Observations from a Holiday Season Nightshift By Joe Couture

He told me that he was a fixin’

to kill a prominent politician.

Wry smiles came from his fellow patrons

As he explained his deal with the ancients.

Jesus arranged the intricate details

along with the boys, a group of angels

Who set on a sum of many millions

they’d bill to world leaders for the killin.’

Christmas lights danced off the can in his hand

that waved as he weaved, unable to stand.

After his loud oration, he announced

the pay’d go in the “Pete loves beer account!”

in the bank of heaven.

As he laughed at the politician’s fate

regulars laughed in his sunken old face

I couldn’t help thinking

His first time swaying by lights and garland 

when the smiles of watchers weren't so hardened.

Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. He writes for his health. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social

Learning About Romance at Jake’s, Explained Badly By Greg Clary

Standing in the TJ Maxx checkout line

fluorescent lights humming like cicadas,

I stare at a display of modern salvation:

sleep gummies, alertness pills,

“Stamina” powders, menstrual mercy,

gas relief,

all the physical poetry of being human,

alphabetized under SALE.

I turn to the young mother behind me,

her buggy stacked with frosted wreaths

and peppermint scented illusions.

I ask:

“You trust this stuff more than the gas station racks?”

She laughs without looking up:

“Honey, I barely trust gravity.”

And suddenly, 

I’m back at Jake’s Texaco in Greenbottom,

a kind of community safe house

for boys who liked Elvis,

pickup trucks,

and the idea that life 

was about to begin any day now.

And Jake, our local wizard of

life-skills wisdom and moral confusion,

kept the good stuff behind the counter:

rubbers, apple wine in Mason jars,

pint crocks of moonshine, 

Playboys ragged at the edges,

and one deck of French poker cards,

strictly medical, showing nekkid people

engaged in cardio activities 

unfamiliar to us. 

One hot July day, a buddy and I,

fueled by hope and ignorance, 

sent five dollars cash

to an ad from the back of Argosy Magazine

for a packet of Spanish Fly,

advertised as a romance enhancer,

but we would’ve been happy

if a girl simply nodded at us.

It never arrived.

We checked the mailbox every day

as if it cradled 

the future of our hearts. 

Sixty years later,

I see that same friend at funerals,

reunions, and campfires.

He always pauses and asks,

“Has it showed up yet?”

And I always answer,

“Yes, in a way.

Just not by mail.”

Greg Clary is a retired college professor who was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia. He now resides in the northern Appalachia Pennsylvania Wilds.

His photographs have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Pine Mt Sand & Gravel, Tiny Seed Journal, Watershed Journal, About Place, Change Seven, Appalachian Lit, and many more.

His writing has been published in Rye Whiskey Review, The Bridge Literary Journal, Northern Appalachia Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Waccamaw Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Black Shamrock Magazine, Rust Belt Review, and Tobeco.

His new book of photographs and poetry, “The Vandalia in Me”, was published by Meraki Press and is available on-line at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

PLATO SPEAKS OF SALOONS By Dan O’Connell

  At Pop’s Bar, established 1937.

Real bars open at 6 a.m.

has no food but peanuts 

and a potluck on Thanksgiving

regular crowd as diverse as the liquor shelf

ghost names engraved in tarnished gold plates

ash trays at the bar and every 

tiny round table arising 

from threadbare red carpet

like buoys

juke box of timeless rock and blues

and TV for the most exciting two minutes 

pool table doubling as a slab

toilet room held together by stickers

no windows or if there is one

it’s curtained or covered with posters

of sexy women holding bottles 

eliciting jokes and memories  

always something strange, here, e.g.,

a defunct phone booth used as bird cage

  

real bars have real drunks

Plato slurs as he studies the forms

at 6:55 a.m.

 

Dan O’Connell is a four-time award winning poet, and multiple finalist and honorable mention. His poetry has appeared over one hundred times. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, and several chapbooks. A former philosophy professor, Dan O. is an attorney representing the oppressed. Find Dan O. at www.danoconnellpoetry.com.

Proof By Chad Parenteau

God proves

own existence

hating you so

fucking much

too often for

randomness,

earth moving

enough that

you must 

be favorite 

dumping spot

of universe. 

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.

THE MILLBURY STREET SHUFFLE By Christopher Reilley

We begin at the top of Millbury Street

with the optimism of newborn Vikings—

legs steady, voices bright,

convinced we are legends in the making.

Twenty-one years alive,

twenty-one drinks ahead,

a math problem no sober person

has ever solved gracefully.

 

The first bar greets us

like a forgiving aunt—

soft lights, easy pours,

a bartender who calls you “kid”

with the kind of affection

that makes you feel both young

and temporarily invincible.

 

By bar four, colors start to bloom—

neon halos around street signs,

a warm glow under your ribs

like you swallowed a lantern

because someone dared you.

 

By bar eight, the shuffle begins:

that sideways drift

your feet invent without permission,

a kind of drunken interpretive dance

meant to convince gravity

you’re still on speaking terms.

 

By bar ten, you’re arguing

with a traffic cone

about the nature of destiny.

The cone is winning.

 

By bar thirteen,

you have made at least two new friends,

someone’s dog is wearing your birthday hat,

and you are loudly insisting

that water is a “myth invented by Big Hydration.”

 

By bar sixteen,

Millbury Street wobbles a little—

not dangerously,

just enough to remind you

that pavement is a suggestion

and not a promise.

 

By bar eighteen,

your friends are holding

a loose-formation phalanx around you,

guiding you like a ceremonial float

in the parade of your own terrible decisions.

 

By bar twenty,

you raise your glass

with the gravitas of a knight

about to swear an oath

you do not understand

but deeply believe in.

 

And at bar twenty-one—

the finish line, the altar,

the victory lap disguised as a stool—

you take your final drink

with the joy of someone

who survived their own ambition.

 

At the end of Millbury Street,

you are a masterpiece of chaos:

laughing, leaning, luminous,

a triumphant mess wrapped

in birthday-colored bravado.

 

This is the Millbury Street Shuffle—

a pilgrimage of youth,

a marathon of questionable wisdom,

a celebration so spectacular

you’ll only remember half of it,

and cherish all of it.

 

Christopher Reilley is a New England-based poet and author whose work bridges poetry, prose and fiction. He has served as Poet Laureate of Dedham, Massachusetts and is the founder of the Dedham Poet Society. Reilley’s creative reach extends into the realm of cultural preservation: four of his poems are included in the Lunar Codex — a digital/analog time-capsule archive of global artistic works that has been carried to the Moon.

 

Unnecessary By Dan Provost

As the bass lines

Strays in rhythm

With the beer orders…

Electric mayhem

Flashing while looking

Out the window—the

Wind revolving a

Purgatory riff, oh God,

My loss spills blood 

Through my eyes. Seeing 

beings spontaneously crack 

Into splinters of

Unnecessary shame.

Inside the sphere of the

Conflict, beings beaten,

Busted by bureaucratic

Bounties. Paid nothing

For crimson knuckles.

 

Dan Provost’s poetry has been published both online and in print since 1993. He is the author of 17 books/ chapbooks, including All in a Pretty Little Row, released by Roadside Press, in November 2023. Notes From the Other Side of the Bed will be published by A Thin Slice of Anxiety Press in early 2025. His work has been nominated for The Best of the Net three times and has read his poetry throughout the United States. He lives in Keene, New Hampshire with his wife Laura, and dog Bella.

The Barmuda Triangle By Bruce Morton

            (Bozeman, Montana)

Proximity and geometry, they are what

It was that got them that moniker. Three

Neighboring watering holes, a triptych oasis:

The Hof, that is the Hofbrau, a cinder-block

Shrine. The Molly, the Molly Brown saloon.

The Scoop, dive bar, since sunk, gone belly-up,

Like a defeated Moby Dick. Many have met

Their demise, disappearing from the radar,

After a night flight into the triangle, moving

From one bar to the next, guided by not-so-

Dead reckoning--instinct, luck. For beer is

An unreliable joystick, and a pool cue a poor

Crutch. Each companion a compass searching

For something resembling a true north.

Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Mort (2024) and Simple Arithmetic & Other Artifices (2014). His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.