Free World

With heads bowed as in silent prayer, but fingers locked behind our necks as if we were under
arrest, we knelt facing the wall in a coldly lit corridor of Lakeside Elementary School, safe, they
said, from the blast wave. We didn’t object or question. We didn’t admit fear or doubt. It was
enough to be told throughout childhood that we lived in what they called the “Free World.”
When minutes later the air raid drill was over, we marched in an orderly line like soldier ants
back to our classroom. The world is still a funny kind of free. Whereas in Mexico they say
“whiskey” to get people to smile for a photo, in the U.S. we say “money.”

Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

Mirrorground Fair Narcissus

(To Steve Sassmann)

In the funhouse mirror, stuck
in those infinite births,
I see the distortions of me.

Fairground grass eats my ankles,
so do
the ice follies and other narcissus.

I touch the glass; it gurgles, streams
a river of whisky;
under his distilled breath the ticket man
says that I can cross it
but for that charges will be extra.

This year too, I may not dare.

The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

Sunny

Sunny was a giant water turtle
living on the wide bend in the river.
Someone said he was shot
sunning on a rock.
Others heard he was stuffed
and displayed in a museum.
Some even say he was captured
and lives in a tank in a rich man’s mansion.
Everyone misses Sunny,
especially the children
dreaming of riding on his back,
as he swims the river of light.

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write in the middle of the night with a grin and grimace and a flame in his heart.  He can be found on Twitter @papapoet.

MY DAUGHTER

Is only three feet
Long and now older
In years than me

She wakes me
Each morning
And nibbles my ear

Gently taps
Me on the head
With her paw

Stares at me
With what most
Of us all lack

True & unconditional
Love

Her eyes
Telling me
That she is
Real

In an unreal
World

R.M. Engelhardt is a poet, writer & author whose work over the last 30 years has been published in such journals as Thunder Sandwich, Full of Crow, Rusty Truck, Writers’ Resist, Dry Land Lit, Rye Whiskey Review, Hobo Camp Review & many others. He currently lives & writes in Upstate NY and his  books of poetry are entitled “DarkLands” (Published By Whiskey City Press 2019) & “We Rise Like Smoke Poems Psalms & Incantations”  (Published by Dead Man’s Press Ink 2021). His new book of poems is entitled “RAW Poems By R.M. Engelhardt 2023”

All books available on Amazon.com

Bee Balm and Lemongrass

Our blooming back yard is bursting with color.
The roses are lining the fence and smolder like a small fire in bright oranges and reds.
The white ones, however, are my favorites.
The birds thieved the blueberries long ago.
The possums have been through the tiny pumpkin patch.
The neighborhood cats will piss on anything that doesn’t move.
Clover springs up everywhere.
I remember last year when you flung handfuls of seed into the air.
Were we celebrating something?
The humming birds come for the Bee Balm and stay for the Aphids.
On this mild May evening, I smoke a cigarette then pull up a stalk of lemongrass.
It has a vaguely sweet aftertaste.
I lounge here at the back of the house, my thoughts leaving me alone for a moment.
Soon, the insufferable mosquitoes will arrive wanting to get drunk on my blood.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry, prose, reviews and collages published around the world.
He has edited his own poetry journal, FEARLESS for the past thirty years. He has authored sixteen
chapbooks, including Incessant Shining (2011, Alternating Current Press).His latest books: Cease To
Destroy, Just Another Small Town Story and The Mirror Masks Nothing, a co-authored book with John Patrick Robbins published by Whiskey City Press, are now available on AMAZON.

Postcards

Downeast our last resort 
to turn a deaf ear to the past, 
yet the windup of our twenty-year swim
finds us stork-legged and shilly-shally. 

Our old seaside junk shop 
sells impossible bottle boats 
and postcards of Edwardian holidays—
youngbloods of Brideshead revisiting the sea

their tea-colored eyes consumptively
fixed on the white-and-red-striped puppet booths,
until they can scarcely look out for tears
as Punch and Judy slap sticks and cross swords.

Knees bared, you applaud
the bathing machines pulled by horses 
up and down the beach like swimmers
synchronized with the rising and falling tide.

The sky is post-office red. 
The sea cracks the siltstones 
and the waves, gleaming like hedge-sparrow eggs 
spill and pool and tint the sand.

We pull our rigging 
through the guide holes
slyly questioning but never knowing how to reply—
our boat punchless in impossible land.

Damon Hubbs is the author of the chapbook ‘The Day Sharks Walk on Land’ (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His latest chapbook, ‘Charm of Difference,’ is forthcoming from Back Room Poetry. Recent poems have been published at Lothlorian Poetry Journal, South Broadway Press, Eighteen Seventy Press, and Book of Matches. Twitter @damon_hubbs.  

I Grew Up in a Brewery Town 

I grew up in a brewery town. 
A third of the population worked for a single employer. 

A fleet of trucks lined up at the back loading docks each day. 
All the suds shooting off down the highway. 

A production and distribution hub for many twist cap destinations. 
Many friends had family that worked at the plant. 

Employees got a free case of beer each month. 
Along with a well-paying union gig.  

When the Molson plant closed down, 
there was a depression for many years. 

People survived, they usually do. 
Getting jobs down in the city an hour’s drive away, 
so that the brewery town became a commuter town. 

Everyone had to pay for their beer now. 
And they were drinking more than ever. 

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.

Holy War

I can’t feel my feet in the fire
and can’t afford a drink in heaven.

A hundred ways to drive down the mountain without snow tires.
Deer and a salt lick and a tree felled on a wet road my father

haunted with his shotgun and a hat.
There ought to be a clear cut exit through these trees—

ought to be laws against acts committed by a man on a Mission from God.
Somewhere, right now, that man has his finger on a trigger.

Michael Dwayne Smith has work haunting many literary houses, including The Cortland Review, New World Writing, Chiron Review, Third Wednesday, Heron Tree, Heavy Feather Review, and ONE ART; he’s been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. A Professor Emeritus in Education and Educational Technology, he lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family and rescued horses.

Rear View

A bridge is burning where
you have been.

Black smoke and flames
just before the fall.

Despite the warnings to
Not look back! you do.

Despite the side view mirrors,
the rear-view mirror that
suggests: objects are closer
than they appear, you look.

Up ahead, another bridge
is on fire: smoke clouds,
falling ash, flames.

Heavy water rain, pitch dirty
and oil coated, hammers
the windshield, shatters the glass

into crystals of dry ice
that burn like fire ants
burrowing beneath the skin.

Still, you drive on past the road
closed, the do not enter signs.
There is no other choice.

Alan Catlin is a six decade warrior of the small press scene. He has pomes in recent issues of Beatnik Cowboy, Home Planet News, Chamber Magazine and Synchronized Chaos. he has full length books forthcoming from Roadside Press, Impspired and Kelsay Books.

Illusions

Where I find my quiet
a pinhole reflection
feeling close to the faraway
(absent)
from the now
freedom captivating
embroidered illusions
colouring my eyes
(present)
I am a distraction
a dusted human shape
free floating
a minute detail
creating fantasies in dreams
(erasing)

I move silently
grieving senseless pain
phantoms of chaos
hang in a vacuum
sculptures of air
hug me tightly
in the emptiness
spinning delights
(quietly)

Sinead Mcguigan, a poet and psychology graduate from University College Dublin Ireland
writes poetry that explores the human condition and the deepest emotions connected to
experience. Sinead wrote her first solo collection A Gift and a Curse while recovering from
cancer; her new book Unbound is also available on Amazon. Sinead’s main interests are
travel, concerts and art. She often collaborates with artists and have appeared alongside
their work in many publications .
You can read more of her poetry on Instagram/ Facebook@sineadmcgpoetry