Phase 3

Dockyard green, more rupture
than relic; green scars
cracking concrete, green fists
punching back the tide.
Even six feet down
an embankment of mud
green roots fester
and cling. The fouled salt
of the river only serves
to toughen their grip:
the tide washes green
downriver, quicklimed
to the sea
where I cups it in my hands,
my face a green mirror;
baptising new eyes
a darker shade of dream.

Ian Mullins bales out from Liverpool, England. Collections include Laughter In The Shape Of A Guitar (UB, 2015). Almost Human (Original Plus, 2017), Masks and Shadows (Wordcatcher, 2019), Take A Deep Breath (Dempsey & Windle, 2020) and Dirty Sweet (Anxiety Press, 2023).

An Autumn Sonata

for a summer through smoked glass,
darkly, all the empty lawn chairs,
deserted chaise loungers, blackened
cooking pits, wrought iron rusting amid
scattered ashes; all the metal hoops
of the abandoned croquet court:
wooden mallets, striped balls, painted
stakes signifying the end and the smell
of low tide by the Sound. Mother's last
cigarettes still burning in a glass ash tray,
the dead floating in Styrofoam coffee
cupping dregs, milk scum and spent
stick matches; the smoking, matched sets
of horse hair recliner chairs, canvas covered
gliders and rattan end tables on the screened-
in, against the elements, porch; all the black
holes of the frayed oriental throw rugs,
generations old, the scattered piles of
living room leaves, burning refuse, cracked
sticks and wadded newspapers, Sunday sections
and all the other days of the week kindling
for the lasting fire of her days and nights
here, working on a new classic repertoire
for two hands, piano with sprung wires
and disconnected pedals, broken chopsticks for
that infernal night, when smoke gets in your eyes.

Alan Catlin has been publishing in the small presses, littles and university magazines since the 70’s which, basically, just makes him old.  His next book is How Will the Heart Endure from Kelsay Books about the life and times of Diane Arbus.

Hera

Ashamed.
Your desire
is my humiliation.
Weighted by this anchor,
drowning in the cross-currents,
I profess no needs of my own;
I live in blind obedience,
delving inward to escape.

Sarah Daly is an American writer whose work has appeared in twelve literary journals including Umbrella Factory Magazine, Synchronized Chaos, The Olivetree Review, Blue Lake Review, and elsewhere.

Fate Is Fate, Mate

Huxley’s Four-Tenths of a Gram
… from Study Room…
to Mind-Voyager… the Path
is Serpentine and Flexible
… we never Emerge from
Chapters the Same as on Entry.
Slipshod… as long as Results
can Speak for Themselves…
I barely ‘Scratched The Surface’,
and couldn’t Scattergun, even
Loosely, without… Succeeding.
Carson McCullers, FAMOUS
for her Southern Gothic…
appeared to me as I was coming
around from Surgery in 2022
at Derriford Hospital, and said
“You haven’t kissed ‘Her’ yet
… your Changing has begun…
opening wide like a Jeobseon.”
I pothole ‘Reality’, when Alone,
I do not ‘Dwell’ or ‘Stagnate’,
you just Can’t… after Returning
from those Doorways… Brighter.

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.

Box Inaugural

This isn’t the box
I was in
When I closed my eyes
Or, maybe
But from the outside now
Inside was constricting
Concluding
I admit, also apprehensive
I mean, not the box
But I
Now, still “I”
Eyes open
Affixed on box – outside
Aware, unbound
Beginning
Now is the time
To see what’s next
To turn around

MH Clay lives and works in Dallas, Texas. He has a poetry page at
https://madswirl.com/author/mhclay/. His poetry chapbook, Perhaps This Rain, was
published in 2007 with a second edition released in 2010. He has published two poetry
collections, sonoffred, Rebel Poetry in Ireland, 2015 and Angst, Mad Swirl Press, 2016
with a second edition released in 2022.

Early September Poem

drizzle everything outside wet
yes, welcomed by many
too dry for a month or two
now a few brown leaves curl up in their exile
cornflake wet
those leaves slippery to the foot
the car window beaded with drops
sky gray
enough light to still inspire the day forward
instead of going in
shutting one's self
in the computer
all the news THEY want you to see
too limiting that mode of thought
better to get a little wet
to glory in the hibiscus
beautiful orange on a gray day
the grass early September green
the mind filled with its own drizzle
and it whets the appetite
for life
still on the branch
green
though the season's change is coming
the fire of reminiscence will light
the shorter days ahead

Dan Cuddy is currently an editor of the Loch Raven Review. Recently he has had poems published in the End of 83, Broadkill Review, , the Pangolin Review, Madness Muse Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, the Rats’s Ass Review, Roanoke Review, the Amethyst Review, Synchronized Chaos and, Gargoyle.

Statues come to life

statues come to life in distant lands,
horned agents crawl out of sinkholes;

somewhere someone’s living his dream, others perish in brutal nightmares.

nightingales disappear, sparrows are shot down,
no one’s allowed to rise up but the pigeons swarming the squares.

staring down the bottomless pit, the poker table set with one chair empty.
reserved, thank you very much; the dragons still soar over

flaming meadows—where’s the butterfly net, the desire for the great hunt?
under the bridge all dreamers vanish; self-inflicted exile for those
born too late and too early. wrong time, wrong place—story of too many lives.

silent tears and murderous statues, palaces crumble down to pieces,
skid row turns into a mansions-filled graveyard—no one’s left to shed a single tear.

we’re still here, everyone’s still around; even when the sky fell, we remained.
flames extinguished and dragons murdered with one simple word
no one ever heard.

harrowing grey mornings and nights of knee-deep snow; welcome to

whatever this is, nightmare or dream,

as another hole tears the ground open and from within leap
infernal flames and a familiar voice come on over, it’s time.

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 in various places, such as Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Fixator Press, Outcast Press, Piker’s Press, The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.

ditto

dancing gentle on broken glass
shards of trickle a reminder smudge
of my still alive continuing

did a muffled dream breathe isolated
or was combination itinerant scribe
nature presenting elementary grasp

nobody knew i played in dangerous
why discard compensation ongoing
endure dependent relies on silent

it was murky rain on shattered past
that spelt me your eyes meant truth
only a fox smiles of not eat fresh kill

they must realize decades
of knock us down bred pointless
achieved their angst and our win

i’m no real poet of anything actual
a lame assembly devised as nomad
became art form notorious slap

would the cluster believe joyful grows
from non-adherence be normal
essential queer chime takes final bow

ditto answers all when constructing
sliding chapters in pandemic scale
decades taught me heaven belief

(Originally published by Pif Magazine, 2020)

Stephen House has won many awards as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. He has had many plays published by APT and two chapbooks published by ICOE Press. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

Night Comes

Night comes with its dark cape.
It envelops the tree in the yard 
and its branches and leaves.
It feeds on the tree’s sap. Night
comes to touch everything in 
sight and never apologizes for
its darkness. It will walk without
feet. It will make one blind and
conjure the dead. Night will come
like a perfect stranger. It is born
as the day goes to sleep. Night 
will lean on you with all its strength.
There is no fighting it. Just fall asleep
and let the darkness do its thing.

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

My Brain is not a swim up bar

They say
if you smile
it actually makes
you feel happy

So when I drink
I pretend to be buzzed

When I’m on
vacation
I pretend to relax

I lean my head back
and say

“Boy, Howdy
is this relaxing or what?”

Behind the scenes
my cells
are doing major
reconstruction

excavation
demolition

feasibility studies
gearing up for inspections

catastrophic failures

But I still daydream
that my brain is
a swim up bar
instead of
general contractor
of a mixed use
zoning site

Melanie Browne is a poet and fiction writer from Texas.
She has been published in various anthologies including
This is Poetry Volume IV: Poets of The South and 
Cowboys and Cocktails: Poetry from the True Grit Saloon