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Independence Day by Barry Graham

Oh, Independence Day. I should have known it was Independence Day, because everything seems independent. Nobody should go to work or go to school. Instead, we should pay $15.00 to sit in an auditorium and reflect on the wise words and valiant speeches given by our former Heads of State. Read excerpts from early American literature written by presidents. Pay another $4.00 for parking when we are through. I will take brief notes on Notes on the State of Virginia and My Life:

From Jefferson’s NOTSOV:

“The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in their first instance of their mixture with whites, has been observed by everyone, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life.”

“But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration.”

President Jefferson was so preoccupied by his thirteen-year-old slave girl giving birth to their first son that he wasn’t in the right state of mind to speak intelligibly. But I guess if she was a virgin it was all worth it, right Tom? If I were to rape a slave girl I would have forced her on all fours and made my wife watch. You probably called her into the barn and pinned yourself on top of her, knowing her mother and two sisters were hiding behind the corner, not willing to risk their own lives to speak out.

In the state of West Virginia there is still a family of black folks who share the same blood as Jefferson. How are they celebrating Independence Day?

From Clinton’s My Life:

“Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control. The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment.”

I wonder if Clinton wrote his own 957 page memoir. No one else is given credit on the book cover. But on to more important things - Bill why didn’t you just fuck her? I would have fucked her? No scandal. No impeachment. No mouths and cigars. No Kenneth Starr. No ridiculous assertion of guilt or innocence.

“President Clinton, did you have sex with Miss Lewinsky?”
“Why yes I did.”
“Thank you Mr. President, you’re dismissed.”

two poems by Brittony Johnson

A Man and His Guitar

I had to be at the subway by five,
had to.
I couldn’t be late.
I couldn’t miss my train.
At four forty five,
I bounced down an eternity of stairs.
Lowering into a hobos haven.
I sat on a bench and watched the people,
all going somewhere.
Some were late for meetings.
Winos taking turns in human degradation .
Perhaps a few are headed home for
home cooked meals.
One man….
early in his thirties,
stood near to where I sat.
He was strumming an acoustic guitar.
A Calvin Klein advertisement behind us.
The case of his guitar lay open,
exposing the red velor interior.
Money lay inside haphazardly.
His eyes were closed.
He played each chord from inside his mind.
Feeling the strings with his heart.
He let the music just be.
He wasn’t standing here in Levi’s,
trying to make a dollar.
He only wanted all these people,
for just one moment in time,
to stop and listen.
To the sounds of wood and nickel strings.
The sounds of life he gently strummed.
As my train arrived,
I dropped a twenty dollar bill inside his splendid red.
I wondered if I’d ever hear him on the radio
as I rushed on the train that led to my next ten hour shift.

Flights of Fancy

I needed for a moment
to be looked at like Venus
in a Botticelli painting
to be touched
like a sculpture
seeking perfection in art
to be hungered for
like a vampires first kill
do not worry love
I won’t cling to flights of fancy
I want nothing more
Just to erase the erasable
and be awash in new
for one luminous moment

Minnards by Barbara Hilal

little minnards have slimy innards
goggly eyes, voluptuous thighs
larger fish are slick but boring
minnards-alluring, attraction- enduring
don’t accept less, they’re simply the best
slick inside then slip and slide
slimy, slick, slippery slap
goggly eyes, that hypnotize
slimy skies and mucousy nets
buckets fulla minnards flopping
scaley tails in snotty pails
fishy swishing, never stopping

The Most Beautiful Woman I’ve Ever Met by Mathias Nelson

It wasn’t her looks.

It was the things she said, like “I live in America but I don’t consider myself American. The government will send you off to die in war but if you’re dying of cancer and don’t have health insurance they won’t fight to save you.” And, “How are we showing we are thankful by gorging ourselves on Thanksgiving? Shouldn’t we just eat what we need and give to others in need?” And, “Animals experience fear and love, yet we kill them like it’s nothing because we are ‘smarter.’ If aliens came down from Zimbolo and did that to us what would we think morally?”

She worked at the post office and told me these things when I went there to send my manuscripts out. I wrote about societies follies sometimes and she had read my work and took it as an open invitation to spill her guts to me. I didn’t mind. I completely identified and agreed with what she said. I stood there with my mouth open, nodding my head, awe struck by her outlook on life while she weighed and stamped my manila envelopes.

“What’s up with people going to war over religion?” she said. “If we took away all the fantasies we’d go back to the basics by worshipping the moon and sun. Hell, you could write a religion.”

I smiled, “My thoughts exactly.”

Her spirit was so damn beautiful. The capsule containing her spirit, however, was not beautiful in the classic sense. Her face reminded me of an egg with long strands of curly black hair hanging over her large forehead like cracks in a shell. Her cheeks blushed as red as a rooster’s comb as if she had been out in the cold for days. Her pure white skin made her teeth look gold and her gums look blood. Short, stout, with the tits of an impregnated dog and a body shaped like a turtles shell, her little hands clenched my submissions like the claws of a crab as she said, “We’re all monkeys trapped on an island, too afraid to swim through the murky waters of society to the other side.”

MmmHmm,” I said, gawking at her and imagining her beautiful words doing evocative belly dances through the air.

And the next week I went to the post office with four new manuscripts and ambled up to the service desk, sure enough, there she was, sizzling with words.

Like a cooked maggot: it wasn’t the taste that counted, but the hunger it took away.

Before she could say anything and put me in another trance, I said, “Listen, what are you doing tomorrow night?”

She looked up and her eyes grew so big that the sleep lines disappeared and for once she was speechless.

“I,” she said, “I,” and, “I don’t have any plans . . .”

“What do you say we get together and talk?”

She grinned with her crimson gums, “It’d be like a dream come true!”

Once again, “I agree.”
- — -

The night was lukewarm so I mixed a couple sixteen ounce bottles of Seven-Up with vodka and drove her up the bluff. I had found out her name, Rochelle; and I thought, now that’s a name with spirit! I pulled in the parking lot near the bluff top. We had already finished our vodka sevens so I mixed a couple more and we walked up the trail. The sky was clear and the moon looked like a mauled silver dollar glinting with star rays. Rochelle smiled constantly. She was a bit drunk and held my hand, bumping into my side as we made our way up. Couples coming down gave us queer glances. I could hear the guys laughing after they passed us and their girls giggling and saying “Oh stop!” But I didn’t care. Rochelle didn’t care. The world was one big Follyville and we both understood that and thought the same sardonic thoughts about them except we omitted the “Oh stop.” We came to the end of the trail, a fenced in edge of the bluff with an American flag jutting off the side lit by spotlights. It waved and wisped over our heads as we looked down at the sepia tinted city lights.

“America, ha!” Rochelle said. “I was born here but I could have been born in Hiroshima, a mutated freak after they dropped the first atomic bomb.”

I raised my drink, “Cheers to that,” and gulped it down.

“Humans really are the violent type of animals. I mean look at the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. They reacted like rattle snakes, thoughtlessly lunging at anything they opposed without the slightest recognition of innocence. Why don’t we cook and eat these malicious humans instead of things that live day to day without harming anyone?”

“Right on!” I said.

She went on and her voice began to slur, “How can we possibly think we know how the universe was created when we don’t even know how to cure AIDS or Cancer or Alzheimers?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“It’s like everyone has cataracts and they can’t see outside the box. They say ‘Oh, we better get married, everyone else is, and it’ll be best for our kids.’ Well not always, buster, I say. Sometimes children are better off when the parents split so they don’t have to deal with the constant bickering and often times physical fights.”

“So true,” I said.

“Empathy is the greatest education anyone can learn. People would be so much better to each other if they would detach themselves from their own minds and fill the shoes of others who are starving or in pain or dying.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes indeed.” I lit a cigarette and let its soul slowly drift away.

There was silence. Rochelle stopped talking. I tried to think of something smart to say, but she had already said everything that had been on my mind that week. I started to chain smoke. She took longer chugs off her bottle.

“You haven’t really said anything since I’ve met you,” she said and turned to me. “Haven’t you anything to contribute? I thought you writers were supposed to be special, truly deep, rippling with the brilliance of a crystal stone tossed in a wide never ending lake. Just what the hell is this?” she scowled. “I feel like I’m talking to a vegetable.”

“I’m just stunned that we think so much alike,” I said. “Don’t take it the wrong way. I think it is wonderful.”

“Are you freakin’ serious?” she said. “Are you bullshitting me? I bet you’re just going to write a story using my thoughts. Aren’t you? That’s what it is, isn’t it? Seek out your little ideas and jot them down? You’re using me!”

“Well, yes and no. You’re taking this the wrong way. Honestly I . . .”

“Screw you, Nelson! You’re just an idea thief.”

“Not really, I . . .”

Rochelle tramped down the trail and the dirt kicked up around her pudgy ankles while her thin black hair blew like hundreds of spider legs and she disappeared into nonexistence.

I muttered the end of my sentence, “thought of it all by myself,” and looked down at the city lights, then up at the flag, and over the moon. The vodka seven was hitting the spot. I flexed my muscles. Years of lifting weights rippled beneath my t-shirt. I glanced down at my chest; it looked sort of like a pair of breasts. I stood at the bluff top, thinking by myself for a few more hours, drinking my content.

three poems by Jack Henry

bar sitting

i sit in the back
of a drag bar
smoke cheap cigarettes
back lit in purple
neon
and wonder:

is this where i first fell down?

old 80s pop songs
by one-hit wonders
play on a beat up
jukebox

two septuagenarian
transvestites dance
on four-inch heels

i watch colors fade
across grease heavy walls,
thin flicks of lightning
dash as i flick
out my smoke
in an exhausted can
of Pabst Blue Ribbon

time twists me in knots,
i cannot remember
where morning
last felt like spring

my limbs arch like broken
rainbows and yesterday
keeps stinking up
the joint

i light another cigarette,
a barmaid brings me
a bottle, half full and
overpriced, the dancers
laugh just as the
front door opens, reminding
me of daylight
but i don’t move an inch

there’s a bus stop on the
corner and i have correct
change
perhaps i should stand
perhaps i should fly
perhaps i should open my
eyes and move past my present

song changes, trannies
shuffle off, i take a long
look and sigh

i remember:
i never actually did get back up

slippery entrails

woke up early tied to my post
burned in half-light, dust
and anomalous rhythm -
blight stretches across
this dark valley
where tall trees and
scornful meadows
used to reign supreme
over nebulous things

if i cry for freedom
my freedom will fall
if i cry for anything
words will be swallowed
forgotten, and based through
slippery entrails
of yearning beasts

Japanese tourists w/little shiny cameras

they keep them
out of the spotlight,
off the stage,
tucked away and forgotten

wouldn’t want to disturb
Japanese tourists w/ little
shiny cameras who
wander oblivious between
and amongst the monoliths
and petroglyphs of an
American past

there’s no monument
to the homeless

as a ragged man
stood and stared up
at Lincoln on his high
thrown, he smiled
through broken teeth

he stood on the spot
where martin luther king
went to the mountain

police took him away
as school children in
matching shirts sat
on marble and ate
peanut butter sandwiches

Cheese moon fails by AJ Kaufman

the cheese moon has failed
yet once
again
drowned in the bare
mercury river’s
dip
passing houseboats’
juxtapoints
colonies of river
monks
bearers of truths
always heavy
in the white summer’s
middle
ground

litanies goin’ nowhere
night still young
& over the top

all spectators
barbiturate…

rats leave barge
rusty
heavens

the moon shall feed
curiosity
the dip adds trust
to the monks’
foul taste
cascadin’ down the
pretty
rabies
tails

the cheese moon has failed
yet once
again

& the symptoms
were simply
outrageous

four poems by David McLean

our walls, according to Butters Stotch

the walls that hem us in
are words, and stone piled,
fragments of void,
empty we.

once they asked for
gods to besiege us,
called on creators as ancient
enemies, and no crevice

for us to crawl into
as snails or insects,
unhidden and bright in his light
yet, evasion fruitless.

so they burned their youths
as sacrifices torn in their callow
monkish desire, twisted
away from life.

and the true seed, the meat’s
naked faith, is all we believe in
now. passion is our timeless
duty, empty banal replication

casting forms again
we stay in. sinless
oblivion the body is,
fateful mating

predisposed to nothing.
and yet love a minute
is our truth, like Butters
said. then we are empty

husks. dead.

of mankind

man is an empty city
that never existed,
besieged by nothing
and all his absences,
all the gods forgotten
who had forgotten him

the squares and alleys
there are nowhere
though ghosts roam them
they are cold and lonely
and we call them holy

traces of misbegotten reminiscence
as though someone looked at us
once, as were there love,
as were time and the empty
city a memory, and memory
was good, the city full
enough

prayers and lies

every prayer is wasted
and most are lies
for reference to god
is to address a word
in a book or a childhood,
and the monk’s lonely
homelessness in the world
is nostalgia,

not for some home in heaven
but for that which is not
and never was,

pining passion to hold
his own identity
he doesn’t really
need

and god a guarantor
for this greedy being
he almost believes
in

not just the sweet coming nothingness
than can’t even be bothered
to lie to us,
not just empty time -
though every prayer is wasted,
though all of them are lies

you fell

you fell a dream
from a nest of devils.
i saw you in the cold
and was so full

of blood
i could spare some.
like a vampire
when night

was inside us,
time invited
to this nostalgia,
where memories

drop from the oblivion
wherein we forget them
to grow up women
or men,

dead

you fell a dream
from a nest of devils or heaven,
remembered
yet

four poems by David LaBounty

Along the Road to Freedom

in between jobs and wives,
heading west on the
Pennsylvania Turnpike
in my ‘73 Olds Omega
which would have
been cool if the
year wasn’t 1995
and cooler still
if the car wasn’t
rust lime green
with a hand-painted
racing stripe
down the middle
of the hood but
the car only cost
two paychecks
six months earlier
and it was
all I had and
I was glad
for it because

I was leaving wife
number one on
the east coast
and headed home
for Michigan or
maybe further
west, I wasn’t
sure but I
only had
two hundred
bucks in my
pocket and
to my name
and I felt
the giddiness
of freedom
and the joy
of the open
road when
I stopped
for a whopper
and gas somewhere
near the shadow
of Pittsburg. I
felt just damn
fine even though
it was August
and ninety-five
degrees outside
and the Omega
had vinyl seats
and no AC. I
felt just fine until
I went to drive
away from the
pump. I turned
the key in the
ignition and
the engine
turned and
turned but
would not
fire and I
examined my
twenty-seven years
and my life
at that moment
with
no place to be
and no one there
to help, my bright
freedom suddenly
turning dark and
purple like a deep
deep
bruise.

Boy Scout

you quit the scouts
before you got
anything out
of it and that
doesn’t change
the fact
that you’re the
man of the house
and you’re supposed
to hunt and gather
and provide for your
family and it’s
a Wednesday
between paydays
and you’re forced
to forage in
the kitchen
and there’s nothing
but saltines and
slices of shiny
yellow processed
cheese and you
eat about half
a dozen little
cracker sandwiches
and wash it
all down with
a tall glass of
water mixed
with generic
Metamucil
and you know
that people
can adapt
to anything

especially

their own shortcomings.

A Straight Shot of the Sun

it’s the urbanized suburb

it’s the sidewalks
ripped out of
the ground by
the towering
maples and
oaks that bend
the sunshine
in such a surreal
and beautiful way.

it’s the shrinking schools
full of fat and tattooed parents
driving rusted Chevrolets,
wearing sweatshirts and jeans.

it’s your small house
that doesn’t stretch
with your children
and belongings.

it’s nirvana further
out, halfway to
the country, it’s
the brand new
schools and skinny
parents in minivans
and suv’s, in sweaters
and skirts, in shirts
and slacks.

she makes you go and look.

you drive for an hour.

the subdivision is full of
brick houses and copper
awnings and there
is a community pool
and wouldn’t it be lovely?
the kids could swim
through the summer
and there are jogging
paths, you could start
to jog, you know,
get back in shape.

the subdivision is new
but already full of children.
play structures pepper
the nearly treeless
landscape save
the saplings
that line the streets.

you hate it.

you hate the pretty
houses and the
smiling pretty people
that chat with their
new neighbors
in this flawless community
forged by some corporation.

but you really hate the sun,

you hate how it shines

it’s light over everything.

the hook

Warroad, Minnesota
and this was probably
1981 or 2. I was
the thirteen year old
boy that none of the
girls wanted to kiss
or even touch so it
was the town library
for me, a narrow
storefront crammed
between the drug store
and barbershop and
it was barely
funded by the
village of a thousand
souls and the librarian
knew me, she knew me
well and memory
is a tricky thing
but
I do remember her
as a thirty something
epileptic and the
whole town whispered
that it was because
her parents were
first cousins and
I was cool with
all of that even
though she had
something of an
overbite and
was deaf in one
ear because she told
me one summer
afternoon as I
was checking out
Hardy Boy mysteries
that
I could probably
read and understand
Hemingway and
she grabbed a hardcover
copy of
The Old Man and the Sea

and that was it,

I haven’t been much
good for anything
else ever since.

two poems by Sean Mcgahey

Broad street…

Doing the scene on Broad street
with the neighbourly cheap
dampen smooth girls.
cheap drinks and a handful
of molten moist skin is
“doing the scene” on Broad street

Unrealistic….

In films
the moist folds of smooth
flaps glisten inviting
an invigorating
lashing of a tongue…
In reality the folds are
maranated in something
along the lines of sweat
and gristle…depending on
the crevice and the quality
of the crevice…be prepared
for a pubic harvest…..

River actor beggars by AJ Kaufman

one chilling noon
the bridge all new & enlightened
as opposed to our
spirit
all in patches & stain

middle of March
the marchy sun marchin’
our women ran away
w/ St.James queers & rag dolls
spiked as usual
wearin’ hundreds of dresses
at once
one giant umbrella
hourglass
hobo

we’ve had raw fish served on
rusty Coke cans
blue weeds to top it
a bit of salt that someone
brought in
some rum
found at the wrecked
fishing boat’s
deckhouse

the river would always feed
her beggars:
all people from her banks
are actors
the lowest deepest
society’s
scum
all people here are
beggars
the stage’s the marchy noon:
oiled
wooden
runaround

get ready for the play, boys
the river-a-callin’
the curtains set apart
impatiently waiting
for a new searing
drama…

the applause’s the always
near
rain
& rooftop carbon
black
chick

Lungs Wind Ghosts Chills Inspiration by Rob Plath

The most memorable moment in Ginsberg’s workshop was when he made us read, not Corso’s surreal ramblings, nor Creeley’s pared down jazz blasts, but Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” aloud and en masse. “Obey Shelley’s punctuation,” he kept insisting. “When you do this, you invite Shelley’s ghost into your pulmonary system–he manipulates you from the grave,” he tremendously added in a matter-of-fact voice. One of the many things that would come off his tongue that would cut a new permanent groove in my brain during my time studying under him.

When we read the poem together as a group of twelve, he read along with us. We had to do several takes to get every one in sync. The final recitation sent chills up the knobs of my spine. It was like a witch’s coven chanting a magic spell. I felt like some ancient thing was cast in the room. I am not a believer in phantoms, but I felt a strange presence as the poem revved up in the final haunting stanzas.

When we were finished, I swear, the horizontal blinds rattled in the April wind. “Shelley ’s poem read aloud is inspiration in the most literal sense, Allen said, if you give it wind it’ll give you wind back,” he insisted. Some people were out of breath by the time we read it all together to Allen’s liking. “You hyperventilate if you read poetry the right way, he said. “You don’t have to take drugs, you can get lightheaded or buzzed from poetry,” he chuckled, his dark wise eyes gleaming behind his famous glasses.

This is an example of one of the many defining moments in Allen Ginsberg’s workshop: lungs, wind, ghosts, chills, inspiration–the full experience of poetry given to you by the great bard himself.

Black and Grey Hair by Richard Wink

Bursting blue frame
smiling concrete face
plummeting liquid features
squirt
squeezing a ripe lemon into a butter smeared pan.
Intense street boy
carving his blade over a smooth cheek
budding bright geisha
in the garden
singing to the satellites

 

Next door
an old miser
is struggling
his kidneys imploding
bottle by his side
resting on the foo-ton
lost burning embers
open mouthed
and horrid

 

Three poems by Bradley Mason Hamlin

CHUCK BERRY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Some
times

they come
over

maybe
they’re babbling
about
Charles Bukowski
or
the New York Yankees

so I
turn up Chuck
Berry
and drink
a little faster

and
sometimes
they hear
but

sometimes
they don’t listen

cuz
they is tone
deaf
dumb deaf
or just

too drunk
to know better
than to
bandwagon chatter

but
when they
get
kicked out

it’s not
because
they didn’t have
a good time.

HANGTOWN POEM NO. 1

and when I heard
you were
in the county Hangtown
jail
I almost felt
relieved

sort of like when
Mom died
an end of sorts
to the madness
that was

and maybe
I
thought
yours
is
only now
coming to light.

YOU NEVER DRINK ALONE

you see their
faces
hovering,
fading,
sometimes popping in
and out
of the dark

hooded
figures moving
slowly
toward you

sometimes
it drives you mad
but mostly, I
just
go get another drink.

What Sets Me Apart by John Grey

More than anything
it’s the failure of stone to be rivers,
ear wax to be brain food.
Bulbs won’t invent,
Machinery just lies there.
And there is more air in the world than energy,
more dirt than travel.
I write with a pen
that is the exact opposite
of everything that it’s not
on paper that is not now,
nor ever will be, the planet.
I kiss lips instead of jet planes,
visit grave sites in lieu of
the insides of a cell.
I’ve lost my place in the book
where the great people live,
where ink is blood,
and plot explodes like a volcano.
Day after day, I look in the mirror
where giants have been reported
but always I’m the one comes to the glass.

showerhead by Darryl Salach

I was standing in my tub
as I turned the water handle on
first the hot
then mixed in the cold.
On came my showerhead
screaming water pouring into my face.
It felt like a hammer hitting a square peg
it hurt
it really hurt.
The tears that were running like a river
only a short moment ago
have vanished for now
washed away in an endless sewer hole.
The shower curtain is my shroud from staring eyes.
The circus is in town
cotton candy,
balloons that look like angry tigers,
a fat man in a black top hat,
candy apples,
giant kaleidoscopes of colored glass.
Bring in the hungry lions
the spectators roar.
A clown with big red shoes
honking a horn madly
slings an arrow into my heart.
I’m on my knees
water pouring on me
I look up and into my showerhead
the tears are back

A Genpak Product by Matt Finney

“It’s just a job
I’ll hold for right now”
Is something I’m saying
This moment
But I know there’s
No chance of me escaping out
Those smoke filled pipes
The no air conditioning will sweat my spirit out
Until it belongs solely to Genpak
But I should be proud
I help make paper plates for all the schools in Elmore County
I give the little piggies who are gonna be just like me
A troth
Maybe I should look on the bright side
After I break my back, bust my ass
And mock my co-workers
I’ll be half as good as Koweski.

Four-leaf-cloverfield by Scurvy Bastard

The fucking leprechauns are everywhere
we’re hiding out in the basement of AA
it’s the only safe place
while thery’re ransacking the city
tickling everyone to death
But they’re nothing compared to that giant creature out there
30 stories tall
the spitting image of Michael Flatley
riverdancing through the city streets
smashing skyscrapers to dust
Ach, th’ horrors, th’ horrors

The Profit of Avenue A by C. Edward Anable

Michael Roth has a sinister five o’clock shadow. His t-shirt is dotted with blended milk from the three bowls of corn flakes he had this morning. He pulls on his boots, the most expensive things he owns. He laces them up slowly. They are the color of murky blood. He leaves invisible footsteps as he stomps out his front door.

He waits at the bus stop for the #2 bus. This morning it never comes, so he gets on the 115 instead. He sits in an orange seat half way down the right side. A girl with frizzy, clean hair sits near him. Her eyes look like eggs, sunny side up. He wonders if she is just high or if she could really be that naïve.

Michael Roth exits the bus nine stops too early. He is hoping that the girl will follow. She doesn’t and the 115 pulls away, each window passing by, displaying its passengers prominently. A man has already sat in the seat that Michael Roth vacated.

He debates three destinations. One, the art supply store: It was early enough that he should be able to steal six charcoal pencils easily. But it’s Tuesday, and that is not the day to shoplift. Two, Francine’s: There would be enough drunks by now that he could coax free coffee from the bartender. He keeps a key from a Pontiac Fiero on his key chain for just that purpose, though he’d left the key ring at home. Three, he could go to work, despite being over an hour late.

Michael Roth paces six blocks in a vague direction. Head down, back arched, forward leaning, hands clasped behind his back for balance. He isn’t so busy counting the cracks to notice from the periphery that a twenty-dollar bill had apparently fallen lifeless to the ground several steps away. It fell from the pocket of a man who was too preoccupied to miss it.

He pulls to a stop and his thoughts crash against his forehead, some even fall out on the ground. Pure instinct takes it from there. A man in a white suit, holding an umbrella has also noticed the wayward bill. He is equidistant from Michael Roth, the twenty evenly placed between them. Boot and umbrella collide as the scramble unfolds. Poor twenty nearly shredded. There is no time now for polite exchanges. No time for debates. Interests need to be served.

They each succeed in getting a portion. The man in the suit smiles glibly as he’s pretty sure he has at least 51%. That left a large minority for Michael Roth. Dialogue ensues but the two parties reach a stalemate as to which bank they would use. The man favors 21st Trust as it was on his route. Michael Roth of course prefers the Bank of Dimley, Watts and Raticker, for obvious reasons.

It is agreed that they would disagree and meet again tomorrow at the corner of Kings Lane and Moniker Street. This would give Michael Roth a slight time advantage.

Michael Roth backs away from the man for half a city block. He turns around only when a car horn sounds because he thought it suddenly felt like a race and one that cannot be run or won backwards. He puts his hand in his pocket as he hurries along and feels the confidence that only an investment in dirty cotton allows. Tomorrow, he will be nine dollars and eighty-four cents richer.

shallow cowards by Rob Plath

i detest
safe writers
their pretty words
stinking up my nostrils
shallow cowards
saving face
in their sentences
i wish i could
punch a 1/2 pack
of cigarettes out
on their brow
yeah you know
who you are
one day
you won’t have
a face
to rescue
so write like
a skull,
motherfucker

Where I Live by Dave Oprava

Whales. What can one say about Whales? Largest of the mammals, eats lots of small shrimp, great source of oil and blubber, if you are into that kind of thing. Oh, you mean Wales. Well, that is another kettle of laverbread and cockles altogether. This lovely principality shoved onto the arse-end (or willy end, depending on how you look at it) of England is a veritable coal mine full of history, intrigue, genuine people, and an amazingly well promoted, albeit obscure and relatively inconsequential Celtic language. Founded in 1923 by John Wales, Wales grew out of the industrial period that demanded such global necessities as coal, rugby, and strong, warm, flat beer. Lacking any great imagination, John Wales named all of his children either Jones, Evans, Williams, or Jones. With not a lot of industry and lacking in real jobs, he sent most of the men off to star in the 1964 movie “Zulu” starring Michael Caine (who is not Welsh) and narrated by Richard Burton (who is Welsh). When they returned from the movie set, the men went back to the coal mines and the woman continued to make rarebit for them. The Welsh never talk about sheep. Everyone knows why. In the 1980’s Margaret Thatcher had a fling with the then aging John Wales. He jilted her and in retribution she shut down all the coal mines and threw everyone out of work. The entire country has been on the dole ever since, thanks to money that comes from England. Nowadays, most Welsh people sit around and drink remembering the good old days when Dylan Thomas used to walk the streets of Swansea and throw up wherever he felt like it. Yes, Wales is a great place. And so are whales.

Why Mother is Paying Huge College Bills by Dan Provost

Her bare midriff was rolling along aside of her while the other students were whistling along-obsessed with breast, bars, and excuses to give the professor why they will miss the first class.
“It’s only the syllabus,” a longhaired fat kid says to some zit-faced hero.
“They never do anything the first day.”
“Tell the teacher that your schedule was wrong. He’ll believe you.”
While the girl with the jiggling abdominal muscles looks for other failures in the fashion world to bond with, another girl storms out of his dormitory-angry over her lack of slumber.
“My God-damn roommate was up fucking some jingle jangle she met last night…I didn’t get a wink of sleep with her moaning and screaming.”
She wasn’t saying it to anyone in particular, just showing her emotions to the blank air.
Upset over other’s orgasm.
Her blood stained eyes focuses on an SUV that is in the process of packing up some misguided co-ed’s belongings.
As the balding dad shakes his head in disgust, carrying a CD player and a small lamp-the mom emerges from the doorway with her arms around her daughter.
Consoling the sobbing girl who is muttering, “I can’t stand being so far away from home…I hate this place.”
Three older girls, probably juniors, are pointing to the hysterics between small giggles and party goggles.
“It’s only been two days,” one of the experienced says to the other veteran. “I guess she just couldn’t take it.”
Meanwhile, the third girl with the black halter and busting cleavage stares at some boy who just left the science building.
“I want him,” she utters in the midst of a sheepish grin.
“I want him drunk and naked tonight.”
All three girls guffaw loudly, ignoring the fact that they have biology lab at 9 o’clock the next day.
” So we’re going to Smitty’s tonight?”

Waste Knot by Scurvy Bastard

Swerving down the all American
As usual
Both ears swallowing radio-seed
I was informed
Prozac would be getting a warning label
Too many subscribers
Were canceling
Out
Out the window I spied
With 2 worn eyes
A landscape littered with casualties
From Madison Avenue to MTVland
& I thought
What could possibly be more worthless
Than suicide-inducing anti-depressants?
And then I remembered
It’s an election year
There’s hope yet

two poems by Rohith Sundararaman

you got wet in the rain and i caught the flu instead

we were sitting on the hill
thinking of mean things
we could say to each other
and i was thinking how you could say
not the usual stuff like i hate you
but say how i wasn’t even a man
now, that would be mean
considering the things we have done to-
gether but you never said any of that
instead you curled your fingers
into mine and slid your head
over my shoulder, waiting for the sun
to set and perhaps it was only me
who thought the sky had ripped open
the sun from our life but i didn’t say that
and as the light faded away, i felt smaller
and smaller till i was almost an atom
and when it became dark
i crushed the grass with one hand
and held you in the other

the sun sets as it rises on some other world

as the night creeps
in, bundles of bodies pile
up along the side-
walk, each fighting for
a slab of kerb on which they
can lay their mattresses, a mash
of cloth and cotton that sinks
into the cracks on
the pavement as their mass
radiates out like a radar call
to a swarm of anopheles
come, sweet ones
at least you can celebrate
our homecoming

Dakota Street by Robert Aquino Dollesin

She solicited him from an upstairs window. He climbed the weathered steps, left his boots baking outside her door. When he tried to describe his loneliness, she shook her head and raised a finger to his lips. His visits grew frequent. Her modest desires and simple dreams enlightened him. Family and friends noted his happiness. “Dakota Street,” he revealed, when pressed for details. But their collective scorn shamed him into abandoning her. With rain came nights of sleepless lamentation. Come spring he returned clutching an armful of roses, only to discover shoes - not his - resting outside her door.

A Dogmatic Poem by David LaBounty

Somehow, she
heard about
your friend,
how he cheated
and cheats on
his wife over
and over with
hookers and
barflies and
she says,
that’s disgusting
and
you shouldn’t
hand out with
him anymore
and true,
you know his
wife and kids
and how
disgusting
adultery is
and there is
a loathing there
but there is also
twenty years
of friendship,
twenty years
of memories
and beer and
so you say,
I don’t care
and then you
say, he who
is without sin
shall cast the
first stone
she rolls her eyes
and then you say,
Jesus came for
the sinners and
not the righteous
she walks away
you walk down to
the basement to
dig through the
boxes of ignored
books and you’re
looking for a dusty
and smooth-paged bible
only because
borrowed words make great
stones and ammo.

two joints in kunming by Mick Brazel

smoking in an alley void and new cameras record the streets blankly
stark and overdressed neon and cess pitted gainst the spring festival
with an indefinite chasm shadow of Mao, Ni hao
but this ain’t Britain
surveillancelot
you d think you were in a police state but..,
if torture were invented yesterday and i was away what would the people say
on my return the chaos i used to see glow will turn rhetorical and retro
a blundering resonating destructive assumption
statue built tall
landmarking consumption
rivers run a wasted hue the water
runs through me to the sea
eventually
like any land i will slide
and we share are we communist
we don’t care are we free
is it work, slavery or subsistence
tempered tarnished tolerant
by the red lantern and grey river
eating grain and pig lungs
as a reminder of the fierce fusion of future and past
standing facing the damn wall and chasing
the scent of culture that wafts along aimlessly now

Neo takes the blue pill by Graham Isaac

Through the stark brightness of forever, fate stares without sunglasses.
Nearsighted, confusing like shapes and sizes, colors blurred and watery,
blunted by sight outside of time, fate thinks you’re it. The silver bullet.
The stungun. The magic marker.
Fate picked you as the One when it saw you
selflessly performing the little miracles
bystanders overlook, that it would take omniscience to
notice, the way you always pay your rent on time,
frequently watch your nephew and have never once
exposed him to sharp knives
or pornographic materials
little inspirations that, under the harsh glare of infinity
make your shrug look like a flex, your fantasy novel
an instruction manual, the drone of the t.v. an anthem.
Fate is winds its’ arm to toss you the ball, it picked
you when it saw you getting up at 6:58 am- two! whole!
minutes! Before your alarm so you could make it behind
the comic store counter with a donut this time-
where you work for a dollar less than minimum
because they make up for it in store credit.
It’s the little miracles that have the universe tricked, the subtleties
that blind fate to the obvious, so, with less than twenty twenty vision,
it saw this as quiet heroism
not your trademark apathy, neither embracing nor
giving in to routine
because the latter implies struggle
and the former, a movement of your arms
and when the Necessary Lessons and Preparations cross
your path you won’t believe this shit, you will shake your
head and e-mail your ex-girlfriend, because she still likes
your crazy stories
and when the Great Struggle you were Bestowed by
Fate comes, you’ll sit behind the smudged glass counter, lift your
eyes from your book and say
“were you looking for something. . . specific?”
Somewhere, a confused fire fighter is losing at scratch tickets, once again.

Christ! The Plumber by Sean McGrady

I opened the door and the man who stood there was more welcome than the second coming of Christ - yes, even more welcome than Christ himself….which I am really not looking forward to…because I am sinner and more, a backslider, a saved sinner who has lost his spiritual way and returned to the reprobate mode of being. Degenerate, corrupt, immoral. I swear, I drink, I lie, I fornicate, I have perverted dreams in mind of women who know not a notion of the place they play in my imaginings. (Imaginings - weak thoughts strong on image. Idle idoling, idolatry. I idolised women.) I am damned, at least in the Lord’s language, in the evangelical vernacular. The Lord has disowned me, he strives with me no longer I am on the hot track to Hades. And heat is very much on my mind.

Wait a minute..rewind…the boiler broke down. There was an abundant absence of heat in a minimal amount of time. In other words, all of a sudden. I heard a suspicious noise in the flue on the Thursday and I know a noise of doom when I hear one. In the car I can recognise a not normal noise. I am always right that something is wrong. On the basis of a noise alone. The boiler is a new contraption but I was putting the rubbish out and I heard it above me…from the flue high up on the wall. A choking, gurgling timbre that was most certainly not a sound sound. A sound that was unsound in fact.

My next move was to visit the holy of holies, the place of warranties. The ark of the covenants. Agreements. Lordly and worldly. My little safe box full to the brim and running over with documents. Oh how happy I was when I picked it out and held it high to read the magical words that mean my day of atonement has arrived, that I am covered (the original Jewish meaning), I am saved (the Christian meaning), I need only ring the magical number on the 24 hour hotline to enforce my right to salvation.

But standing between me and the water of life, hot showers and cosy central heating on the predicted coldest weekend this winter is the satanic She of the switchboard. The wicked witch speaks the words of doom. A definition. A restriction. The flue is not part of the boiler, it is therefore not covered. See your installer! the She says. I didn’t say it was the flue, I said, and told her that the noise was merely from the flue and it may indicate a problem with the boiler. No, it’s the flue, She says, probably a blockage and you are not covered. No, I only mentioned the flue to indicate where the noise is emanating from, you are assuming it is the flue, are you an engineer? Here She flew into a rage over the flue issue as if She were protecting the keys of the kingdom of Hell. Why did I say the word flue, why did I mention the fucking flue? See your installer, it’s a flue problem!! was her final flourish. And I was summarily cast adrift into liability limbo.

The cold about me seemed colder. The boiler flashed a fucking LCD light off and on to indicate the demise of its intended function. LF, LF, LF, L fucking F!!! F fucking L!!! What could be more fucking annoying? I needed a hot shower but I imagined the icy droplets pinging onto my goosepimpled skin and the mad race to relative warmth. That brainless She bitch, that stupid tart!!! If I phoned again I’d have to wait in line again on the switchboard and they’d have a record of me saying the fucking flue word. So, I had to go in search of a heating engineer and pay through the nose for it.

Then the holy knock on the door. The bastard postman I thought with his bastard late delivery. If it’s a window salesman he’s fucking going to suffer the torment of an icy boot. I don’t need Victorian plastic windows. That very conceptually corrupt idea burnt through me but added nothing in the way of warmth. Standing at the open door with the cold wafting in from beyond is Nigel. Nigel? Yes, Nigel. The Albert Perks (Bernard Cribbins) of the plumbing world. If you’ve seen The Railway Children you’ll know what I mean. The steady station master with the unshakeable morals of an upright working class Victorian, (not the plastic alternative that has all too easily been bought). But he’s the salivating image of Bernard Cribbens as well. The bloated eyes, the white woolly sheepy hair. What the fuck was he doing at the door with all those features? My door? Looking with his bulging beady eyes into my freezing hallway. On his authoritative recommendation I had the whole apparatus of gas and water installed about two years previously. His excitement for the product was unnerving. His interest, his tendency to be obsessed with fuel economy and efficiency concatenated with equal economy (that William of Ockham would have been proud of) my ideas of opposition to the tradesman tendency to advance the case for the practical judgement over the theoretical. In fact it was an advancement of a denial that anything beyond the practical existed or was worth a mental glance. The uninitiated in matters of trade technique were looked upon, and talked to as, idiots. How was it that all those kids who left school early to do apprentiships, thought of themselves as possessors of a unique form of knowledge? Nigel has a folder that is carried like a Bible. He opens it reverently for therein lies his sacred text, the facts and figures and measurements. And from that text he preaches his gospel. Nigel is an evangelist, with a power of conversion, a converter of the domestically destitute who have plumbed the depths of discomfort.

Just passing, he said, wondered how the boiler was doing. It’s not doing, I said. So without hesitation he slipped past me, with a wink, and set about fixing it. Out with his toolbox, off with his jacket, into my kitchen. And he didn’t take a cent. No no! he protested with his hand palm in my face warning away my thrusting attempts at payment. That was as warming as the heat I now enjoy.

OK…that I had to inspect and pass praise on his new full back tattoo, pleasure him with a bounteous blowjob and allow him rear entry are matters of small consequence. His pleasure in his coming freely is the thing. That’s why I am the sinner that I am. As God is the great I AM, I am the great I am sinner.

Wicked, Wicked Wine by Jason Robinson

red wine
the not so kind
kind
I am not speaking
of merlot or
of cabernet sauvignon
or an elegant
dinner at
tavern on the green
a dry, full-bodied red
swimming in a deep
crystal glass
it can seduce you
it can make you drunk
but getting down and dirty
in a liver busting rage
a balled up in the
fetal position in an
extended crying jag
on the floor of your
basement flat
you need the rotgut
the cheap crap
it comes in a jug
it comes in a box
it comes in little bottles
wrapped in brown bags
mad dog
muscatel
thunderbird
ripple
it’s all the same
story
pedro just outta
the joint
panhandles a fiver
suck a bottle down
an hour later
he gets the blue-light
special for
pissing on a dumpster
now he’s back in
county lock-up
for thirty days
and a long thirty nights
linda in her doublewide
with cheating beating
truckin’ husband carl
on the road again
kevin 4 megan 3
on the sleeper sofa
in front of the TV
she rinses fills the
big gulp cup
fills it to the brim
begins the slow dance
to oblivion again
left the gas stove on
way up high
dreamed that the
children were screaming
that the walls were melting
she also dreamed that her last
sip of red really was her last
but it was, oh it was
and bacchus roared
and satan proudly applauded
“next” they said
“next”
and the demons of death
ascended

Whilst Busy Living by David E. Oprava

I.

I am almost 35 and I think I am trying to kill myself. I’m not sure. It’s an incomplete notion. There are the overt signs, overweight, overwrought, overly intoxicated, but no one ever says anything to anyone. Watching self-destruction and commenting are incompatible in polite society, so I continue to consume with no relevant sense of perspective, a fly pinned on the front of a 747, still alive and really just along for the ride, whenever it might end. Not in a morose way, because when laughter comes it is deep, velvet, crimson faced and palpitating, tar-lung thick. It passes. I wish I had never watched TV, read a book, or seen a movie. They are full of lives that are supposed to be but never can, because the people in them are the dreams of what we think everyone else, including me, could be. They are impossible to become, because no one ever looks, feels, or acts that real, we just are as we are, all we’ll ever be. But, I love life the way one loves themselves, one measure adoration, one part self-deprecation, and a touch of self-annihilation. It’s an imbalanced equation. The gear grinding of the teeth is how I know that what I am doing and where I will go is a tick-tock process, pushing each limit and still alive the next day, waiting, wondering, what will it take? What’s at stake? I am almost 35 and I think I am trying to kill myself. I’m not sure. It’s a complicated notion.

II.

As I get bodily bigger, inside my self gets smaller and smaller still till soon I imagine a diamond will emerge in my morning stool and I will know then, that is the end. Entropy happens at different paces and in places seen and unseen in my friends, the ones that are left, the obsidian formed in my youth who, although weather beaten, I still call when drunk or low or reminiscent of things that have been. A doctor, a lawyer, a rock star, a teacher, a wife, a mother, a widowed brother, nametags they wear for the majority they meet, but I know under there, somewhere, is the child who played with me, a past conjoined, replete with soundtracks and expressions I haven’t seen since. Morality may be sentimentality, but before senility robs me of my memories, I’ll cement them in time, cut the stem, and let them be mine, at the end.

III.

If only finding roots were as easy as looking under my feet, how simple it would be to have a sense of belonging. But belonging comes from breeding and close proximity to those things we know, love, and accept us, no small task for an insulated world where I no longer cling to sanity’s stringent plot line, a sublime sense of opportunity unfolds to the growth of a fresh sensation, insanity being born, not kicking or screaming, but smoothly expressing as a lactating breast so much pent-up stress, madness, quiet, simple, erotically supple, naked madness, the mind at last undressed. No one is there to tell me I’m sane.