Drums

Down the hill behind him
shots were again being fired.
Each explosion split a thought
into pieces that drifted in different directions.
He put on earphones then
and turned on native American shamanic drums
and followed their rhythm to a place and time
where everything that happened
was part of the same current
that would lead anyone who followed
to where it
and all else
both began
and came to an end.

Mrs. Tinsley Calls the City

The cars are parked too close to her house.  
Her neighbour is feeding the raccoons again.  
Right from the hand, against local wildlife regulations.  

Mrs. Tinsley calls the city.  
Kids out on the street at all hours.  
Surely there must be a curfew.  

And on a school night.  
Their parents not securing their garbage   
as per municipal guidelines.  
That comes with a hefty fine.  

And the noise from the party house down the street.  
Last time came with a warning.  

Mrs. Tinsley has been put on hold.  
They will surely hear about this as well. 

To Those I’ve Wounded

What I didn’t do
I should’ve done,
and what I did do
I shouldn’t have, 
and now I can’t
escape my own
history, a stench
like dead-flower
water in a vase.

After I die I’ll be dead for a spell

let’s say, let’s say six months after I’m dead
–what will I look like then deader than dead
if that’s possible? Sure, my body will
shrink some and in, say, seven hundred years
I might be indistinguishable from
nothing at all, as if I’d never died
and was never buried although fossils
are a Hell of a lot older. Bowing
before some old dead sucker’s headstone here
in our churchyard cemetery I want
to see the person, what he looks like now,
what rags or jewelry might remain and hair
and belt and shoe buckles and wonder if
any life is left that he might lend me.

Between Me And You

Everything you do is
determined
not by you
but by something
through being you
fits in with the manner
in which the puppet master
has you acting
because there is no free will
and everything you do
from the slightest scratching
of your nose
is preordained
you are a raggedy-Ann doll,
a floppy-disc,
already imprinted
way before birth
therefore what to do
except identify
the cosmos as you already
determined
go with the flow
call it a good day’s
warble
and continue the dialogue,
for sanity, to be sure,
is tentative.

The Turtle Crossing Guard

Once, a boy only wanted to be a crossing guard. He knew there were yellow school
crossings and yellow deer crossings and yellow cattle crossings and even yellow bear
crossings. Those didn’t interest him. He only wanted to stand at a yellow turtle crossing,
with a stop sign and a sash. He wanted to protect their slow way across. After school he
practiced sign angles. Kept a whistle handy. Could say Stop in seven languages. His
mother knit a colorful variety of sashes. His favorite was purple, so perfect for an off day.

Quatorze: juillet

The tracking device be-
neath the skin be-
comes an alarm clock.

He wakes, tripped; a
loop of marching bands
& syncopated Sousa. Sand

beneath the skin, be-
hind the eyes. Personal
trigger, not brainwash-

ed but conditioning
without product. Which
hand to move when the

clock starts ticking, what
call does nature answer?

Some Distant Point

There’s a man with a blur for a face,
a can of beer and a cigarillo, standing
in a corner of a fancy living room, somewhere,
with a hardwood floor, a Persian rug and
an empty chair in the other, a bay window
between them, showing us a Spring day of
impressionist blues, yellows and greens
with a barbwire fence and an old dirt road,
trailing off to some distant point on the horizon,
and each post crowned with an old boot.

Weathering

Hard facts pummel us daily like the wind and the rain.
We stand like statues, growing brittle round the edges while attempting
to remain implanted in this harsh, damaging reality.

Life may be a game.
The players shift places.
The board remains the same.

We rise from the ocean netted with debris and what the waves wouldn’t swallow.
We are nearly convinced that we shall survive whatever situation and circumstance
happen to toss our way.
We have made ourselves believe in the possibility of tomorrow.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry, prose, reviews and collages published around the world, most recently in Punk Noir Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Piker Press, The Crossroads, Drinkers Only, 1870, Synchronized Chaos, Yellow Mama, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Literary Yard, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Medusa’s Kitchen. 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).He received a BA in Liberal Arts from Union University/Vermont College in 2016. A new book, Just Another Small Town Storywill be available from Whiskey City Press in 2021.

Caesar Salad On the Rocks

Carrots jumbled in the food processor
with alphabet soup and lampshades,
[i’m eating it yum, yum, yum]
Drinking Caesar salad on the rocks,
postwar croutons float in the miasma,
limited vocabulary tossed, frothing,
over three extra shots of espresso.
Oh don’t forget the dressings,
caked on makeup of mud and
DDT, try and get some eyelids,
if you want to be a normal boy,
but only if you want to be,
I understand if you don’t.

Jeremy Scott (he/him) is from Albany, Georgia. He’s @possiblyarhino on Twitter. His debut novella, Marginalia, will be published by Alien Buddha Press. His work has been published or is forthcoming in All Guts No Glory, Angel Rust, BOMBFIRE, Fifth Wheel Press’s flux digital anthology, Selcouth Station, Versification, and others.