WHERE DO YOU WANT TO EAT? BY Dan Flore III

she took me to some Mexican joint

upscale

people wearing clothing

I can’t afford

I was exhausted 

felt like I was crisped 

on the edge of the sun

sun burnt

burnt out

I just want to go somewhere where 

I can blend in

and nobody knows I’m there

even myself

I said

when the waitress came over

she had tattoos 

on her leg

that could wake up the town

I ordered three tacos 

I could eat one

I went out to smoke 

it was a good respite

it was night by now

and I was getting cooled off

when a group of drunks 

started yelling

and the panic started

there was no way I could go back in

that restaurant

I sat on the bench 

looking like a clown with a poor disposition 

can you finish your pina colda and get me the hell outta here

I texted her

she came out 

and saw me crying

you poor thing what happened? 

I said the night bit me 

I just wanna go home 

which is where she took me 

and in a hurry

Dan Flore III’s work has appeared in over a hundred different publications. His latest book that’s available is JUMBO POETRY (Crying Heart Press)

with a little pond By J.J. Campbell

i remember when

i was a child

i always wanted

a little piece of land

with a little pond

just enough solitude

so that utopia would

be possible

now, i’ll be lucky

if its a trailer with

an outhouse or a

composting toilet

the doctors say

i’m dying

i laugh

ask if they would

like a shot of jack

as well

if anything, life is

so fucking overrated

in these days of who

is the biggest asshole

after i finish my next

glass of scotch i’ll tell

a story about a wayward

soul and all the embers

from the burning bridges

J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Synchronized Chaos, The Beatnik Cowboy, Yellow Mama, Night Owl Narrative and Crossroads Magazine. His most recent book, to live your dreams, published by Whiskey City Press, is available at Amazon by going here: https://a.co/d/073NBSFO

Let's Drink By Kevin M. Hibshman

A toast to your health.

You are not healthy nor will you ever be.

Why wallow in spiraling depths of despair alone when we all know how

Misery loves company?

Wake up in the gloam.

My kitchen is cold and so is my memory.

The people I love are enemies.

I watch them disintegrate daily.

The clock has froze.

Let's add some sugar to a life that will never be sweet.

I've been far away and drowning.

How would you like to try to swim with me?

I am talking respite not escape.

No canned religion.

No hypocrisy.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide.In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).

Cease To Destroy from Whiskey City Press.

His current book is Lost Within The Garden Of Heathens also from Whiskey City Press and currently available through Amazon.

https://a.co/d/aIBcNvy

Door To Door By Susan Isla Tepper

I bought my first Electrolux 

vac from an oldish man 

who went door to door.

He was pleasant 

and down to earth,

asked if he could put

his hat on a chair.

We didn't have sex 

though he spent a lot of time

explaining hoses 

and attachments 

while kneeling on my floor.

I sat nearby on the couch 

glad I didn't wear shorts that day.

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer in all genres. Her most recent book, a Novel titled Hair Of A Fallen Angel, came out in the fall from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC. Tepper has also written 7 stage plays. Her third play titled EVA & ADAMO will present at The Tank, NYC, early fall. www.susantepper.com

Symbiosis By Michelle Fairchild and Alex S. Johnson

In loving memory of poet Jordan Gallader 1985-2020

You and I and we flourish in collective possibility

Emboldened 

As Jordan stretches, morphs into her sugared web,

Frilly white and lightly patterned 

Seeking foothold in the clefts of eager minds

An outsider within, she forms the 

heart of the fungus

spreading herself as spores of influence

we become threads in her tapestry

trance formations laced in filaments of deep time

Thriving in the light of

A remembered sun,

We nourish her, and ourselves

Growing in ways that others cannot,

In perfect communion

Choosing photosynthesis over grief

Our green fuse sparkles like crystal 

consuming itself in wondrous pinwheels of creativity

we grow together inside and out, 

a symbiosis of solar solidarities 

 Tiny fingers poke and trace our destiny

Hearts and stick figures scatter our fragments Among waiting graves and trees

Our new consciousness spreading slowly now,

We are a lush outgrowth of our former selves

Enduring beyond imagination 

Artists and authors Michelle Fairchild and Alex S. Johnson are the inventors of the Haunto-Fiction literary genre and co-creators of LACUNAE: A LITERARY TRIBUTE TO JORDAN GALLADER, to be published by Nocturnicorn Books in 2025. 

Phantom Cento By Michael Dwayne Smith

too slippery in the world & exposed

we were surrounded by syllables

from lungfuls of tarantulas &

pink-mouthed cats in the shower

(press star for customer service)

us all scraping our eye sockets clean

with broken whisky bottles—

but you cannot demolish a hole, so

we mustn’t cry over an absence of air

Michael Dwayne Smith haunts many literary houses, including The Cortland Review, New World Writing, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle, Chiron Review, Monkeybicycle, and Heavy Feather Review. Author of four books, recipient of the Hinderaker Prize for poetry, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and a multiple-time Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominee, he lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family and rescued horses. His latest full-length collection hopes to go from apparition to publication in 2024.

We Love Our Audience By Alex S. Johnson

"Because we can"--Illuminati

Breaking through the

inevitable cosmic

Crust

Starshine, fumbling fingers of ocean, topographic maps to never, rain

slicing like

surgical steel

Scraped rust of clever

Because we can

Because we must

Draining the sutures

firing bullets of rainbows over

Galaxies skin deep

We're not proud

we have agents in

Every country

sporting mirrorshades

that feed back

into your

brain

We speak all languages

including

alien and

angelic and

android and

animal and

pain

We are the Illuminati they warned you about

the vampire hive mind

Relax

Don't be afraid

Accept your true

Nature.

We never die.

We never die.

We never die.

We are the gods your ancestors thought they invented

For millennia we have been hunted

We are the goblins and ghosts that haunt your erotic nightmares

We play for keeps.

Join us

Do not weep.












Alex S. Johnson is a retired English instructor, disability rights activist, author, editor and publisher (Nocturnicorn Books). He is known for his highly unusual poetry style which combines influences from Dada and Surrealism to hip hop, black metal, industrial noise, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman and Rimbaud. His books include the acclaimed collection The Death Jazz, Bureau of Dreams, The Doom Hippies and Bizarrely Departed. His work has appeared in such venues as Horror Sleaze Trash, Black Noise, Bizarro Central and Cease, Cows. His upcoming books include The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs, featuring a roster of luminaries including Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin Kiernan, John Shirley and the co-founder of the iconic Goth rock band Bauhaus, David J. Haskins. Johnson ilves in Sacramento, California with his family.

Johnson's poetry and prose collections The Doom Hippies and Skull Vinyl have been acquired by the Widener Library at Harvard University