DEPARTING FLIGHT

A mechanized beast
steams with red eyes
in the dull brown dusk air
of an early Denver evening
at the airport in an Uber,
dropped off in the same place
where I first met her, when
I thought I was going to fall in love.
It was a slow climb up the escalator
I originally came down with a hope
I managed to burn down in a
heated couple of weeks
I can barely remember
and that I deeply regret,
a sting everyone saw me feel.

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of “Too Young to Know” (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and “Invasion of the Shadow People” (forthcoming, Luchador Press, 2022).  His work has appeared in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, River Dog, Misfit and The American Journal of Poetry, among others.  He lives and writes in Long Beach, California.  

Gold Leaf

They claim less is more.
And that may ring true in most cases, aside whenever my mind reflects upon you.

Hints of happiness left spilled upon the canvas that embraces my emptiness for seconds at a
time.

A tear traces the lines, as the blood mixes with my mediocre soul.

Love is always a double-edged sword.
I signed the canvas that was our moment forever frozen in time.

John Patrick Robbins, is the editor in chief of the Rye Whiskey Review and The Black Shamrock Magazine. He also has a new book out with Kevin M. Hibshman. The Mirror Masks Nothing from Whiskey City Press. His work has been published here at Fixator Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Piker Press, Lothlorien Journal Of Poetry, San Pedro River Review, The Dope Fiend Daily and Fearless Poetry Zine.

His work is always unfiltered.

Sitting Squarely

Beach chairs are so uncomfortable.
I was sitting squarely for a while
now I’m squirming around
trying out new positions
without success.
I look down at you with envy
lying there.
“Let’s have a change,”
I say, “you try the chair”.
But there’s no budging you
from your comfort zone
and really,
I don’t blame you.
You were right,
we should have bought two beach mats.

First published in Nine Muses Poetry, August 2020

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Journal, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

plucked chicken blues

you don’t need a lamp
to see that cynicism
is just realism
with a higher
Scrabble score

and while you’re at it
behold an old man
telling you to
get off my lawn
and out of my sun

Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (nominated for the 2022 Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award) and Salt Holds No Secret But This.

Joy, Not Enjoy

Ladies free before eleven 
like some misguided  
Cinderella. 

The town  
forever out on  
the town. 

Joy, not enjoy. 
To feel more extreme. 

That handsome browbeat cowlick 
battening down the hatches. 

Expect rough waters  
on the open market. 

Crisis counsellors  
with a face full of $2 dollar drinks 
that go down easy as company  
quicksand. 

That gooseflesh on my neck 
brought back to gaggle. 

The veiny doorman with anger issues  
slamming down some pearly close shave Guido  
over a hipster foosball table kicking cans  
down the road, 
by rote. 

And the giraffes all on stilts. 
Long lines for the bathroom 
on safari… 

I want a feeling I have never felt. 
Some wild-danced aloneness  
that has always been mine. 

In the silent giftwrapped distance. 
A way to breathe again that cannot 
be boxed, beaten or taken. 
Sinking down into the couch. 
Like the captain of my ship, 
a personal scurvy. 

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, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

A Place I Imagined

pulling a suitcase
of clothes from the tube
station entrance. and this
is late august.
2012 – I’ve just
moved to london.
two weeks in some
busy hostel room
full of strangers, the air
strangers breath, the bed-
clothes their bodies. time
to find a flat; some place,
I’ve imagined near
camden. I was 22. somebody
yelled – I am blocking
their stairwell.
tired, full of travel
and buses to london,
and trains. the sky
was wide blue,
full of pigeons and other
grey garbage.
suburbs surrounded,
like rings in a broke
open tree.

DS Maolalai has received nine nominations for Best of the Net and seven for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).

TURRETS

Turrets. Lots of old postcards
With turrets, vintage 1910,
A bank in Buffalo,
Residential streets in Rust Belt towns,
Tastes of another time,
Popular for a while, then not,
Then briefly in vogue again.
Why am I drawn to this?
It comes back,
As of course it always does:
The corner grocery on King Street,
Between Gerry’s house and mine,
Where we would stop in late afternoon,
After a game of catch, or basketball,
One-against-one, the basket his prize
Mounted on the garage
Behind the house on High Street,
Sooty snow shoveled out of the way,
Next to the Chevy dealer,
His home, his father’s office,
Both of them cardiologists
Who smoked.
There were turrets on the
Fine houses still left on High Street,
And on the little store
Where we’d get a cherry popsicle
And talk about the Phillies and the A’s
With Mr. Schneider
Whose family lived upstairs,
In the round room, we called it,
Over the Breyer’s ice cream sign.

Gerry died quite young.

We exchanged Christmas cards
And, toward the end,
An e-mail or two.
Mr. Schneider left no heirs.
I hardly get back
To Pennsylvania at all.
I guess they still make
Cherry popsicles.

Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other
Ladders, published in 2017 by Beech River Books. He is a retired school administrator with ties
to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four months of the year.

Those Days

i liked boise
not a bad dirty old town
up there you see
a big mountain
you can die in 1971.

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006),
Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic
Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine
Press, 2016)

Dregs

Cecil Taylor (piano)/3 Phasis

that year I listened
to so much Cecil
that everything else
sounded soft
and straight, mono
where he pulsed stereo,
all time beating on,
beating back,

sound waves whispering
that musicians take soundings
by tuning forks struck
down their throats,

vibrating to a pulse
Cecil first heard
when his fingers were deep
in the dregs; scraping dishes
in a restaurant spinning
his sides

dirt on his hands
but still dreaming off-beat

Ian Mullins ships out from Liverpool, England. Laughter In The Shape Of A Guitar (UB) struck few chords in 2015. Almost Human (Original Plus) was let loose in 2017. Masks and Shadows (Wordcatcher) took off in 2019. Take A Deep Breath (Dempsey & Windle) followed in 2020.

I PROMISE TO DIE

Another night alone here
In every sense
With all my senses intact for now
And all my nonsense, too.

The room is dark,
Sharp with the moving shadows of the night,
The footsteps louder in the distance than they were the night before –
Made with the black boots of inevitability.

The lightning strikes closer.
The thunder pierces the ear with her bolts.
I’m so tired but I can’t sleep yet.
I will. I’ll sleep eventually
And I’ll rise again
Until I finally can’t.

Not won’t: Can’t.
Life, it can’t kill me.
Only death can kill me
And I hear her black boots clomping on the wet grass
In a distance still far but closer.

The moon outside no shinier, no duller –
Just being the moon.

I promise to die
Only when it’s my time to die
And not to die just because I surrender,
Because I’d rather,
Because I’m afraid.

I’ll only die when the sound of the black boots is blood boiling in my ears.
Only then will it be the time –
I say in my mind with a resolute finality,
Looking up through the window as
The moon smiles the wan crooked smile of someone unbaffled and indifferent,
Stoic and eternal.

 

 

 

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.