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Tuesday, December 31, 2019

INVADER. By Bryn Fortey


the battle-scarred invader
plants his flag
claims the land
for his triumphant clan

blood will soak
and stain the earth
women will weep
for men-folk lost

the conqueror will
never be loved
but the planet will adapt




    

Bryn Fortey is a veteran writer from Wales in the UK. Widely published
over the years, he has had two collections published by The Alchemy 
Press, both featuring a mix of short stories and poetry.

 He is grateful thatin old age he is still able to put pen to paper and finger to keyboard

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

An Invitation To Adventure. By Ian Lewis Copestick


Last night I found a credit/debit card
In the street outside the local
shop.
At one time, perhaps 20 years ago
This would've been an invitation
To adventure. Without thinking I would
Have been buying whiskey, cigarettes
And getting cash back. But now,
No. Before I even really thought
I knew I didn't want to get caught
And be taken to Court
For a charge of fraud
Just for a couple of days
Of drunkenness and
Other assorted fun.
I suppose I must be
Growing up, or maybe 
Just  losing my nerve.
I've got old man skin
On my hands too.








Ian Lewis Copestick is a 46 year old writer (I prefer that term to poet ) from Stoke on Trent, England. I spend most of my life sitting,  thinking then sometimes writing. I have been published in Anti Heroin Chic, the Dope Fiend Daily, Outlaw Poetry, Synchronized Chaos, the Rye Whiskey Review, Medusa's Kitchen and Horror Sleaze Trash.

Friday, December 13, 2019

This Anthropologist I Once Studied With. By John Doyle



He reminded me of Bill Murray, Garfield the Cat;
so it came as no real shock 
that little more than months later
Bill Murray would play Garfield the Cat,
thanks to this Anthropologist I once studied with -
deadpan, dour, 
upper-lip a tent that protected his lower-lip
from any retort that might just shoot him down -
like that tribe deep in lush-green jungle he once lectured on.
Stephen who later became a bit-part walk-on 
in shampoo commercials
still swears to God that he saw him smile that day -
we wondered 
if that Murray-scowl would ever be the same,
sitting around a campfire 
under starlight
playing awful 1996 alternative-rock songs 
on his guitar -
for polite
but bored senseless natives








John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch. 

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.


Tuesday, December 10, 2019

DEATH POEM by R.M. Engelhardt

There's
An old man who
Sits on the
Park bench
Feeding pigeons
Who looks like
Everyone's
Grandpa


Except for
The words
In the shape of
A plaque
Tattooed on
His forearm
In Nam
In Vietnamese

Which read;

You may have
Killed me but
My spirit shall
Haunt you the
Rest of your
Days

And your family
Is now cursed

Forever









Poet, Writer, Author & even a Minister over the last 25 years R.M. Engelhardt has been published in such magazines as Thunder Sandwich, Rusty Truck, Writers' Resist, Dry Land Lit, Hobo Camp Review & many others.

 He currently lives and writes in Upstate NY where he runs the Troy Poetry Mission. A last stop open mic for poets who like to share their work before going to San Francisco or hell.

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Crazy Making by Kelle Grace Gaddis


Roaches are despicable. They zip up the walls with their evil little-barbed claws like demons, gives me the creeps. If one disappears into a crack, it’ll reappear out another when you least expect it. This morning I woke up with a big one on my pillow, its antennae practically in my mouth. Sickening. It starts with one but before you know it, they’re everywhere, eating your food, taking over, making you feel like a guest in your own home - crazy making.
A couple of weeks ago, I put a slice of bread in the toaster, and one crawled out before pushed the lever down. Killed my appetite knowing that thing was in where my food goes. The problem is they’re not easy to get rid of, not under the best of circumstances and Lord knows I don’t have those.
I wanted a Shockwave Roach Bomb because it kills everything within a hundred feet of its canister but it’s too expensive. Besides, Jolene nurses her twins in the downstairs bedroom and I don’t know what to do with them. She’s so overwhelmed with the new babies that she didn’t notice her two-year old put a roach in her mouth. Disgusting. Her six and seven-year-olds treat the bugs like pets, racing them on tracks made out of cardboard boxes. Half-wits.

I can’t kill them fast enough. The way the roaches multiply is unfair. When I turned the light on in the basement the floor was so thick with roaches it looked like black water, rising and falling. All those little bodies rolling over one another scared me half to death. I turned the switch off quick to avoid driving them upstairs. I’ve prayed for an affordable solution, but God has yet to show me the way.
A while back a lady at the church told me to use lemon peels and bay leaves, but the roaches ate those up and looked for more. Another member of the parish suggested sugar and baking soda. She said the roaches would be drawn to the sugar and killed by the baking soda when it mixes with the acid in their stomachs. Liar. The roaches tripled overnight. Jolene suggested coffee traps. The traps I put out killed a lot of them but I resented those little bastards for depriving me of my morning cup. I’ve only got enough money left for instant and I’m tired of sharing that with a throng of dirty roaches.
The fabric softener cure sounded perfect. It’s recommended for houses whose walls have gone black with roaches, but it makes the coffee trap method look cheap. One bottle’s six bucks and I’d need five or more cases a week to kill all of them. I’d do it if I weren’t broke. Give the roaches the death they deserve. All you have to do is spray fabric softener on the floor and walls, and the roaches suffocate in the solution.

Jolene doesn’t complain about the roaches. She was lippy at first, testing her boundaries, but now she behaves and seems happiest listening to rock music with her headset on. She can’t hear her babies crying or me talking when she’s got it on but it keeps her content so I let it go.
Jolene is easy to manage because she catches on quick, much faster than her kids. I don’t spare the rod with any of them, especially the children because they make everything harder than it needs to be. Our family order isn’t rocket science. I answer to God, they answer to me, simple. The roaches are another story. I have no control over them.

                                     ~


I can’t think with Jolene and her five kids scattered around, roaches tumbling out of the light fixtures downstairs. Lately, I prefer to sleep on a cot in the attic surrounded by a thick ring of Raid and a second ring of white candles. I feel closer to God up here, even if I look like the centerpiece of a satanic ritual when I’m sleeping.
I should say “If I sleep,” I have nightmares. The kind where you can’t remember all the details but you know it was bad because you wake up hollow and afraid. I recall flashes of my dreams, something in the dark, feeling like I’m falling, screaming, nothing solid, until I wake up to the roaches closing in on all sides.
I thought the Lord sent the roaches to test me but now I believe they’re Jolene’s fault. She’s a fallen woman. I found her on a street corner holding a cardboard sign. A pregnant beggar with three little one’s in tow. When I first saw her she looked exhausted, barely able to ask for change. I told her she could come live with me if she was willing to get married. I didn’t have to ask her twice. We stopped at the courthouse on our way home. That evening I saw the first roach, the next day a dozen more. There’s so many now the census bureau couldn’t count them. Jolene gave birth to twins a week after she moved in. Knocked the wind out of me. One more baby would have meant five more mouths to feed; now I had six people to care for on zero dollars a month. There’s nothing left to sell except the house, and, I can’t sell it because of the roaches.
I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and a pack of smokes to calm my nerves even though I’d planned to quit after I became a family man. Quitting didn’t take. Frankly, I think liquor and smokes are Godsends. Roaches are afraid of fire making each smoke a little torch. The booze is a sort of life-softener.

Of course there’s a chance the roaches aren’t Jolene’s doing, God could be punishing me. I killed my mother in childbirth. When I was five the ladies at church told me it wasn’t my fault, but I’ve always known better than most people.

My father used to say he went into ministering so God would grant my mother and him a good life but God had other plans. I wish I’d known them before me but that’s nonsense thinking. All I know is that my mother’s death hurt my father bad enough that he couldn’t help but pass his pain onto me and my stepmother Emily.
Sometimes when he drank he’d say beautiful things like, “God called your mother home because she was an angel.” I liked the idea of my mother in white robes with gigantic feathery wings. Father also told me that God was prone to darkness and that I should behave or risk the wrath of God through his hand. I did my best because I knew father was strong enough to do whatever God required.

Father was something else. I used to come home from school and find him digging holes in the yard for his empty beer bottles because he didn’t want the neighbors to see how much he drank. When he was liquor-drunk he could have cared less. He’d just throw the empty bottle at me and tell me to dig and he didn’t give a shit who saw him do it.

On my sixteenth birthday I went to a party in town. On the way, I picked up some moonshine from Little Eddy’s Gas Station. The whole town drank off Eddy’s still. I wanted to try it after a kid at school called it, “Liquid courage.” The moonshine hit me like Christ on Sunday and I finally understood why father liked to drink.
After the party, I started feeling sick. To get home faster I decided to cut through the apple orchard leading to our farm but I could barely walk and had to sit down. The sky was as black as Satan’s soul but I wasn’t afraid because I saw two angels’ eyes twinkling at me through the clouds. I lay there talking to mother until the sick went away, but I was still too tired to get up. I prayed for protection from God before I fell asleep and I wished on a shooting star that my father wouldn’t know I’d been drinking.
In the morning I woke up stinking of stale booze amid all the fallen apples. I felt as thirsty and sweaty as a man wandering in the desert. I reached up and picked an apple off a branch, chewing and spitting until my mouth was tolerable before I started for home.
When I reached our yard I saw father on his back on the lawn, his blue eyes wide, filled with morning sky, vomit clogging his throat. Emily went into a depression over it. She felt like it was her fault for not checking on him. Of course, I knew it was my fault, either mother answered my prayer or the devil fulfilled my wish and I had another of my parent’s deaths on my conscience.

I found enough money in my father’s bedroom to live off of for ten years but that was a decade ago and now I don’t know what to do with myself. I considered preaching but I’m not as charismatic as my father. Farming is out because I let the crops go wild and no longer have the funds to get it all up and running again. I tried a few “Work from home” jobs from the Internet but, like all else, those took more than they gave back. Frankly, with all that’s gone wrong, I can’t help but wonder if God has been coming for me all along. Or, worse, maybe it’s the devil coming for me, riding in on the backs of roaches because I haven’t been good enough.

It doesn’t help that the IRS is after me too. Demons. I’m not going to give them a dime. My father paid off the house before he died. Nobody told me anything about paying taxes until a notice was nailed to my door. It said to pay what I owed or move out. What bullshit. I called them and got some high-pitched guy who sounded too chipper for the task his job entailed. He guffawed and chattered about how he couldn’t believe my case had been overlooked for so long. When he said he was going to make my case “a priority” I could tell he was smiling. He was as giddy as a man that found treasure, as if my unpaid taxes were the Shroud of Turin and not some sick government plan to steal my home. I hung up. The house is mine. If the IRS wants it they can take it over my dead body.

My stepmom Emily would have said, “Take a deep breath and God will see you through.” Of course, that didn’t really work for her. She’s been gone nearly as long as father. Cancer. She went from diagnosis to death in three months, the two of them gone the same year. Somehow I still believe in God but don’t go to church anymore. I know the congregation would still pray for me but it hurts to be looked down upon and pitied by good people so there’s no going there.

Jolene’s no help. For a while she tried to keep things clean but the roaches are far more determined than she’ll ever be. She’ll sweep roaches out of the bedroom a few times a day but it only makes them more determined to get to the food she’s got in there, poorly sealed formula tins, cookie crumbs, potato chips and the like. Her kids are a world of mess.
It’s hard for me to believe I once thought Jolene was my calling. I came across her holding a sign that said, “Save me.” I thought that if I helped her like Jesus helped Mary Magdalena, then the money would follow but it’s been six months and all Jolene and her kids have done is drain my reserves faster. Maybe the Lord has a plan for me, for us all, but I don’t understand it. Jolene’s kids are always screaming and crying, provoking me to the degree I might not ever find a solution.
Bowie, Jolene’s oldest, has no common sense. He broke our only plates trying to kill roaches. He’d set a plate over a dozen or more and jump on it sending shards in every direction. I jerked that boy up from his destruction so fast I nearly pulled his arm out of its socket. His brother Hendrix kicked me in the shin and I knocked that little bastard out cold for acting against me. I’m not a violent man but unruly kids need to be disciplined; my father taught me that much.

When I was five, father, Emily, and I were stacking wood for winter. As a small boy, I could only carry one piece of wood at a time. When I tried to carry two the second piece slipped through my hand and I got a big splinter. When I started to cry, Emily went to get a pair of tweezers to pluck it out. Father said crying was for babies and that the Lord expected children to be diligent and careful in all tasks. Because I was still learning about life, I told him I didn’t get the splinter on purpose. He hit me hard for talking back. I cried more still not understanding, so he hit me until I stopped crying.
When Emily came back she said, “You’re a brave boy,” infuriating my father. He grabbed her braid and jerked her to the ground saying, “You’re as insolent as the boy!”
Father hurting Emily upset me because she was always good to me. And, because children are notoriously slow learners, and I no exception to that rule, I grabbed the bottom of his coat and begged Father to stop. He forgot about Emily and turned back to me, pulling me off the ground and carrying me to the barn.
The last thing I saw was sun streaming through a hole in the old tin roof before father locked me inside an empty feed container. The screech of its lid, a metal echo before darkness. For a while I could hear father yelling at Emily to quit crying and then silence.

The container was the size of a sow’s belly, tight, old, and oddly warm and muggy for autumn. As a punishment this would have been plenty but I wasn’t in there alone. There were roaches all around me. I kicked and thrashed to get them off as best I could but the rust and grainy surface of my cage tore at my skin until, exhausted, I lay still and let the roaches crawl all over me. I’ve never been as still since.
In the middle of the night Emily set me free. She carried me to the house, the whites of her eyes bright as two distinct moons under the billowing grey-black lace of clouds, slow moving and mysterious, a veil between this world and God’s. I knew He was always watching.
Emily’s tears felt like sparks hitting my face. To get away from the sting of her pity, I squirmed until she put me down. She reached for my hand but I didn’t want it. I ran away from her, up the front stairs and closed myself away in my room as if she were a ghost. She was kind but father was the strong one. I never questioned or disagreed with him again. The next morning at breakfast when he ruffled my hair I was grateful. I’ll always love my father, but I have hated cockroaches ever since.
The next time I saw a roach I instinctively grabbed my father’s lighter from the ashtray on the porch and burnt it alive. I felt like the exterminator from a TV ad of the time. I don’t recall the brand but I’ll never forget the strong man with a flame-thrower wiping out all of the roaches around him before his weapon turned back into a spray can.

~

Today Jolene and her kids are downstairs. The thwack, thwack, thwacking noise I hear is no doubt Bowie and Hendrix smashing roaches with hammers ruining the floor. Jolene thought they’d help keep the roaches off her littlest ones but it hasn’t worked. Nothing has. The roaches are winning.

I was about to go down there and tell them to stop putting dimples in the floor when I realized how much the muntin in the attic window looks like a cross. No, not a cross, a God’s eye. That’s what we called those yarn inventions we wove over two sticks in Sunday school. Father called them “God’s magnifying glasses.” He hung one I had made over my bed and pointed to heaven as if he’d hung a window that only God could see through over my bed.

~

While drinking my bottle of Jack Daniels the attic’s exposed beams and peaked roof transformed into a church. My cot has became its altar. Who am I in this place? I’ve prayed for God to come and, until this miracle, all I’ve heard is the scurry of little feet, forewings, compound eyes, and antenna but He is here! I pray, Dear God, I ache for all that I can’t fix, for all that I can’t do, but mostly for all that has not been revealed to me. I beg you to show me the way.

In the silence I hear God’s answer. Behold the lighter and the can. How clear it all is. All that is below is beneath me, coursing black and vile. My eyes are open and my mind is clear. The ticking and clawing of everything I once feared is a siren calling me home. I am the light. I hear everything, see everything. The roach’s movements are God’s whispers. The longer I listen the more I hear, water over rocks, one finger pressed to Emily’s fearful lips saying, “Shhh,” the wind through the leaves of an apple tree, father’s searing sermon, the quivering congregation, the gasps of infants, the snuff of a cigarette on the dusty floor. I am the answer to my problems! God is the last ray of sun before nightfall passes through the dust-flecked air and His voice is mine and I am brighter than the sun.
I hear Him through me say, “Let the roaches be your reason why.” And I know what to do. I pick up the can of Raid and spray. Its mist is wide and intense. When I light the stream it becomes a lightning bolt, a flamethrower. I’m no longer afraid. I have gotten everything right





Yellow Chair Review published Kelle Grace Gaddis’s first book, My Myths,in 2017. Other recently published works appear in Chicken Soup For The Soul: Dreams & The Unexplainable, Dispatch Editions Resist Much / Obey Little, Vending Machine Presses Very Fine Writing, The Till, Five Willows Poetry Review, The Hessler Street Fair Anthology, LOLX, Moonlight Dreamers of the Yellow Haze, BlazeVOX, The New Independents Magazine, Thirteen Myna Birds Journal, Knot Literary Magazine, Entropy, Writing For Peace, Dove Tales, Blackmail Press and elsewhere. Ms. Gaddis has written several poetry chapbooks including It Is What It Is - It Was What It Was, Visions Of and American Discard. She is honored to be one of 4Culture’s “Poetry on the Buses” contest winners in 2015 and 2017. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 2014. 



Friday, October 11, 2019

EVIL SPIRITS by R.M. Engelhardt

Vodka
Rum
Whiskey
Gin


Tim Collin's
Ghost enters
The room with
A Moscow Mule

Drowns his
Sorrows in
Scotch

12 years old

Macallan is
Older & wiser

Hails from
Scotland

And talks alot

Old Fashioned

The gin in the
Bottle just sits
There and watches

Without magic
And wishes he
Was ale

There are no
Such things as
Evil spirits

Only misunderstood
Ones

Ancient and
Lost at the bar

Wasted
On the young





Poet, Writer, Author & even a Minister over the last 25 years R.M. Engelhardt has been published in such magazines as Thunder Sandwich, Rusty Truck, Writers' Resist, Dry Land Lit, Hobo Camp Review & many others.

 He currently lives and writes in Upstate NY where he runs the Troy Poetry Mission. A last stop open mic for poets who like to share their work before going to San Francisco or hell.



Friday, October 4, 2019

Elliot Stabler in S.V.U. by John Doyle

Reminds me of the boys in school who ended up doing quite well;
I mean, they had steady jobs, wives, kids, lots of testimonials.
But you always suspected they wanted to be alcoholics
or train robbers in 1880s Texas to take them away from the humdrum and failures
of utter perfection, of getting married at 25 to the only girl they ever boned,
of the sadness of being respected by the fathers-in law,
of looking in the window of an Irish bar in Queens
and longing to be lonely, the green, green grass of sometimes failure.
It did not shock me when Stabler went fucking postal in his final episode;
well, it was the best he would come to going postal,
even with the blood-thirst of a pack of rabid devilish wolves
he had been a perfect failure in his neurotic success








John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch. 

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.


Friday, September 27, 2019

Mind Your Own Business. By Dan Provost




While getting in line to pay for my seventeen dollars’ worth
of groceries, some brutish lady with red stained eyes and
clabbered face asks; “Big party at your house huh”?

I look down at my sugar free pudding, grape soda, Miller Lite
and all the other parcels on the belt…

Stare at her and say, “Every night with myself.”

“You’re not invited.”





Dan Provost has been published throughout the small press for many years.  He is the author of nine books and lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

A Treatment. By Ben Nardolilli



If God exists, I’ll know
Because he’ll tell me how to fix
The latest knot
Within the plot of the novel
I’m working on,
He’ll be divine enough to know
Not to interfere with the poetry,
That stuff has to remain
Human, only human
In its sources and execution,
If I claimed otherwise
I wouldn’t be a poet any more,
But a prophet instead,
And I don’t want that career,
I’m not armed heavily enough
To last long on any dais,
Nevertheless, if God exists
And we’re in talks in private,
I’ll tell him I’d enjoy
A promotion to the big room
And be a writer for his show.








Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Inwood Indiana, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. 

Friday, August 23, 2019

WHEN IT'S BEST TO DRINK ALONE. By Bradford Middleton



It's happened again as the time spent at bars
Dwindles to the point where I contemplate
Just giving up, maybe visit only once a week
To drown this lonely existence surrounded
By other people by way of a change.  Of late
Though it is these other people that have
Caused the most damage to my mind leaving
Me demanding more booze to drown out
Their existences as I struggle through dreaming
Of sitting at home alone, smoking the
Proverbial weed and very occasionally
Treating myself to a drink but not through
Need or habit just for the pure simple joy
Of cracking that bottle open and taking a taste
Loving it as it cascades down my throat.

The other night I went out, alone as usual,
And found myself in one of those moods,
Dark, foreboding, wanting to get annihilated
The only people I spoke to were bar staff
All of whom knew my name and asked how
I'd been, handing over drink after drink until
That point where I could face no more, a time
Spent surrounded by useless hipsters, bearded
Fucktards who annoy me greatly, and if it
Weren't for the smoke I'd have ended up
Leaving a hell of a lot quicker and walking
The streets dreaming of bars where the drinks
Flow cheaper and there are no immaculate
Beards requesting craft beers looking down
On me as I sit, beer and chaser at the ready.








Bradford Middleton was born in south-east London during the summer of 1971 and won his first poetry prize at the age of nine.  He then gave up writing poems for nearly twenty-five years and it wasn't until he landed in Brighton, knowing no one and having no money, that he began again.  Ten years later and he's been lucky enough to have had a few chapbooks published including a new one from Analog Submission Press entitled 'Flying through this Life like a Bottle Battling Gravity', his debut from Crisis Chronicles Press (Ohio, USA) and his second effort for Holy & Intoxicated Press (Hastings, UK).  He has read around the UK at various bars, venues and festivals and is always keen to get out and read to new crowds.  His poetry has also been or will be published shortly in the Chiron Review, Zygote in my Coffee, Section 8, Razur Cuts, Paper & Ink, Grandma Moses 'Poet to Notice', Empty Mirror, Midnight Lane Gallery, Bareback Lit and is a Contributing Poet over at the wonderful Mad Swirl.  If you like what you've read go send a friend request on facebook to bradfordmiddleton1. 

Sunday, August 18, 2019

WITH MY PLUS ONE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL. By Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal


Sitting here
at The Bowl,
my plus one
to my left,
a cooler
with six beers.

It does not
tell me to
stop drinking.
It does not
tell me to
stop singing.

It does not
disappoint
or let me
down.  My plus 
one is all 
that I need. 





Luis was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in the mental health 
field in Los Angeles, CA. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Beatnik Cowboy,
Dope Fiend Daily, Unlikely Stories, and Zygote In My Coffee.


Monday, August 12, 2019

Mr. Asshole. By Dan Provost




It’s a great
justification for 
all those who suffer 
from depression and anxiety
that “getting out of your head”
is the reason you, sometimes,
drink twenty Miller Lights.

Smoke ten pipe hits of the weed.

And take credence that the
world is all right for a while.

No, not really…

The truth is that asshole has crept
into your life again.

Not as often

Not every day…

But he still lingers around the 
Periphery.  Peeking, hiding—
Welcoming back the guilty 
hangover, 

when, while groaning in bed… 
All you want to do is swallow
the bullet—Cursing your existence.

No, I do not make
the cut anymore…

Walking around dazed.

Pondering creative ability
under the influence.

When you have difficulty 
picking up the pen…

Yes, I hate that asshole
who has hounded 
my footsteps for so many
God damn years.

He laughs when I’m
fucked up…grins

when I make a fool of
myself…

Calls me out when
I try to stay sober.

Kills me if
he wins…





Dan Provost has been published throughout the small press for many years.  He is the author of nine books and lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura.

Friday, August 9, 2019

The Weirdo of La Calle. By Gwil James Thomas



Lived at the top 
of the street - 
his hair was wild 
like an animal’s - 
maybe that’s how 
he’d befriended 
the alley cats 
that’d follow him 
down the street - 
he carried a pen 
and a little 
black book 
in his back pocket, 
he was frequently 
seen in the bar, 
or by the dumpsters
going through 
unwanted paintings 
and broken furniture - 
a few months ago 
he was caught 
skinny dipping 
with some girl -
having climbed 
the fence 
to the pool of 
the nice flats 
down the street - 
he always 
seemed to have 
some fresh wound 
or bandage on him too - 
God knows what 
he did? Or where 
else he went? 

Someone said 
that he wrote
poems too - 
but of course 
you can’t believe 
everything that 
they say.





“Gwil James Thomas is a novelist, poet and inept musician originally from Bristol, England. He is a Best of The Net nominee whose written work can be found widely in print and online. His latest poetry chapbook Writing Beer, Drinking Poetry is forthcoming from Concrete Meat Press. He is currently laying low somewhere in Northern Spain.”


Thursday, August 1, 2019

Tattoos by Wayne F. Burke


Tattoos
over
his
arms
looks
from
a
distance
like
he
forgot
to
wash.




Wayne F. Burke has published six full-length collections of poetry, most recently DIFLUCAN (2019, BareBack Press). He lives in Vermont.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Crooked Smile 101. By Brian Fugett


my liver aches
worse than
your broken heart
& I will always be
one shot of vodka
away from
you






Brian Fugett is a member of the slacker, fast food generation that has been branded with an “X”. He sits in his pad all day consuming more oxygen than he’s worth. He’s been doing it for 47 years now & has become quite efficient at it. Some day he hopes to be president of the “International Society of Incontinent Gum Swallowers”, a support group for people who compulsively swallow gum & piss themselves. Until that day arrives, he occupies his time with writing, photography, boozing, tail-chasing and occasional pugilism.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Portrait of Joyce by John Drudge

Holding his hat
And ash plant stick
Twisting words
Around the bush
It was with
Great gasps of want
That the devil tipped
His drink to lip
And washed away
The circus




John works as a clinical social worker and is the president of a national disability management company. He holds degrees in Social Work, Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services and has studied philosophy extensively.  He is an avid traveler and a long-term student of the martial arts holding a 3rd degree black-belt in Kempo Karate. His diverse educational and experiential background gives him a broad base from which to approach many topics in his poetry. John currently lives with his wife and two children in Caledon, Ontario, Canada. 

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Let’s Carry On. By Kelle Grace Gaddis



Help me through the valley low
below its bounds, not tree or
mountain, but bars hard before me,
not jail, the other kind neon signs
flashing “open” pulling me into
chaos, cold easy demon Champagne
bubbling with light stealing
reason, seasons, and life
Time’s an illusion, fiddling away
days until melancholy’s sad reflection
sees me, yet not me, older broken,
surprisingly still able to hope, or,
at least not ready to fashion a rope
Forgive me, friend, I know I shouldn’t
joke. My laughter’s from a glass before
noon, maybe two, so I can shimmer
like a glimmer of my misspent youth





Yellow Chair Review published Kelle Grace Gaddis’s first book, My Myths, in 2017. She’s recently published her second with Cyberwit titled, When I’m Not Myself. Other recently published works appear in Interim, BlazeVOX 15 & 17, Rye Whiskey Review, Chicken Soup For The Soul: Dreams & The Unexplainable, Dispatches Editions Resist Much / Obey Little, Vending Machine Presses Very Fine Writing, The Till, Five Willows Poetry Review, Thirteen Myna Birds Journal, Knot Literary Magazine, Entropy, DoveTales, and the forthcoming Fiction War Magazine Volume 8, 2019 and elsewhere. She was honored to be a Tupelo Press 30/30 Writer in 2018, a 4Culture “Poetry on the Buses” contest winner in 2015 and 2017, and a prize-winning finalist in the National Fiction War Contest in summer of 2018. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 2014.

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

poison, confined. by Eliana Vanessa



drank everything away, 
no reason to call the doctor,
took care of all my problems 
when i handed the devil
the gun in my dreams.
love ain’t what it seems,
when you’re 
changing the litterbox 
of your own mind,
blindly calling the cat a deity,
better to write bad poetry
than to delude oneself 
with the notion
that there is
any hope for escape 
and let the skull of every 
recurring nightmare
bleed toxic.





Eliana Vanessa is originally from Argentina and moved to New Orleans, Louisiana at a young age.  She recently participated 100,000 Poets for Change (2018) and served as part of a panel of poets in The Jane Austen Festival (2017, 2018, 2019).   You can find her work online at The Horror Zine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and The Sirens Call Ezine, The Ramingo’s Porch, Ariel Chart, Beneath the Rainbow, and Fearless.  Her poetry appears in two recent anthologies: Masks Still Aren’t Enough (2019) and Americans and Others (2019). She is Eliana Vanessa on Facebook at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/eliana.vanessa.7758.