Routine

The white, ancient land
lies flat before our eyes.
Something lurks beneath the ice;
something – behind the heavy, grey water;
something – inside us,
shaky and changeable.

It’s a difficult thing – to be human.
The horror of organic existence
walks side by side with us
all through life.
We came here by helicopter,
and now
please,
please,
let’s take a look at the samples
we got.

The white distance
and the barking of dogs.
It’s ultimate and simple.
Beyond this whiteness there are no ridges,
no abandoned cities
under the water.

We’re just standing on snow,
and we have new equipment
for drilling.

Kate Efimochkina is a writer and graphic artist. You can see her works in The Turning Leaf Journal and Outside the Box Poetry.

Raw

As a general rule
I never take a dump at work
preferring to defecate
in the morning
in the sanctity of my apt.,
no coworker rapping on the door,
no lingering stench left by a colleague
too lazy to refill the soap dispenser,
no cut-rate toilet paper
drawing bright red blood
from a 53-year-old asshole raw
from decades of bending over
and spreading my cheeks for the man,
whose current emissary
drives a $150,000 Porsche Carrera
and owns a condo in the Caymans
but can’t spring for a lousy tube
of Astroglide
much less show me the courtesy
of a reach-around.

Ben Newell dropped out of the Bennington Writing Seminars during his first semester before resuming his studies at Spalding University where he earned an MFA. He lives in Mississippi and works as a bookseller and freelance writer. 

Osmosis

When the paintbrush
cuts a rug on the canvas,
it informs
of a maelstrom in the mind
of the artist.
Piebald lineaments persuade.
Whenever you meander
with whoever you move,
it matters not,
as you influence the fountainhead,
of my métier
and I’m euphoric
about its rare steam
like the monochrome before me.

Sanjeev Sethi is an award-winning poet who has authored eight poetry books. His poems have been published in over thirty-five countries and appear in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. He is highly commended in the Erbacce Prize, UK, May 2025. He lives in Mumbai, India.

 X @sanjeevpoems3 || Instagram sanjeevsethipoems ||  

Poem for Andrea Gibson

we never met
but i thought
we were made
of stronger stuff
you & i

i thought we would
yell our words
down the throats
of caves forever
& that they’d echo back at us
with twice as many riddles
i thought we’d find all
of love’s hidden places

but this morning i cried
on the telephone
cancer & a failing heart
& a brain turned to mush
& you aren’t here
it turns out i was always
the stuff of soft clay
while your mouth
was always full of grit

if someone sends you a message now
there will be no reply from the dead
no final fight song
no morning gossip
disguised as a prayer

there will be
so many things
that get left unsaid.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020),
Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis
Chronicles Press, 2023) and Dead Photographs, (Stubborn Mule Press, 2024). He may be
reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

 

A Folk Painting

The mirror is cracked and I am torn in half.
Where the silver is gone, it is black;
a path I dare not tread is that.
And when I look in, I am partly missing.

I am everyman with the task
of recovering the fragments of myself scattered.
I would not have had it like that;
I would have preferred to remain whole
and present. To be in my body

in each step that is the dance I forgot,
and I have no dancing teacher but the past,
where the silver disappeared and cannot
be recovered. There are no craft masters to restore it.

I have seen folk paintings made on mirrors
and from them I can perhaps learn to fill the absences.

Jack Galmitz was born in 1951 in New York City. He was educated in the public schools and received a Ph.D in modern American Literature from the University of Buffalo. He has been writing for 50 years. Whether such a long-term committment was wise is still open to debate. He has published in numerous online and print journals. To name a few: Otoliths; Utsanga; otata; Former People; Synchronized Chaos. This year 4 poems will be published by Sandy Press.

Just To Clarify

… although I’m not looking to
actually arrive at
… ‘Apotheosis’…
just to keep almost hitting it
by a hairsbreadth
… the Goal is ‘Better’
not ‘Perfection’… more Road.
I’d take
‘Out Of The Ballpark’
all day every day, if I could,
over the ‘Winner’s Circle’
… I hope that I’m never
PERFECT in my Craft…
merely each year a little closer…

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion”, collection of shorter fiction “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “The Dark Side Of British Poetry: Book 1 of Urban, Cinematic, Degeneration”, “It Is Big And It Is Clever: Book 1 of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” and “South Wales Outlaw: Book 2 of A Punk Rock Hostile Takeover” are all available by Close To The Bone Publishing.

Multivariate Melodies
(a Tom Beckett Title)

Pattern analysis will be employed
to investigate those onset-related
brain responses that occur when
a more abstract dimension of pop-
ular music is introduced. Basal
ganglia — the areas commonly
associated with visceral pain —
are involved which overshadow

the true nature of a key change or
an out-of-key pitch, the usual
markers of an anomaly in any
music acquisition. No longer can
nootropic supplements provide the
mental energy throughout the day
that is needed to complete an audi-
tory scene analysis of polyphony.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North
Queensland in Australia. He has been publishing poetry for over sixty-five years, & is the author
of around seventy-five books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo,
non-fiction, & art history. His most recent books are the downloadable pdf, Closed Environment,
from Neo-Mimeo Editions, Nualláin House, Monte Rio, California, & The Complete Post Person
Poems, from Sandy Press, Santa Barbara, California, both published in March, 2025.

I’ll burn that sheep when I get to it

I don’t count sheep;
I set them on fire.

Sleep is like a friend
that won’t tell you why
they left—so,
I burn through my eyelids
and eventually, my brain
leaks out of my sockets.

The sun casts a cruel spotlight
on my charred sweaters;
the aroma of smoke follows me
back to the moon.

Megan Diedericks writes poetry and fiction, everything from meek to macabre can be found in between the lines. She self-published her poetry collection: the darkest of times, the darkest of thoughts (2022), and a second book is in the works! (TBA, Island of Wak-Wak). Find more of Megan’s work at https://bit.ly/megandiedericks

Something foolish and crude

drunk at a party
on rum with white wine,
with beer and with not
enough sandwiches.
I collapse, spiral down
like a bird in siberian winter;
atumble through feather
and frost. I fall, and remember
my yells in the kitchen;
said something interesting
and followed my point
with something more foolish
and crude. I remember
the sink, and the dishes
like buildings with an ivy
of long-finished dinners.
life passed. a duck
flinging doppler
through guns. my friends
quite embarrassed. my wife
just as much as my friends.
glorious. sparks flaring
on firelit paper – a lobbed candle
and throbbing hot grease.
when they put me to bed
I’m still very much
clowning. my eyes
long tunnels, full of cars
striking cars.
things spun.
the eiderdown
on my legs
is beautiful.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections, most recently “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

conglomerate telegram

hot flash it’s sticky in this stop
darkness nuclear rat n
trenchstopcoat flay alive stop
huddled the protect masses of
pulverized antithetical object
devices stop the senseless stop i
have no hot flash true identity
stop i have no hot flash voice of
my own stop

(This poem originally appeared in ‘Clockwork Cat’, 2024)

Scott C. Holstad has authored 60+ books & has appeared in the Minnesota Review, Exquisite
Corpse, Santa Clara Review, Chiron Review, Long Shot, Southern Review, Poetry Ireland
Review, miniMAG, Eulogy Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Argyle, Bristol Noir, dadakuku &
Blood+Honey. He’s moved 40+ times & lives near Gettysburg PA.