A Taste of Poetry By Karen A VandenBos

A petite pink haired pixie of a gal got off her beat up stolen

bicycle blowing face sized bubbles with her gum and smiled

at the “Help Wanted” sign posted in the front window of the

local bar, a nondescript place where the hangers on outnumbered

the staff. You could tell by the vacant look in their eyes that

no matter how many drinks they had that their stories would

remain the same unless someone dared to dream big and give

them an opportunity for their voices to be heard. As things

looked now, the wee sprite peering in through the window with

the ridge of freckles across the bridge of her nose was the

answer to their prayers. As she approached the bar, the manager

noticed she was wearing a pink ballet slipper on her left foot

and a black high topped tennis shoe on the right. She wore a

faded black turtle neck shirt and a pair of ragged denim shorts.

A variety of cartoon band-aids decorated her fingers and

knees. In a voice that sounded like a cocktail of puberty and

cigarettes she said she was here for the job and she took it

and wore it like a badge of honor. Every night she would show

up at 9 pm on the dot and watch as the regulars stared at the

scraps of paper and pens that now came with their drinks and

asked them to jot down a word or a sentence about what was

on their mind. At closing time she would collect the notes and

put them in her locker. Week after week she continued this

process until one night in December there was a new sign in the

window that advertised an “Open Mic Night”for poets. Well

she knew then what she was going to do. She took those scraps

of paper that she had been collecting home and put together a

poem, a killer poem of love and loss, laughter and tears, names

and numbers and lines of deep thoughts. When it was her turn

to read that night she stood under the lights and gave each of

those regulars a voice. She used their words to tell their stories

and gave them back hope. Soon all the bars followed suit and

words were gathered from cocktail napkins, bathroom walls,

dollar bills and all those little scraps of paper. Pink books of

poetry appeared as a choice on the menu and poems became

the new soup du jour. Poetry had never tasted so good.

Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI.

She has a PhD in Holistic Health where a course in shamanism taught

her to travel between two worlds. She can be found unleashing her vivid

imagination in two writing groups. A two times Best of the Net nominee,

her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Moss Piglet,

Feed the Holy, The Rye Whiskey Review and others.

Late-Night Wine By Ma Yongbo

I rise to take my leave of the tavern keeper,

draining the last darkness from the bottle,

friends melt away all too soon.

The moon, a fledgling loon,

wheels above unseen pools,

fishing out your sallow, bloated mask.

I long to board any random tram bound for the outskirts—

how sweet the urge to breathe damp earth.

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of Difficult writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce American postmodern poetry into Chinese.

He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 9 poetry collections.He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell,Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. His complete translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. 

https://www.facebook.com/yongbo.ma.2025/

The Girls Who Held My Hair By Heather Kays

Not saints.

Not angels.

Just girls with chipped nails

and lip gloss smudged from making out with the wrong men.

They didn’t know my last name.

Didn’t need to.

They saw my knees hit tile

and moved like instinct.

One held my hair like a rosary,

murmured “you’re okay”

like scripture.

Another dabbed at mascara trails

with a cocktail napkin,

called me “babe” like she meant it.

We were strangers

in a holy place—

a bar bathroom

with piss on the floor

and god in the mirror.

She told me

he wasn’t worth it.

Told me my eyeliner still looked good.

Told me to block his number

and wear the red dress next time anyway.

I’ve never forgotten her.

Any of them.

The girls who didn’t ask

but showed up

with gum,

with water,

with warmth,

with rage if I needed it.

There’s a kind of love

that doesn’t demand your best self—

just whatever pieces you have left

on a bad Tuesday at midnight.

And maybe I never got their names,

but I remember their eyes,

their voices,

their steadiness

in a world that keeps spinning too fast.

They held more than my hair.

They held space.

Held silence.

Held me

together.

Heather Kays is a St. Louis-based poet and author passionate about writing since age 7. Her memoir, Pieces of Us, dissects her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her YA novel, Lila’s Letters, focuses on healing through unsent letters. She runs The Alchemists, an online writing group, and enjoys discussing creativity and complex narratives.

Age Is Just a Number By Ben Newell

Having spent the evening 

getting drunk with twenty-year-olds 

and bumming countless cigarettes 

which will intensify tomorrow’s hangover, 

I find myself behind the wheel

navigating a gauntlet of law enforcement 

eager to take me down;

a DUI would wipe me off the map—

And who would I even call? 

Certainly not that cute redhead 

who told me I was older than her father 

when I tried to get her number. 

Ben Newell lives in Mississippi where he works as a bookseller and freelance writer. His poems have appeared online and in print, most recently at Fixator Press and Cajun Mutt Press. He taught high school English for one day. 

Poison By Joe Couture

I’m a dive-bartender, in a town

tourists might call Butt-fuck 

Nowhere. Visitors to my workplace

sometimes look (or listen) around, saying, 

“Man, I don’t know how you do it.”

I always smile, “What do you mean?”

Is it the people shitting themselves,

paying no mind to dripping jeans—

too tuned to their VLT?

Ten-dollar blowjobs by the sea-can out back?

Surely, not the 1100-year-old regular

from BX-19?

A former coworker overhearing 

one of these conversations

once piped up, smiling,

“To work at this place, you gotta be

fuckin’ poison.”

We laughed.

Except, now I think it’s

harm reduction.

No one’s wife is beaten 

while he’s with me. Besides,

in here, the liquor is never

stretched with anti-freeze.

Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. His most recent work is featured, or forthcoming, in Dark Winter Lit, Rusty Truck, ExPat Press, and SHINE Quarterly. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social

Wasted Your Life, Now What? By Chad Parenteau

You can’t take anymore.

This taffy pull of a 

cocktease, a cyclical 

jerk that can never end

happily. So you’re a 

hitchhiker now, realizing 

that a house only exists 

to keep you from going 

home. All you can hope 

for from people face to 

face is mutually assured 

distraction. You search

in all directions for the 

center. That can’t be right,

can it? It’s time to explore

now that your leaders 

have gotten what they 

wanted. You won’t be 

killed for looking up from

those performative hand 

motions you no longer 

understand. There’s got 

to be more than the eulogy

others wrote for you when

you were twenty years 

stupider and only wanted

a warm body to wake up 

to without being insulted. 

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in 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 Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives in Boston.

Beside the Unfinished Glass By Paul Moore

The half-empty glass,

red stain clinging,

a smear of laughter

on the rim.

And beside it,

your ring.

Gold,

still warm, maybe,

from your finger.

A tiny lighthouse,

a silent code.

Don't forget me.

Come back soon.

I am thinking of you.

Or maybe just

a habit.

But I prefer

the secret message.

Paul Moore is a North Carolina–based Black poet who channels family, ancestry, and memory into reflective verse, honoring resilience, lineage, and the shared journeys that shape identity and strength.