I Am Not Thirsty By Wayne Hebb

I drink for that

Warm fuzzy feeling

Leaving my problems

In its wake

Sometimes it takes

Just one 

Despite that, I always

Have another and another

I rarely stop at two

It makes me smile until

It doesn’t and 

Things get ugly

Drunken rants

The hurling of fists 

Blows striking on

My face until 

I am a sour smelling

Lump on the floor and

The bouncers carry me out

I wake on the sidewalk 

Wet with the night rain 

Staggering to my feet 

I make my way home

To that dreary apartment

Falling on that unmade bed

I sleep in a stupor 

Waking mid-day with

Depression staring at me 

With those sad tormented eyes

And I sink into that rut

Where I am not thirsty but

I need a drink

Wayne Hebb is a retired RCMP officer living in St. John’s, NL, Canada with his wife of 49 years. He enjoys writing poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, and novels.  Several of his poems have been published in Verse-Virtual, The Dark Poets Society, The Horseshoe Literary Magazine and The Galway Review. 

MY DRUNKEN COMPANION By John Grey

I press dollars on the table,

faces up,

dead presidents smiling

at the pretty waitress.

She does not mind my foolishness.

And, besides, her smile

is bright and well-practiced.

I borrow it for a moment.

For the man beside me

with his sad heart

and his tales of deceitful exes,

corrupt bosses,

ungrateful family,

needs all the smiles he can get.

He lifts a hand to wave at her.

Not a wave exactly.

It’s more a kind of prayer

And she brings more wine,

enough to loosen the edges

of both our faces.

He doesn’t lighten up exactly.

But he begins to doze.

And maybe he can find solace

in whatever dreams may come.

I leave him there, walk home

past the window

where he still sits,

head down, muttering something

in my direction,

in a kind of slurry code that says

you must always be drunk.

And I think:

hell, maybe he’s right.

Maybe you must always be drunk -

on wine, on women, on sorrow,

on the simple fact that the world

keeps refusing to end.

So I go home, kick off my shoes,

and drink to that.

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Abbey. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review.

I Might Get the Jellyfish Haircut By Juliet Cook

The more absurd my buzz becomes

the better until I bang my head 

on the keyboard and don't remember

the lines I wrote the next day,

but that often happens anyway.

Anyway if I lie down right now,

then I'll unintentionally cause the black cat

to jump off the bed, because he will think

that I think I take precedence over him

even though I don't think any such thing.

My recent online research has involved

how to know if a cat likes you, 

but also poisonous jellyfish, 

inadvertently leading towards

a trending jellyfish haircut

combined with cancerous wigs.

If the cat follows me, does he like me

or does he hate me? Maybe 

I shouldn't have gone downstairs.

I can hear him breathing, but 

I don't know if he can hear me.

Juliet Cook doesn't fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently including "red flames burning out" (Grey Book Press, 2023), "Contorted Doom Conveyor" (Gutter Snob Books, 2023), "Your Mouth is Moving Backwards" (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2023), "REVOLTING" (Cul-de-sac of Blood, 2024), and "Blue Stingers Instead of Wings" (Pure Sleeze Press, 2025). Her most recent full-length poetry book, "Malformed Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press. You can find out more at https://julietcook.weebly.com/.

Cocktail By J.I. Kleinberg

In winter’s last rationing of light

set out your implements of alchemy,

your snug utensils of conjury,

your beakers and powders, glass

wands and amulets. Wipe dust

and stain from your table, carve

a block of ice from the glacier’s lip.

Drop it in a tall glass.

Before it begins to melt, whisper

an incantation of constellations 

in a language you do not speak. 

Take a small scoop from the moon

with a long-handled silver spoon. 

Gather fog from the horizon 

or from a cleft of pine-clad hills. 

Drizzle it into the glass.

Do not be alarmed if the moon 

begins to shiver. 

At midnight local time

fill a small vial with darkness.

Tip it so the darkness streaks the fog

and stains a bit of the moon.

On a scrap of paper from the pocket

of a coat long-unworn

write seven questions.

Murmur the questions into the glass

only until it is full.

Do not allow the contents to spill over.

Crumple the paper and bury it

in your garden. Slip a hollow reed

into the glass and sip slowly 

as you ponder the answers.

J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. She is the author of The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap, 2023), How to pronounce the wind (Paper View, 2023), Desire’s Authority (Ravenna Press Triple No. 23, 2023), She needs the river (Poem Atlas, 2024), and Sleeping Lessons (Milk & Cake, 2025). All of We is forthcoming from Anhinga Press.

Bride of the Black Creek By John Swain

The wind twists the vines,

the night crushes grapes

where I married you

wading in the black creek,

I jumped from a rock,

we washed in the source,

you set fire to the trees,

the sky rises

from the honeysuckle

of your sweat,

you cover me with rain,

we drink the wine you bleed.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. His work has recently appeared in Wild Winds, an anthology published by Borderless Journal. 

Little Head By Katie Barnett

He was a thimble of a man

He came into our bar, The People’s Choice, daily

We lived in Hegins, Pennsylvania   

He spoke but wasn’t understood

Pennsylvania Dutch, like a foreign language

He was suspect

Odd in every flavor

A smarmy fellow

Shaved head

Hunter’s cap

White T-shirt

They called him Little Head

He sat at the bar unaccompanied

Then played cards with my grandmother, Euchre

They relished this past time

I watched but had no interest

He drank shots as she delt

They smoked in tandem

I never liked him

I found nothing redeeming in him

We took him home one night

His house fell in on itself

He knew little, he had little

He found companionship with my grandmother

She gave him something no one else had, a chance

 

Katie Barnett is a speech-language pathologist in Alabama who works with students on the Autism spectrum. Katie is passionate about writing and reading poetry, it is one of the many “silver linings” in her life. She finds poetry compelling and exhilarating. She ventures into topics related to nature, sorrow, joy and mental illness. She attends a local poetry club weekly.  Publications: Allen Ginsburg’s 100th Anniversary Anthology, June 2026 and Rue Scribe.

 

 

 

drinking white wine By John Grochalski

drinking white wine

instead of vodka

stone cold sober tonight

watching sitcoms on the couch

the world seems

so goddamned funny to me

that i want to reach out

and strangle it

until it hacks up a lung.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.