Shanidar Z By Rita S. Spalding

orange poppies on zala’s grave

placed with love upon a heart

cradled in her hand a stone

curved and carved and pressed tight

fingers stretch across all night

are we so different than 

the old poppy holder’s hand 

then and now compassion moans

bones and rigid brows define 

ancient ribbons bleed and wind 

reconstruct and gave a name

she picked flowers in the rain

Rita S. Spalding has had poems published in numerous anthologies and magazines. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons, was published in 1992. A second book, The Eighth, is currently at a publisher. She has received awards for poetry from Jefferson Community and Technical College, Elizabethtown Community College, National Library of Poetry, Kentucky Monthly Magazine and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. In 2024 she was a presenter at the Kentucky Writers Celebration in Danville and Historic Penn’s General Store, the Last Insomniacathon and she gives poetry readings regionally on a regular basis.

Bawdy Blue Rose By Merritt Waldon

All days remembered with fractalian

Digits

Patterned existences

Multiple everywheres

Celestial Terrestrial

Et cetera  

Minds drip

Sadly down the great

American painting of

Bawdy Blue rose

Swaying beyond

Eternity

Merritt Waldon is Southern Indiana poet who has been published in Road Dawgz, Sun Poetic Times,

The Brooklyn Rail, Be About It Zine, River Dog #1, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Americans & others anthology fourth edition, Crisis Chronicles, Cajun Mutt Press, Thye Rye Whiskey Review, and Fearless!.

At midnight Christmas night 2020, cajun mutt press released Oracles from a Strange Fire by Ron Whitehead & Merritt. He lives in Austin, Indiana.

Elegy By PW Covington

He seemed to know his way around by soul

In any town that we can to

While remaining the consummate stranger

Brown-eyed

Passing through

Burning ambition for warmth in the night

Listening for love and only ever hearing echoes

The prophet of highway happenstance and truck stops

     and smoky neon light-filled rooms night

So deep in Mason Dixon

It almost made him want to cry

He told me once, while high

Sipping beer from a bag that night in Pensacola

How to hitchhike into Houston, out of San Antone

Or find a flop in Tucson to lay low

Those desperate places, next to nail salons

Where flesh is bought and sold

He seemed to know every County Road

Or Metro line, by heart

Airports were his haunts

Worked, a while, as a deckhand

In the deep blue cobalt Gulf

Of Mexico, he’d often talk about

Months with the Tarahumara 

     and the railroad to Los Mochis

He knew the alleyways of Santa Fe

     and his way around Capitol Hill

Where to find the cheapest lid on Colfax

     and the way from Mount St. Helens

Up to Deception Pass

Always feeling himself fueled mostly by momentum

He seemed to know his way around by soul

Brown-eyed, passing through

PW Covington is the NBPF's 2024-2026 New Mexico Beat Poet Laureate.

 Writing in the Beat tradition of the North American Highway, PW Covington has spent decades traveling in support of his writing, and encouraging the creativity of others.

 Covington's latest collection of poetry Vintage Denim is available from Alien Buddha Press.

  PW lives just south of Historic Route 66 in Albuquerque, NM, where he has worked on film and television productions such as Better Call Saul and The Cleaning Lady.

Shock the Monkey By Jeff Weddle

I suppose the monkey was a terror,

but it never had a chance.

Maybe it was a biter or

perhaps threw its shit at people.

Still, did it deserve to be murdered?

The father took the son

on a camping trip, the only time

this ever happened,

and the monkey

was left at home,

alone with the mother.

There was an electrical outlet and a fork

and, when the father and son returned,

a dead monkey on the counter.

The mother was fine or better.

Did I mention madness ran in the family?

As far as I know,

the boy never had another pet

until he was grown

and his parents

were as dead as the monkey,

which remains, unavenged

and forgotten,

in a shoebox, two feet deep

behind the porch.

The boy lasted for another fifty years

but finally drank himself into an early grave.

The monkey, safe in heaven,

ate a banana

and bided its time,

because

even in paradise,

sin blots the soul,

and payback is delicious.

It was always going to be

hell.

 

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the Eudora Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry, including being named the first State of Alabama Beat Poet Laureate (2024-2026) by the National Beat Poetry Foundation. His work has appeared in Albanian and Spanish translation. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.

 

Only Pretending By Michael Minassian

In college, I dated Bonnie, a writer,

though she claimed to be Helen,

the most beautiful woman on earth,

and only undressed in the dark

I’m doing this to protect you, 

she whispered, as serious as rain.

She told me that she wrote

about me every day, 

a lie I only half believed,

wondering what other fictions

were in her journal

or on the tip of her tongue.

She showed me poems

with our names erased,

saying it was easier to pretend.

No matter what I believed,

getting the truth from her

was like trying to peel water.

Impersonating herself,

she always stood

at the outskirts of affection,

words circling the drain

or in hiding, crouching,

long after she was gone.

MICHAEL MINASSIAN lives with his wife in Southern New England. He is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing as well as a chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

 

Shaking hands By Julian Thumm

“Are your hands shaking?" 

My brother asks 

They were...

  Dehydration

             I mutter

  Disordered malnutrition or

  Sun stroke

Whatever seems plausible

Is flung against the wall

In desperation

To slowly sluice 

with pathos down 

before our eyes

My glorified debauchery 

   (The gutter aesthete

   With admiration

   Exploring the fecund swill)

Has a grim slimy taint

Under this wholesome

Unforgiving glare

Julian is a fledgling poet from Melbourne, Australia. He studied literature and professional writing and now works as a corporate shill, selling his corrupted pen to the highest bidder. His poetry is an attempt to make sense of a lifetime of bad choices. 

 

Crumbled Pedestals By Skaja Evens

I love you
It’s just my life is full
I hope you understand why my replies are farther apart.
I trust you to process that as you will.

Probably meant in all earnestness and sincerity
But still stings
I’m a ride or die, but you never were to me.
How can I feel anything else
Except expendable?

Skaja Evens is a Best of the Net-nominated writer living in SE Virginia. Her work has appeared in Medusa's Kitchen, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos, Mad Swirl, Spillwords Press, Ink Pantry, Blue Pepper, among others. Her first book, conscientia veritatis, from Whiskey City Press, is available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/conscientia-veritatis-Skaja-Evens/dp/B0CZTRN7ZP