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 

In a Down Economy

Her campaign rests on
hypnotic interventions
& a game of make-
believe that links the
viral envelope with
the virus core. There
is a general embargo
on all belligerents.
Hurt turtles prolong
the lethargy. The
liberal use of indigo
creates ersatz rainbows.

Mark Young has just collated Threescore and Ten, a PDF of the covers he selected as editor
for all seventy issues of Otoliths. It’s available for viewing or free downloading at Sandy
Press, https://www.sandy-press.com/blog/threescore-and-ten-the-images-of-the-covers-
from-otoliths-may-2006-to-august-2023/

He who made a molehill

out of a neglected mountain before turning his eyes and interest elsewhere westward,
staring defiantly at the retreating sun, was never one to mix metaphors with antimatter.
His appetite remains wet. His hunger grows glistening fangs. His pores now pour as his
curiosity peeks. He wonders who baited his breath with anchovies. Alas, there’s no
pudding to proof this claim. It has nothing to do with time’s flying incessant buzz. Or
waltzing on poached eggs. Nor is it a widdle in a haystack or the exact answer to how
many ways a cat may be skinned alive. (See Planck’s area). Or was that a mongoose?
Non possums. It matters not since it isn’t part of any sheep’s pluck recipe. Teeth
optional. Taste buds not needed. Limited synapse transmission a must. Apply within.
That slow train a-comin’ ran you over miles ago. You may have seen the brakeman
waving his red caboose. Even the cowcatcher cared not for your presence, though the
last man to see you did grudgingly acknowledge your inconvenient presence.

Post-Covid, the author has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Vanderbilt Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Misfit Magazine, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, New Orleans Review, & Burningword. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for the symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry. His 200th Prose poem was recently published. 

so humble

the bitches will make a pie out of him

become the media

with tv screen eyes and monitor lips pulsating digital button flashing genitals on the surface of a
plastic moon at minor crescent half past 4am.

hips of guns

staggering poverty against unspoken

lamentation

inflation

Mike Zone is the Editor in Chief of Dumpster Fire Press, co-founder of Deadstar:Control,
manager of the band Tail From the Crypt and producer for the record label Paranormal Vinyl
Cassettes & Hair Xtensions. He is the author of: Wonderful Turbulence, Fuck You: A Fucking
Poetry Chap, & The Earth Was Shaking For Days and Shedding Dark Places (almost) along
with being the co-author of The Grind and Razorville. A frequent contributor to: Alien Buddha
Press and Mad Swirl. His work has been featured in: A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Horror Sleaze
Trash, Better Than Starbucks, Piker Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Synchronized Chaos and Cult
Culture Magazine.

Rich Man Vibes

When I was young, we stole
car logos and hung them
from our necks
BMW, Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce—
trophies robbed from rich men, busy fighting wars in boardrooms and bedrooms
with shocked mirrors pinned to the ceiling
and slaves chained inside glass cubes.
The rich men
wore floral dresses
under parasols in their sunny back gardens on weekends,
struggled to mate in disabled parking spots,
smashed Rubik’s cubes with hammers because their inner child drove into trees.
But us kids were making a statement—
collages of fucked up automobiles,
while standing on skyscrapers in suits with slick hair
because our dads never could.
We snatched the horizon by its throat and drowned it in the Thames, as steering wheels and
car tyres floated on by.

Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Wrongdoing Magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters and elsewhere. He was runner-up in The Forge Literary Flash Fiction competition ‘22. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions ’23. 

Darkness Without

derailment of everything, moments of
ugly truths that emerge out of the
dark waters like the apocalyptical devil;
stories written on an island a crazed man considered
the back of a beast, nothing’s coming
true yet unless you drink too much absinthe or shoot
up too much junk. endless mornings of harrowing pain,
of drowning in the acidic pool of guilt over forgotten
spoken words or erased actions. death in the stream, death
in the ocean, and in the sky; death everywhere. it’s the darkness
of the noon that gets you, the long parade of
nightmarish clowns bearing the signs of a sinful
past residing deep into the emptiness of four
bottles of rotgut.

Currently residing in Greece, George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and is the author of Letters to S. (Storylandia), Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds (Adelaide Books), and Of the Riverside (Anxiety Press). His words have also appeared, amongst other places, in Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.

THE MAXIM GUNS ARE ROARING

The Maxim Guns are roaring,
The bodies are falling like blades of grass in the mower’s own blade.
The bombs are heaved overboard,
The bodies become splinters no bigger than toothpicks.
The hill must be taken.
The town must be overtaken.
Don’t forget to burn it down on the way out.
The wine is flowing from broken bottles.
The blood is flowing from broken bodies.
Another needle stuck in,
Another bayonet at the end of a flame.
Another bloodshot eye peeping through the scope.
Shoot above the shadows.
Keep shooting.
Piss in the street while you light your cigarette.
The poison cloud lowers from overhead.
The lungs expand, contract.
There are rags in your dilapidated boots but
Still the mud gets in.
Your toenails are rotten, waterlogged and green.
That cough is getting worse.
Meanwhile, shoot first and ask questions later.
The rats will feast until bloated –
If not tonight then probably tomorrow.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection from Cajun Mutt Press is now available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6W2YZDP . fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

Temporary Shoreditch

[Breaking… apart… from]… Bookends
… Pollard Oak & Green Leather
dimmed his Enthusiasm for Endeavours
… the word ‘Derivatives’…
shoehorned [Much Needed] Depth
… and, one must never forget
that there is a waiting Lynch Mob…
only a Copper’s Whistle… away.
[Hit ‘em with the gorgeous taste
of Welsh-salted buttered crumpets.]
Why ‘That’ dress?… for Christ Sake!!!
… eye-roll on Aisle No. 5…
and the best thing about being ‘Single’
is the lack of Repercussions….
and your own ‘Clock’ in everything.
Although, when we hold-hands…
and sit just like this… I understand
the language of Woodland Waterfalls.
I am leaving the Big Smoke [Choke]
and the City Ladies… far behind…
to British Rail ‘Today’ into ‘Tomorrow’.

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. 

Canning Rings

A granite staircase switchback of exposed combs
leads to views of Sand Beach and the Gulf of Maine.
Ladders and rungs rock scramble the queen cage
like casket bier pins —the mortician of bees in blue.

You’d wrap your knee
as if you were going to hike
but we both knew you’d say
the old tennis injury was too much.

You could’ve just said you didn’t like heights,
didn’t like being exposed, naked for the cliff
face to gape at, for the falcon to see through.
The honey wasn’t worth it

and you preferred blueberries, anyway.
Picking a bushel in Machias
and dancing barefoot in the kitchen,
canning rings around your wrists
the jam bangling on the stove

both of us forgetting to stir
forgetting the bees in blue;
our love already breaking down
with years too thick to remember

Damon Hubbs: film & art lover / pie bird collector / lapsed tennis player / his latest chapbook, ‘Rimbaud’s Lighthouse,’ is forthcoming from Naked Cat Press 

Lying on a Pillow in the Valley of Death

You would hardly turn your best guesses to hazards   
of my present relaxation, bettering each of these pudgy slingshot years   
lying on a pillow in the valley of death, that deep electric hum   
of fingers through the mud: the marriage, heart, head, money, life lines   
all on neon palm reader’s sabbatical, that scathing basic bitch teal you find   
everywhere these days, in the pleated refutations of week old socks and   
under thousand year old trees;  
I could never truly live with another if that meant a complete   
and utter surrender of the words –  
I made an agreement many lifetimes ago;   
there are many moving parts, but the promise is simple as churned butter   
which should explain why I remain so relaxed in the enterprising trenches,   
my hands behind the head I was born with,   
tingling toes over the side of a bed that once took almost 14 months   
to pay for on the installment plan. 

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.