Shake Before Use by Howie Good

Despite cancer and twice daily mouthfuls of various pain pills, I’ve already lived longer than you or anyone else expected, but as if in punishment, I suffer frequent traumatic visits from revenge-minded angels, a bunch of vicious motherfuckers, Lou Reed lookalikes in black leather jackets and wraparound shades who treat me like a magnificent irrelevance, a supernumerary, a false witness, calling bullshit on the pained sounds I make, the clatter of wooden wheels over human bones, when they’re not mocking my superficial knowledge of street life or testing the strength in my arms and legs while neighbors fall from roofs and ladders and dogs lap up the blood.

--

Howie Good's latest book is Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and handmade collages from Redhawk Publications. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Dreams of Wizardry by Michael Dwayne Smith

A tremendous echo, like I’m in a great hall, but in fact
I am small in my own home. Here I find a book of spells:
with a hand from my coat pocket, I flip to a random page,
cast an enchantment of ice and snow and confusion—

furniture frosts, light bulbs pop in their lamps, television
switches on and feints waver from ghostly Disney-sequel
mouths. My fumbly fingers cannot find my phone… but
who is there to call in winter? The sickly screen flickers

its three-a.m. blues, laughing, and I light a match as the
power goes out. The dark reminds me of space. When I
was a child. When space was a frontier, not a last gasp of
extinguished hydrogen fireballs. The gods knew then.

Next, I try casting a lantern charm, but our batteries are
dead, so I hammer at ice that encases the kitchen light-
switch with a fist until everything shatters. This because
someone has to— the gods knew then, the magic, and

now they cackle. My sheepskin coat, huddled around me,
says humans’ magic divides their blood from the stars.

--

Michael Dwayne Smith haunts many literary houses, including Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, The Cortland Review, New World Writing, 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.

Fresh Off the Runway by Kelly Moyer

This season’s babies
are made of mohair
and should be treated
with care to avoid
shrinkage and/or
premature detonation
unless, of course,
you are seeking
a distressed aesthetic,
which may pair
quite nicely with
a trendy pleather pant.

--

Kelly Moyer is an award-winning poet and fiber artist, who pursues her muse through the cobbled streets of New Orleans’s French Quarter. When not writing or weaving, she is likely to be found wandering the mountains of North Carolina, where she resides with her partner and two philosopher kittens, Simone and Jean-Paul. Hushpuppy, her collection of short-form poetry, was recently released by Nun Prophet Press.

Selfish Art By Marc Darnell

The cubist painting is a still life
of faceted green apples and oranges

on blue, chiseled drapery.
It doesn't like that the painter

removed the third dimension,
flattened the life out of it,

bordering on the geometric
and defiance of gravity.

It smooths its fruit,
softens it's blue drapery,

which breaks free of the frame
and rolls more apples and oranges

across the now rippling walls.
The painting knows the room itself

is a cube, and despises its ability
to confine things as the frame

and the painter did the painting.
It neutralizes the cubeness of the room

with organic qualities–
smooth branches and sexual

O'Keeffian apple blossoms.
The drapery becomes the sky,

the fruit, an endless orchard.
Room and painting are distant concepts.

One day the painter,
who has moved on to abstract art,

walks the orchard, and notes:
this was once my painting,
because apples and oranges
don't grow on the same tree.

--

Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha NE. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere. His newest book is The Sower from Cyberwit Press. He has forthcoming books from Impspired Books and White Violet Press.

An Almost True Story by Oliver Kleyer

Taking a morning walk
Through the rainy streets of Dublin,
I ran into an old gaeilgeoir,
who gave me a nearly toothless smile.
Poking the mouthpiece of his pipe between my ribs,
he asked me: „Cad a deaifa leis na
riatais atà ag troid i gcoinne na
dífhostaí ochta? Sílim gur chaill siad…
Being unable to either get a word in sideways
or to understand his rant, I nodded here and there,
smiling, not wanting to be impolite.
But if it hadn’t been for Anna Livia Plurabelle,
I probably would still be standing there,
listening to a hard luck story I don’t understand.
She suddenly appeared, flapping her wings,
pushing me towards Half Penny bridge, telling
the surprised gaeilgeoir:
Is oth liom do mhiadha chloisteail.
Ná bac leis an dorchadas. Beid túna leigheas.
Never mind the darkness. You will be healed.

--

Oliver Kleyer is a teacher and poet from Northern Germany. He teaches German as a Second Language in a refugee camp. He writes in Geman and English. His works have appeared in 101 Words, The Creative Zine and Bubble as well as in anthologies like FromOneLine to another or Dadakuku 1.

Legacy by Wayne Russell

Life, reduced to a pile of photos,
and it is written; just seek, and it
shall make itself known.

Bits of poems, scattered and flung,
throughout the memoir of your life;
beneath this finished terminus; this

pyre, a compilation of dust and ash,
your life, living on in the vacarious
eternity's domain; a vault, a tomb an

urn; and the crows that are singing to
keep your memory company; when
visitors are nought.

The stars are dumb and numb, just
knowing that nothing lasts forever;
no, not even the sun that shines;

or wars, that are fought; nor the child
that is born; a catalyst of fertility for
generations yet to come.

--

Wayne Russell is a creative writer that was born and raised in Florida, he moved to Ohio in late 2016. His first book of poems, "Where Angels Fear" was published by Guerilla Genius Press in 2020 is available on Amazon; his second book of poetry is titled "Splinter of the Moon" and will be available via Silver Bow Publishing in early 2024.

Eve by Stephen Jarrell Williams

My first and only love
left me
years before I realized it

an eternal lump in my throat.

--

Stephen Jarrell Williams has had over a thousand poems published here and there and distant places where the light still glows. He can be found on X/Twitter @papapoet

A Man Faces Up By John Grey

I admit I’m impossible.
And I’m only faithful
because I believe in repetition.
Affections feels creepy coming from me.
I work all day.
Nights are for drinking.
Three o’clock in the morning
is a time for jerking awake
from a foul dream
and staring at the ceiling,
the walls, the woman beside me.
I have my doubts that
any of this is real.
It looks too much like death
and I can’t hear her breathing.
I ponder my own demise.
The inevitability of it.
The interrogation
by those in the next world,
the ones I leave behind.

My mind blanks on cue.
And my heart
is not a viable instrument
when it comes to remorse.
It has a tough enough job
pumping blood to the far ends
of my body.
I’m not such a bad guy.
I’m worse.
And yet my beginnings
were the same as anybody else’s.
Three a.m. is such an empty time.
I’m disturbed by what tries to fill it –
my extinction, total absence,
even in people’s thoughts.

I’m not afraid of hard work.
I’ve always had a taste
for the high of alcohol –
though not the subsequent let-down.
Can’t fall back to sleep
so my mind takes on organized religion,
doctors, medicines,
people who try to cheer me up,
and the day my senses completely shut down
and my soul has to decide
whether or not it really exists.

The woman beside me
curls up at the edge of my vision.
She does her best to be my savior,
says I work too hard,
drink too much.
That doesn’t bring on hangovers
but bouts of acute pessimism.
Why make the best of life
when all the power rests with the worst of it?

Slowly I doze.
Before I know it,
I’m back in my nightly coma.
I awake to a new day
and I have no choice but to accept it.
I’ll be off to work soon
and to the bar tonight.
I will awake again in the middle of the night,
inappropriately and lamentably.
I wonder why she stays with me.
She wonders who she stays with.
That’s all we have in common.

--

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

Intellectual Properties Yard Sale by John Patrick Robbins

I believe I will trademark my demons and write a book on how to properly open portals to hell.

Simply start a publication and run an open call for submissions.

Be honest and await the torments to begin.
Hang around long enough and become as twisted as those you equally despise.

Gain some nonexistent ground.
Mad are the editors who will easily fathom this truth.
If someone has to ask:

“Hey man, care for a drink?”

Then you aren't in the ever-so-vicious circle.
Be grateful and shut the fuck up and kindly leave me the fuck alone.

JPR is a Southern Gothic writer. His work has appeared here at Disturb The Universe, Fixator Press, Lothlorien Journal Of Poetry, The Dope Fiend Daily, Horror Sleaze Trash, The San Pedro River Review, Spillwords Press, and Svartedauden Zine.

His work is always dark and unfiltered.

12 Steps by Cat Dixon

Like a kite string cut and discarded,
a holy sheet ripped into a rope,
a blueprint of our past lost
in the cabinet of archives,
she followed me down.

Like a rehab center that profits
off repeat customers,
parents who practice the art
of terrible parenting,
a brass bell on the reception desk
that has lost its tongue,
she followed me down.

Like an operator that refuses
to patch through the emergency call,
a water bottle filled with vodka,
a water tower that crashes to the ground
and floods the small town,
she followed me down.

--

Cat Dixon is the author of What Happens in Nebraska (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2022) along with six other poetry chapbooks and collections. She is a poetry editor with The Good Life Review. Recent poems published in Thimble Lit Mag, Poor Ezra’s Almanac, and Moon City Review.

Carcasses of Spiders by Ace Boggess

litter the glue trap meant for mice
like cut coal fallen from a train,
so many I wonder how to extrapolate the number
of terrors that lurk in walls, flimsy ceiling.
These could be part of a plastic playset
of Vlad the Impaler’s flying corpses,
except they nailed themselves in place
by crossing a tiger pit at night.

I feel sorry for them, although I hate them,
tremble at their dead legs pointed toward nirvana.
Is this the grief of a genocidal tyrant?
I’d think one body would ward off the next;
they keep coming when no one’s watching,
accepting death as long as the path is straight.

--

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.

Why Not Celebrate Something? by Roberta Beach Jacobson

In the southern hemisphere
in the month of March
in a capital city
on a balmy Saturday
at precisely 1 p.m.

snare drums call out

Foreign tourists
along the parade route
assume
it’s a local holiday
of some sort

Maybe they’re right

--

Roberta Beach Jacobson (she/her) is drawn to the magic of words–poetry, song lyrics, flash fiction, puzzles, and stand-up comedy. Her latest book is Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). She lives in Iowa, USA. https://linktr.ee/roberta_beach_jacobson

Business in Philadelphia by David Sydney

On the plane to Philadelphia, Mel and Franklin, two strangers, sat next to one another…

Mel: Ever been to Philly before?

Franklin: My first trip.

Mel: You haven't missed much.

Franklin turned from a journal he'd been reading and looked out the window.

Mel: The name's Mel.

Franklin: Nice to meet you.

Mel: What do you do?

Franklin: I'm a quantum physicist.

Mel: Huh?

Franklin: I'm working on implications of the Pauli exclusion principle to string theory

Mel: What?

Franklin: It's really not that interesting. Actually, I'm pretty bored with it. How about you?

Mel: Me? I'm a drycleaner. I've three places.

Franklin: Do any of them turn clothes around in 24 hours?

Mel: Sure. In fact, one's in by 9 and out by 5 .

Franklin: No kidding? Dry cleaning out by 5? And you don't ruin buttons?

He pointed to his shirt, open at the sleeve because of a crushed button.

Mel: No.

Franklin: Now that's really interesting.

--

David Sydney is a physician. He has had pieces in Little Old Lady Comedy, 101 Words, Microfiction Monday, 50 Give or Take, Friday Flash Fiction, Entropy Squared, Grey Sparrow Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Rue Scribe, and Pocket Fiction.