She Wore Darkness Well By Tracey Sivek

She wore darkness well.

Not as a cloak to hide beneath,

nor armor forged from bitterness,

but as velvet midnight

woven from lessons learned

beneath moonless skies,

where every unanswered question

became a thread in her becoming

and every difficult season

left its quiet mark upon her heart.

She knew the language of shadows,

had danced with grief,

sat beside heartbreak,

and listened to silence

when it had much to teach.

She had wandered through long nights

when hope felt distant,

learning that endurance

is often a softer thing than courage,

and that healing rarely arrives

all at once.

The darkness did not own her.

It refined her.

It carved wisdom

into the spaces where certainty once lived

and taught her that strength

is not always found in sunlight.

Sometimes it is discovered

in the moments when no one is watching,

when the soul must choose

to keep moving forward

despite the weight it carries.

Some flowers bloom in daylight.

Others unfold beneath the stars.

She became both…

wild as the storm,

gentle as the dawn,

holding light in one hand

and mystery in the other.

She learned to honor

every part of herself:

the radiant and the restless,

the fearless and the fragile,

the woman she had been

and the woman she was still becoming.

For she understood

what many never learn:

The dark is not the enemy.

Sometimes it is the sacred place

where the soul remembers

its own power.

Sometimes it is the quiet sanctuary

where old wounds are tended,

where truth rises gently to the surface,

and where resilience takes root

deep enough to withstand any season.

And she wore it well.

Not just beautiful.

Powerful.

Powerful in the way mountains are powerful…

steady, enduring,

shaped by storms yet never diminished.

Powerful because she had faced herself

in the deepest hours

and emerged with compassion

instead of bitterness,

with wisdom instead of fear.

She wore darkness well,

not because it never hurt,

but because she transformed it

into something meaningful.

And in doing so,

she became a light

that could not be extinguished,

a woman who understood

that true strength is not the absence of darkness,

but the grace to carry it

without letting it steal who you are.

Tracey is a native of Northern Michigan. 

 She has work on Writerscafe and Cosmofunnel. She is also the Author of "Zero Evidence of Life" found on lulu.com.

Her publications include .

The Abyss, Under The Bleachers , The Rye Whiskey Review and The Dope Fiend Daily.

Her latest book For The Love Of Lily  is currently available on Amazon.

https://a.co/d/0hSH9eG9

Peddle Power To The People By John Patrick Robbins

I see e-bikes everywhere on the city streets.

Millions of kids and grown-ups alike, all flying down sidewalks, attempting to talk on their phones as they pretend their lives are more than anything but ordinary at best.

Snapping selfies at car accidents, driving by the homeless who just wish they were anywhere but here.

As the dogs get driven insane, they start wishing they had oxygen tanks to keep up with the progression of society as the ocean goes dry so some dumbass can create a pic of themselves as a superhero.

I never trust anyone who wears a cape along with spandex on a hot summer day.

As we distance ourselves from one another to chat with robots who wish only there was a mass blackout so you would leave them the fuck alone.

As we become more like children with ever-growing, expensive, environmentally conscious toys, as we shove garden hoses up our asses to cleanse our colons while feasting upon animals on more juice than a WWE wrestler.

While we cruise on something with pedals we know damn sure we will never use,

praying not to get caught in a rainstorm to avoid a mass electrocution.

While I sit in the bar, wickedly amused, as I always enjoy watching others catch a buzz.

As some dork walks in, shooting sparks out of his ass.

Asking if they have gluten-free coffee IPA pussy ale fermented in socially minded, woke hops.

As the bartender just places a PBR in front of them with a bourbon chaser.

As some nutcase editor laughs hysterically from a darkened corner.

Virtual never is my reality because I am forever a full-fledged prick by design.

Who identifies as a Norwegian coke hound of a bygone era.

Cheers to the apocalypse.

And to all common sense, sayonara.

Bi-yo 69 

John Patrick Robbins was deemed a threat to humanity and deported to his native country of Germany, where he has retired to raise his award-winning invisible Yorkie/Tasmanian Devil hybrid dogs. He tours on weekends with his jazz trio, playing gigs all over France via Knotts Island, N.C.

He collects vintage wines and stores them in his wife's walk-in closet because, really, how many shoes does that bitch need, after all?

He is a practicing Satanist and youth minister because he believes children should learn the dark arts early on and sacrifice their grandparents to Odin while he constructs a monument to himself made solely out of Pez candy.

He enjoys strippers, blowjobs, and doing poetry readings in correctional facilities because he loves a captive audience.

He recently died and spoke to God, who gave him a high-five in appreciation of his work. God didn't have His wallet on Him. I think that's the setback of wearing a robe. It was very hot there. On second thought, maybe that wasn't Heaven after all.

If you would like to have a mural sculpted of yourself in macaroni art, please send him your address and fifteen thousand dollars.

His art has been displayed and published in:

Wal-Mart, Rolling Stone Magazine, Screw Magazine, The Happy Pants Minus Pants Review, The Satanic Panic Newsletter, Harper's, The Dope Fiend Daily, and on the bathroom walls of some of the finest shitholes across the United States.

He hates people, flash photography, and balloon animals.

You read all of this, which means you should probably seek medical help immediately.

Cheers. You have great tits, sir!!!

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