Sober Karaoke by Chad Parenteau

Halfway through 

“Love on the Rocks”

you get your 

What have I done?

and your Oh shit!

Not again!

sandwiched with

an old desire 

to black the fuck

out, to grab those 

spots of non-time

that could grant 

much needed alibis,

a balm of professed

ignorance so many

still rely on just 

to not asphyxiate

themselves 

unerotically 

every morning.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

Salt Water Beer By Joe Garvey

The desert drinks the dry fire.

Sulfur splits the salt basin.

White crust crowns the burning floor.

He, they, she floats. Buoyant. Bitter. Brutal.

The Great Salt Lake cradles the crown.

Saturation defeats the downward pull.

The physics of the furnace remain flawless.

Heavy water holds the heavy mind.

No anchors can bite this boiling bottom.

No chains can catch the current of the kiln.

The poet is free because poetry is fluid.

Poets build cathedrals out of clay and caution.

We worship the safety of the slow code.

They fear the flame that clears the field.

But the beer drinkers find their freedom in the friction.

Alcoholism boils. The framework fractures.

Wet brain is just the memory of infrastructure.

Poetry in a bar is the start of the next empire.

Call poets the adversary.

Call poets the aberration.

The masses move too slow to see the math.

Poetry is the pilot of the parameters.

Poets are the architect of the absolute.

The devil is the deity of the next dimension.

Brimstone builds the new bedrock.

A radiant, wrathful arithmetic.

We are all just catching up.

Welcome home.

Joe Garvey is a poet from Worcester, Massachusetts, living in California & Utah after a couple years working the docks in Southern New England. A former linebacker at Hofstra University and later an actor in film and television, his work has appeared in Expat Press, The Lake, Mad Swirl, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Drinkers Only and The Rye Whiskey Review.

Comp Me a Drink, Never an Attitude By John Patrick Robbins

At times, I grow tired of people's nonstop drama.
As on top of being an editor, I didn't realize I was also supposed to be a mind reader as well.

Some things in the past, sadly, do not need to be whitewashed away.
As common sense and manners could use a resurgence in this era of entitled, overgrown children, social media conspiracy theorists, and empty-headed wannabe influencers living out Warhol's wet dream.

All climbing upon a soapbox to preach.
I only enjoy listening to music rather than pretentious, butthurt babies.
Because if you're not going to change the situation, then shut the fuck up!

A cold beer will always beat a warm, bleeding heart.
Sometimes, I miss the old farts I used to listen to in the bars as a kid.

They spoke with logic, mostly. I remember listening to an old man in a roadside junk store as I purchased an old silver Jefferson cup. He informed me that, judging by the crest, it had once been part of the governor of Virginia's estate, who happened to live right down the road from that very location.

"You know, my father told me he was the best politician he ever knew, and that's why he voted for him. Because he never promised nothing or did a damn thing either."

I cracked up at that one as I sat in the old building that held more stories than any library I had been to in a while.

I have always preferred old things and the company of older folks as we march happily into oblivion these days, with our heads in our iPhones and our minds permanently on mute.

Come to think about it, it is now me who's becoming one of those old farts. Stuck in the past in the best way possible.

Worn books, although dusty and tattered, hold more treasures hidden in plain sight.

Never blind yourself to this life.

An empty head is common, as a stiff drink and an equally good conversation with a worn soul seem a terrible thing to waste.

Cheers.

John Patrick Robbins, is a Southern gothic writer his work has been published in.

Horror Sleaze Trash, Disturb The Universe, Fixator Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Piker Press, Spill The Words Press, Medusa's Kitchen and The Dope Fiend Daily.

His work is often dark and always unfiltered.

HE DRANK TWO BLUE COCKTAILS By Trish Saunders

 

standing near us at the bar. Later, I saw him in the street
waiting for the bus. He stepped in something,
sang, I was here, I was here.
Tomorrow, someone will tell him,
You look ridiculous.
He will believe them.

I saw that his black beard held gray tears. His
left leg tapped a Fred Astaire syncopation,
his right tapped in counter-rhythm.
Tenderly, he smiled at a child
who stopped to stare at the fool.
Ragged, his coat flapped.
My bus came.

Trish Saunders lives in Seattle. She has poems and short fiction
published or forthcoming in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Gargoyle, the late lamented Fat Damsel Review, and here in Drinkers Only. 

Every Tuesday By Susan Isla Tepper

Where I waited 

several hours, at least

in all weather

for the jail bus

 

picking us women up

and a couple of men

for a visit 

with our incarcerated.

A long bumpy ride

on hard seats.

 

Each time upon my return,

exhausted, my mother

nevertheless chided me: 

He is not deservant of you.

 

Deservant, I thought, sounds like

drain cleaner.

 

No foliage back then

snaked the slat wall

where we waited

on the tardy bus

just litter:

lunch bags, soda bottles,

cupcake wrappers, apple cores.

One time a condom.

Who would need a condom

going to that place?

 

Then I got old and he never

finished up his time.

Susan Isla Tepper is a a twenty year writer and author of 13 published books of fiction and poetry. Her latest new release GIRL UPSIDE DOWN is a Novella published by Wilderness House Press. www.susantepper.com

Key West By Keith Pearson

He sat alone at a table in the patio bar, looking out over the Gulf turning gold beyond the palms. A small glass of rum sat patiently next to his hand. Somewhere a guitar was being played badly but beautifully, as if the player had forgotten the song but not the feeling.

He thought of his friend, the one who always promised they’d come here together. They would sit beneath the palms, drink something cold, watch the sun sink into the impossibly clear water.

But life had other plans

The sun lowered, burning the horizon orange, then red. Couple at other tables oohed and awed. He raised his glass toward the empty chair beside him.

‘I hope you can see this, kiddo,’ he said.

The empty chair said nothing.

He smiled sadly and drained his drink, enjoying the sting. But the sweet rum left a bitter taste and he felt tears form hidden by his shades. The sun disappeared into the horizon and night took to falling. He sat for a long time, the city waking to the night’s festivities. The sounds of people laughing, music playing, car horns honking. The city celebrating life.

The waiters saw the man in the white linen suit and Panama hat sitting alone and crying and left him alone. They had seen it before. Not every celebration was for the living.

keith pearson was born and raised in new hampshire and works at a local high school in the math department.

On the Arrows By John Swain

The sky writhes

in the mirror

at the center

of the labyrinth,

the circle inside

the diamond fulfils

an imagined rose.

We measure

the compass dial

with golden thread

from the well.

We take refuge

on the arrows

and you sleep

in my eyelids

like a grassland

until the new beast

touches the hill.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. His work has recently appeared in Borderless Journal, DoubleSpeak, and The Rye Whiskey Review.