1.
Sound 
occurs (weird):
– morsel of fancy:
– breath – dancin’ – 

…
tart…
mind ruse of rue 
behind its back.

but then –
astounding wallop
besets a bit :  
…

“ball ‘n’ band” –   
“sway under the cobweb” –  
…
“fondly” “taken down” to addle long on “lure”.
toll…keen, abrupt. -draws near.

Mouth waltz
veers
to twist
over the curve of the neck

Benign osculation
***
2.
blank whops
an abysmal frantic strays.

bizarre
bevels the strident clamor
– dithers, sips…

…gets tangled thereafter.

sigh –  odious,
an afterthought:

bellow and quack;

flap, flop, clap – slop –
– vain kinkle plop: an unexpected
twitch.

the swish, the tick –
the fly rambles.

-blink`bat – 
throbbing tired,
shift quake 
plonks to shadow:
” twines smoke skew”…
…
– 
tire beep dazzle
/ abash blast:
blue

viscid whiff
tinkling 
inwardly 
phit -phut: 
pant-sigh
loured.

done…

***

Volodymyr Bilyk is a poet from Ukraine who writes in English. So he’s basically from another dimension or Parts Unknown. Long story short: he follows Ezra Pound’s “Make It New” and considers Pink Dairies song “Do It” to be a quite adequate description of his artistic intentions. His latest book “Roadrage” is available here: https://zimzalla.co.uk/049-volodymyr-bilyk-roadrage/

She wanted attention and he needed something from another who had become emotionally detached .

He drank himself into a stupor.
She hurried herself in delusion .
And the other simply played a game .

Two hearts broken together where to damn stubborn so they remained apart.

A overgrown child was unaffected by her reckless destruction .

The truth of two hearts was buried in the rubble of words never spoken .

Adults can be far worse than children.

Playing games at such high stakes .

But within the ashes would always remain the truth.
He loved someone that could not love in return.

And another was simply a excuse she needed to keep everyone away.

But for a moment I saw you there .
And I will be eternally grateful for the view

Three fools lost within a simple game .

John Patrick Robbins is the editor of both The Rye Whiskey Review and Under The Bleachers. His work has been published with Punk Noir Magazine, Mojave River Review, The Rusty Truck, Piker Press , Ariel Chart, The San Pedro River Review , Romingos Porch,  Outlaw Poetry Network, Red Fez, Blognostics, Horror Sleaze Trash.
His work is always unfiltered. 

It read like the back of a 70’s prog rock tour t-shirt,
Purple on black in awkward light,
Complex against tie-dye!
Painful jazz on the eye!
Unnecessary?
Ain’t that what you’re paying for?
This sounds nice,
That sounds nice,
What do you fancy?
I’m going with the Goth Burger.
Another opening night, in an old cobblers!

Jeff Platts, or ‘Jethro’ is an ex miner from Barnsley. He is creator of Barnsley’s Spoken Voices, a community of amateur poets and writers who seek to encourage people to pick up a pen, a piece of paper and perhaps even a microphone. He has produced a CD of his work ‘Harping On’ and is currently working with Barnsley’s Spoken Voices to produce a second compilation of their collective works.

When This Night Has Faded

When this night has faded
The robin will remind us
There is something for which
To sing.

When this night has faded,
Shapes shall resurface slowly
As the sleeping awake
Once more

When this night has faded
This night handed to us
When we squabbled like starlings
On wires

When this night has faded
Those discarded things remain
Our things still there where we
Left them

When this night has faded
You are still a stupid fool
But you see we are all
Fools now.

When this night has faded
We will wonder what to do
We wonder that it can
Be done.

When this night has faded
Cash counted or burnt so that
We begin with ourselves
No less.

When this night has faded
And the woods break their silence
The genderless sun will
Just shine.

On the sparrows chatter
And our naked bodies
When this night at last has
Faded.

Raw Rendezvous

Caged then born
stretched out from the dark
magnetic moon nostalgia
above the brutal earth

Shape of mist when
it touches the sour ground
builds a box into which
we throw our voices down

Richard Daniels is the editor and chief dogsbody at Plastic Brain Press, a small press run by a large Plastic Brain publishing poetry and fiction. They also have a podcast. Richard is the author of Too Dead For Dreaming, a collection of short stories. He often writes poetry on the back of sick bags.

The Stone in the Middle of the Road

To be the stone in the middle of the road
immortalized by Carlos
Drummond de Andrade.

In Rio de Janeiro,
Brasil, circa 1930,
to be the stone
in the middle of the road.

Looking into
his tired eyes and to be
remembered his entire life,
I want to be that stone.

Find My Way to Darkness

At day’s end
I slowly
find my way
to darkness. 

Glimmering
stars, cool air,
flight of thoughts,
drowsy head. 

From my porch
the moon seems
near. I watch
it reign

in the sky. Trees
heave and bend.
Each make noise
in their sleep. 

Breezy night,
twittering,
the fool won’t
go to bed.

Born in Mexico, Luis lives in Southern California, and works in the mental field. His poemsonline and in print, have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, PygmyForest Press, Runcible Spoon, and  Yellow Mama Magazine.

1.

There was a dead deer floating in the river this morning, its haunches all smashed in. It must have been hit by a train and somehow washed downstream. I wanted to wear its skin. I wanted its spirit to possess me but the carcass was bloated and soaking and the putrefication shocked me to passivity. Once again my spiritual aspirations get swallowed up by the death neurosis that births them; still something of the world in me, that fanciful veneer. Maybe I really do miss shampoo. Despite my revulsion, I dragged the carcass through the woods and nailed it to a tree beside the railtrack. Everyone should see the blood and guts hedonism of the machine age. Somehow the sacrifice might get my point across and make us all agile hurdlers of the most obstinate psychological impediments.

2.

Rumour has it there’s a man living feral in the woods. And now the children come to gaze into the trees, looking for the wolf or the bear or the wild stallion. They know me though. I was their neighbour once and perhaps, at best, a fox. Children these days are so uninspired because of the terror their parents crush down on them. That’s the manipulation I left for the woods. When I wake from a restless dream of leaves, I hear them whispering, and they’ll throw a stick or stone and I’ll poke my head out and yawn. They’ll holler and run away thinking they’ve wounded me. Education is a slow dumbing down of something raw and pioneering. A train passes likes a horse and suddenly the sky is clear. Suddenly there’s a space where my life is a little less radical. Suddenly there’s an aeroplane.

3.

Night brings consolations and a kinship with the small, furry creatures. The darkness chatters then drops down a broken well where I found a baby otter last week. Sometimes the only place to go is inside my own head. There are rooms there and an icy bed fitted with prickly, nylon sheets. Despite my poverty, I’m always hospitable. I invite the animals over and we chat and drink wine till it’s time to switch off the lights. There’s a powerful presence in the woods, like animals gathering to pray; a bonfire of devotion; a bus load of tourists. I peek into the crowd and remember the darkness and the fetid, flowing river – how they nourish me. A longing for company reaches my heart from the moon. In the morning, the burrowing badgers keep my feet warm and even my breath is superstitious.

Stephen Nelson is the author of several books of poetry, including Arcturian Punctuation (Xexoxial Press) and Lunar Poems for New Religions (KFS Press). He has exhibited vispo and asemic writing internationally and has appeared in numerous magazines, including Otoliths, 3am, Bones, Posit, and Brave New Word. You can find him online atwww.afterlights-vispo.tumblr.com and www.afterlights.blogspot.com.

ephemera stranglehold

I thought our block was mostly
north facing in order to adapt to
changes in light. I know less about
clothing. Just because something
doesn’t do what you hoped it
would do, you won’t want to
waste your money on excess
packaging. Winnings can be

calculated by multiplying one’s
continuing health by the number of
private gardens in Japan. Now that
the swivel chairs have been chosen
we will end the afternoon with a
few topical musical contributions.

varied expressions of the other’s corporeality

At another time they would roll
back the conflicting operation &
forward an economical option for
boat owners. We do not know
what kind of aggressive techniques
were used, couldn’t find any other
relevant products or a quantitative
explanation. It’s crystal clear that

there is no current, due to decreased
investment in new facilities & a
lack of enthusiasm for finding a new
way to conceive the creative work.
Everyday vessels never wait long
enough to adapt to changes in light.

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry since 1959. He is the author of around fifty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages.

Poem for a Security Guard Who Brings His Own Flashlight

I can’t believe they don’t supply you with one,
expecting you to go floor-to-floor on a future demolition site
in your steel toed safeties, a mask for the asbestos
and your brown bag in the fridge downstairs,
the many watch out for falling concrete signs in all
the stairwells, exposed steel beams and trip hazards everywhere,
rats the size of your foot falling on you from the torn
insulation above, in those dumb blue overalls with someone
else’s name on them because he quit a week ago and you just started,
you may as well be flipping burgers for what they are paying you
and you had to interview twice for this gig, lie twice on your resume
and once to their face, still nowhere close to all the doozies
they told you and this is your early obituary, a poem for a security
guard who brings his own flashlight, paying your own way
down into the city each night, just happy to have the job,
that potato chip crunch of cockroaches under foot,
searching out squatters that piss in juice jars and amateur
ghost hunters that have watched too much television,
until they decide to finally implode the bloody thing
and you find yourself out of work all over again.

The Statues Downtown Never Have Crossed Eyes

BARKEEP – there are war crimes in my drink!
Tiny atrocities floating around in lazy dunce cap circles
that make one dizzy for staring too long.
The statues downtown never have crossed eyes,
I’m beginning to believe in conspiracies no one else
has thought of.  The laces of my shoes frayed with
someone else’s workday.  And those fingers down the bar
that peel the labels right off the bottles, how obsessive!
I think I am in love with the obsession and never the person.
Not even the fingers that seem to prattle about like
a displaced spider.  The church organ has the same fingers.
Every Sunday it is spiders and absolution.
Can I get another drink?  Some ice this time.
I like the sound my glass makes when I hold it to my ear.
You could put it on vinyl and make a bundle.

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

it was every bar in the North Side
long gone places like the 222 on Federal
the Rosa Villa on East General Robinson
a couple places lost in Spring Garden
the bar that burned down on Woods Run
that one that seemed darker than the rest
somewhere in the holler on Bascom
Riggs on Brighton somehow still stands

everyone knew my dad
in those places that hung heavy with hunkie smoke
those places of little hiding
those place of forgetting
those dark places with the rough comradery of men

they were always happy
to see my dad, he had a baggie
or a couple pills to palm
into some cash

we’d belly up the bar
he’d order a Stroh’s
all the bartenders would laugh
as I climbed the stool
already seasoned
I’d order a Shirley Temple
a Roy Rogers, they may
muss my hair, say
you got a fine boy

these are the secrets
as they are, as they were
passed down from generations
sometimes from father’s to daughter’s
always from father’s to son’s

Jason Baldinger is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He was recently a Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, and is founder and co-director of The Bridge Series. He has multiple books available including The Better Angels of our Nature (Kung Fu Treachery) and the split books The Ugly Side of the Lake with John Dorsey (Night Ballet Press) as well as Little Fires Hiding with James Benger (Kung Fu Treachery Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp on lps by the bands Theremonster and The Gotobeds.

Still Life

Mozart street has gone. No spontaneous hosepipe game, no kerbies in a cul-de-sac,  no streets of open doors.  I’d forgotten it all till a decaf latte in a museum café brought it back till the bubbles went.  Black and white heatwave became red-amber-green on a spreadsheet.  Mozart Street has gone, like that squealing child; gone like Mrs McDermott; gone like car-free gutters fishing for frogs; gone like all them kids; gone like the boiling smell of tap-water on flags; gone like boxes of half-price processed colour snaps, waiting weeks to find your mum had missed your head off and third place in that race, well, you’ll just have to take my word for it and write it all down because there’s only me and my sister left who were there, a big deal at the time but in a year or two it’ll dry up faster than steaming screaming puddles.  Mozart Street has gone, like who’s bright idea was it to follow the dustbin lorry? Who you fuckin lookin at? Who d’you think you are? Which was her with the hosepipe?  Who can still see their toes without bending over?  Who can stand pork-pie and Ocean stick funeral teas?  Mozart Street has gone.  The filthy nets were the last thing left when they knocked them down. That kid who squealed as his Dad’s time-and-a-half-on-bonus arms lifted him into the range of the spray died eating a fry-up in The Station.  A shame, it was, he got out of breath even while driving that taxi, leaning out the window with his fag, at that age you’d hoped he’d just get one of them warnings like you hoped summers could always be like that one August heatwave when there was no school, and everybody seemed to have enough time, life time.  Mozart Street has gone and Mr McDermott still has time-and-a-half on his hands, still not an ounce of fat on him, still likes Don Williams, still beats the chair arms when he laughs, still taps his feet to the beat when the staff gamely fail to get the words on the karaoke they bought, still the backing lights a light way back in his eyes to an awkward summer where he’d lost his mother but them kids didn’t half keep you busy.

It was like that.

Jimmy Andrex is a poet and performer from Wakefield who co-founded Red Shed Readings in 2008, who makes spoken word programmes for ELFM in leeds and who currently is touring Stupidity Is Not The Problem, a spoken word and music piece based on Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists as well as promoting a poetry pamphlet with no title.