Cigarette Couple

Lit by the intersection’s traffic signal
and suburban street lamps,

the cigarette couple’s smoky breath
travels into the cold night,

a man and woman
in worn blue jeans and jackets

cross the empty crosswalk
in perfect stride with one another.

I watch from inside my car,
in the right lane at the red light,

listening to a Mudcrutch song,
Orphan of the Storm,

lyrics telling a Katrina story
over a prayerful organ,

strummed guitars
spurring on thoughts of the couple

as orphans themselves,
on the run for a long time,

their synchronicity of puffs
and strides and lack

of facial expressions,
unheld hands, a symbol

of the unconditional,
things that are unspoken,

whatever their life is now
from how it was,

abandoned in the streets,
a burning between their fingers,

ashes falling on the way to the curb
back into the darkness.

BRIAN HARMAN is a poet living in Southern California. He received his MFA in creative writing from Cal State University, Long Beach. His work has been published in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Misfit Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the author of Suddenly, All Hell Broke Loose!!! through Picture Show Press.

Green Flames

green flames leap through fissures, great cities turn
into lush jungles, ancient forests become
abandoned stone ruins—skyscrapers collapse, sewers are
elevated to the clouds, gutter rats fire up
Cuban cigars—yellow plumes of smoke shot up to
purple clouds washing away blue blood from
cracked sidewalks—lonesome man on a winding
highway, wild-haired and wild-eyed, with a shotgun
takes down all adjectives—brothers from other lives,
morose nights under exploding stars—one last night,
homes burned down, banks exploding, the high men
go low, down to the melting core—burn it down!—
burn it up!—knock it back, throw it down—flames leap
through fissures on former avenues—planes float, ships fly—
children play, men cry—pacifists bleed, soldiers drink—when the
first spaceship landed no one looked up—throughout galaxies love
was sought, it resided nowhere—“pour it strong, Jim”—the end comes!
the cry of the madman in the corner—rum to raid banks, bourbon
to conquer the thinning highway—growls, here they come—we’re
dead—no one
gives a damn.

George Gad Economou holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science and resides in Athens, Greece. His novella, Letters to S., was published in Storylandia Issue 30 and his short stories and poems have appeared in literary magazines, such as The Edge of Humanity Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine. His first poetry collection, Bourbon Bottles and Broken Beds, was published by Adelaide Books in 2021. 

The Enemy of My Enemy Is Probably Also My Enemy, Just Without a Goatee. 

For example, no man can wear beige
and remember the taste of the sun. Look,
Jim, just because you went to private

school doesn’t excuse you from a responsibility
to understand physics. It doesn’t matter how
good you look in lacrosse shorts when they

come to reclaim the fields. Sweat soured
on skin like a father’s gaze. A bell that never
stops ringing. I want to laugh like we used

to, talking shit about the pines. Maybe
you’re right, Jim. Maybe there’s nothing
but quiet cars. The flimsy logic of regret.

There’s a certain way of forgetting
that happens every night when you try
to catalogue what remains. It has to do

with never going into the kitchen,
which is the best way of keeping
the floor clean.

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of thirty books, including his newest poetry collection, The Bottle Episode, and his latest novel The Saviors. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog How to Even, with Michael Gushue: https://medium.com/@howtoeven Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Take Five, Decades Later

Supposedly it is a music
that keeps you young, the
Dave Brubeck Quartet re-
dux, combined age around
300 years, more white hair
than a polar bears’
convention. They try to
belie their age. It is a form
of floating. But. The music.

Is. Old. & without the
transcendent magic of Paul
Desmond they are only
old men going through
the motions / paying the
rent / presenting the past
as it was, not what it should
be with fifty years to change
it in. They want to dance,

but this recycled air is not
for pirouetting. But. They. Go
through some easy steps
until the elderly Brubeck
plays Brahms’ Lullaby as
an encore for the elderly
audience & everyone & the
elderly band realizes it
is way past their bedtime.

Mark Young’s first published poetry appeared over sixty-two years ago. Much more recent
work has appeared in Mad Swirl, Scud, Ygdrasil, Mobius, SurVision, Arteidolia, Unlikely
Stories, & Word For/Word.

car alarm

no one heeds a car alarm blaring
battle-cry wolf
dial 911 for a papercut
yelp for police when you flinch
urban chirp lulls citydwellers to sleep
they’ve slept with the wolf cries so much
when a masked assailant attacks in the night
these windows are deaf to the sound
better you did not speak at all
then your throat would gong and feet would come running

Ethan Cunningham’s recent works appear in The Drabble, HASH Journal, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, and others. He lives in California.

“Continuance”

Decision made
permanently

out back
over the fence

a hundred-mile trek
secluded riverland

hidden between cliffs
paradise

building a large treehouse
on a bank of magical trees

never forgetting
their code of whispers

dreams of heaven’s beam
spotlighting your safe haven

where you’ll never hunger
for peace in the everlasting

continuance
of the river rim
and walks in the soft sand.

A long time ago, Stephen Jarrell Williams was called by some, the Great Poet of Doom…  Now, he writes at night, enthused, and waiting for the Coming Good Dawn.

VIDEO CASSETTES

Emptying the particle-board cabinet
That housed our prehistoric VCR:
VHS cassettes of high school commencements,
Grainy wedding receptions,
Caroline in Oklahoma!, 1986,
Vouchsafed to us in sacred trust,
Even without a means
To live those hours again.
We could, I suppose, have them
Put on DVD,
Assuming there will be a means
To live those hours again.
If not, who will ever know
What her children looked like,
Crawling on the floor,
In New Castle, Delaware,
In 1999.

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.

L’ANGE

I found haiku in my chocolate
I was the first on the rope swing
I woke from the mummy’s bandages
I smiled as the city burned
you all know me well
librettos written in my honor
pop songs tattooed to the cortex
of the reptilian subconscious spy
there’s a toy to be crafted
of each actionable moment
find them at the dollar store
a millennium in the future

Jay Passer’s work has appeared in print and online since 1988. He is the
author of 12 chapbooks, most recently from Alien Buddha Press, The
Cineaste, 2021. A cook by trade. He shares his apartment with a calico
named Bird and a spider plant. Passer lives and works in San Francisco,
the city of his birth.

FAREWELL LETTERS

Begin here.
With a blank sheet of paper perhaps.
And select a pen,
one comfortable in your hands enough
to obey instructions from the head and heart.

Start with a word.
“Dear” will do.
Not “octopus.”
Not “inflammable.”
“Dear” is noncommittal
and pleasant to the eye and ear.

A name is where it
gets tricky.
Forgo the cherished pet one
for something more formal.
Go minimal perhaps.
An initial may look like
a speck on a shirt
but its reader
will know who you mean.

That’s the hard part over with.
The rest of it should just flow.
It helps if you have the
first letter you wrote
five years to the day.
Just change the synonyms to antonyms.

When it’s time to sign off,
anything will do.
“Yours” won’t hurt,
though you’re now not anyone’s.
Then comes your signature.
Slow and dignified,
not your usual quick scrawl.
It will show you’re paying attention.

Then leave it on the kitchen table.
Right there beside the one that was left for you.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

It Doesn’t Add Up:  A Fable

Once upon a time,
in a time when such a thing was still possible,
a man handed the cashier twenty dollars
and went out to fill up his gas tank

The car needed only
seventeen dollars-and-change worth of gas
The man went inside to get his change
and decided to get a coffee
that would cost a dollar-eighty-nine
The cashier had no idea how to subtract
a dollar-eighty-nine from the two-something change

If the cashier didn’t have a co-worker
the man might still be there

Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) and has two more full-length books, Euclid Creek Book Two, and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in the publication pipeline.