The scent is beyond my reach
it intoxicates me.
I follow paths
brown, gray
forever in pursuit.

(Originally published by The RavensPerch, August 2021)

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year. Her bio is featured in the “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers” 2020 and 2021.

writhes Of villain

emerges alien stallion prove
provocative cleavage departure
sully chemical comatose sense
apartness radiates empty apt
nest lukewarm fitted sheet
consumed knocking worst
knew notes millennium joist
heebie jeebies coffee grounds
full fritz nightlight subway claw
hall quipped expressive surrender
shimmering hilltop crayons
crawled subsided subjective
occasion melt bearded imp
funniest surcharge magic carpet
proverbial nose guard wise
beefcake trapdoor snore floor
sorely thwarted regard lens
flaring scarred wiggle rib
buns confront flex able
forearm charm brace tube
rumbled wrap balcony shine
biographical scapegoat host
perspective tied up link
acquaintance trolley
snow inclines rewinds
street level barrel kid
be rid skid markings over
toasted bean seem seething
tiny mustache shame

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker. He is member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books peeping sardine fumes (RANGER Press) and [Ruptured] >> Schematic <<  MAZES (Sweat Drenched Press). He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com

Powder Kegs and Playing Cards

Switch-up your cartomancy fingers
… for warm, tingling hands
of gentle, caring ‘Healing’.
Before the Storm came crashing
… we were busy
nest-weaving emotions
from a pair
into a Union-Monolith.
You’re all curves and no curls,
eyes like beasts in heat…
and I’m no longer
doing cartwheels and handstands
for your playful, smiling attention.
This is where ‘Nature’
meets the ‘City’,
the throbbing becomes
tribal drumming.
We Ritual, almost unconsciously,
yet, completely,
and clairvoyantly in sync.
You start and finish my war-dance
… and you are the powder keg
which Kicks-Off my EXPLOSION!

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. 

Piss n Unholy Water

The damned get the party and the judgmental are left with the mess.

You seem lost as well. Let’s turn out the lights and see what else we can find in between the
sheets.

Sit down and tell me your worries.
Call me whatever, as I won’t even pretend to care but I will play whatever character gets you off.

Black rope binds as do equally lies we maintain to appease invisible forces.

To steal passions as we taste nocturnal pleasures to summon nothing but hangovers with some
blurred memories entwined.

John Patrick Robbins, is a souther gothic writer whose work has been published in, Horror Sleaze Trash, Disturb The Universe, Spill The Words Press, San Pedro River Review, Piker Press, Svartedauden Zine, The Dope Fiend Daily and here at Fixator Press.

Acceptance

Caught in the mood
closing in with a constant of chaos
everywhere and almost everyone
bent over or bent sideways
pointing fingers in all directions
down and up and within

coughing fits
teary eyes
aching sides
gasping for air
grabbing others
into a fallen crowd

collapsing on the streets
all the land cradling our cries
looking up blinking back
all the days and nights
hanging in our throats
disbelief

dreams and reality mix
can’t help the dizziness
choke for help

and snapping out
sudden return

to where we started
just before

the mood closed in
with our sledge hammer
acceptance.

Stephen Jarrell Williams spends his time between California and Texas…  One extreme to the other in this spinning world going in the wrong direction. He can be found on Twitter (X) @papapoet

Metal Detectors Find Nothing but Iron Maiden 

Trying to stay afloat – don’t want nobody to be my willing Titanic, 
it’s like the convoy system sailing back across the pond, 
all those hours storming the beachhead and metal detectors 
find nothing but Iron Maiden, twin guitars slamming out  
another heavy Mengele riff, knock-off band shirts outnumbering  
the real McCoy almost 30-1, but the passion is always there 
even if the Christ has taken a serious flyer, everyone hoping to be 
redeemed like expired coupons, relying on public transit to  
get home and private confessions for all the rest – 
where I live, the empty in-ground pools almost climb 
back out of themselves, arched spiders of a curious pink back, 
carpet bombing extravaganzas of fallen acorn season,  
long sleeves pulled up like a retractable foreskin  
that cannot stop listening to records that move the needle, 
not the one you put in your arm, no no!  But that original  
turntable giant that built this entire skyline, flew  
themselves around the world and killed it when they got there;  
if there is a history, make it yours and never mine: 
mites over all the aging cheese bricks, 
these freckled Futurist arms on the long reach, 
and yes, so many dark red bottles of our shared  
razzle dazzle late night wine. 

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.

Out of My Control

Here we go.
Who took the rose petals
from my thorn flower?
What is this?
I took a low blow straight
from the depths of hell.

I’m alive,
but I’m fresh out of dough.
It’s out of my control.
My money’s
spent as soon as I’m paid 
for shit bought years ago.

Do the math.
Life is so unkind when
poverty hounds us all.
Go to bed
and raise the white flag high
in the air and retreat.

Hit the streets.
Put up a mansion tent
where there is no rent.
Pay no tax
like that crooked old Prez
and save your money

for rainy days.
Tell the creditors it
is out of my control.
My money’s
run out to pay for shit
bought many years ago.

Luis lives in California and continues to  work in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Fixator Press, and Kendra Steiner Editions.

slimy and naked and bewildered and

heedlessly twitching over the concrete,

born to be disremembered
like the earthworm
escaping the clutches
of the moppet
by vanishing deep
into the soil,

but forever missing this
personal pile of dirt
big enough
to entomb
the jerking self.

Tobias Seim is some guy who was born and raised in Germany. He quit school, learned nothing, and now spends his time reading and writing. At least occasionally. He is the author of to hunt down dreams like rabid wolves. Find more at www.seimtobias.com