Grand Relic By PW Covington

As flags and marble columns 

Rise outside

They nuzzle in fluorescent lights

Under suspended ceilings

To draw up erotic contracts

On each other

All parties at the party come

Prepared to be fucked over

As all also hope to be 

The final fucker standing

Grand Relic of all 

The shame and stain 

Of all surviving analog

Sent out to professional ego bleachers

The day

Horns of Hell and Heaven

Get blown in tune

To infants suckling caramel liqueur

With a hint St. Louis jazz

PW Covington was recently named United States BEAT Poet Laureate (2026-27) by the National Beat Poetry Foundation.

 They travel extensively, encouraging free expression wherever they go.

Covington lives not far from where Historic Route 66 crosses the fabled Rio Grande River, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Like a Punk Rock By Tim G. Young ​

Last evening blasted through his head like punk rock. It was punk rock, like a rock smashed to bits, blanketed with razor-sharp edges. His hands willing to scrape the edge across the inside of his bared thigh. He would collect the blood in a saucepan while it ran from his flesh like rats escaping a fire in a hole. He would study the color, feel the texture, and probably taste his own blood. But his fingers began to bleed before he could bring the punk rock to his leg. He had to drop it as if it had been pulled from a pottery kiln. The heat reminded him of the cinnamon candy hearts he would throw at his sister after he had sucked on them. He thought the memory of the taste of the cinnamon red hots might resemble the taste of his blood. His fingers continued to bleed and began to pulse in rhythm along with his heart. His heart was booming like a huge kick drum drenched in reverb.

In the beating confusion, he convinced himself his vessel was being drained of every drop of crimson, turning his sheets a stinging red. The red had embedded itself under his fingernails and dripped down his fingers across his chest.

He sat up, moved his hands to his mouth. His tongue emerged, sliding all over his red, encrusted fingers. The taste was anything but cinnamon. It was the taste of another tongue.

The sound of a storm pulled him out of bed in time to see lightning flash and rain pound his window. The punk rock rested on his pillow. The clock on the wall had stopped ticking. The second hand hiccupped at 4.


The numeral 4 sent his memory to a scene from a dark bar. He and his friend Gabriel were drinking shots of red-headed sluts. Gabriel bought the sluts and later tequila, and convinced the bartender to turn it up. The Cramps danced with a shotgun-wielding bikini. The Clash was so very bored with the USA. So was everybody else, but no one was moving except for the bending of the elbow. The bartender walked by to shake hands, depositing a bag of blow into his palm. He laughed and grabbed an anonymous drink from the bar and finished it. He walked to the dim end of the bar where the steps led to the toilets. Gabriel followed. The coke flew up their noses and ran down their throats.


London calling, five lively girls crowded into the bar. The bartender bought them beers. They did a drunken cheer, throwing back their beers, kicking off their shoes. The tallest girl looked at him. He took her hand and led her to the toilet. He slid the latch on the door, gave her a blast, and another for himself. Back at the bar, she gave him her beer and ordered more. All the girls ordered more beer.

The bartender came out and made out with a girl in a very short, shiny green dress. Her hair was dyed red. Gabriel said she could have easily been the original red-headed slut. The bartender ran with this, telling the girl in the short, shiny green dress, who almost fell over from laughter. Her red hair brought blood into his mind. It’s blood that made her hair red.

He looked down at his shoes. They looked like they were on strange feet that never belonged to him. He thought of blue suede shoes, red-haired women, and his wish that all five girls would strip off everything, climb on top of the bar, and spread their legs. He wanted to see the hair at the top of their thighs. The tall girl put her hand on his chin and slid her tongue into his mouth. He smelled her teasing perfume. He pushed his tongue into her. The Sex Pistols played No Future. The lights flickered. The bartender locked the door. It was after four when the party hit full stride. More shots and brews were poured. A pile of cash grew on the bar. Everyone lit a cigarette and a joint. The tall girl moved away, asking Gabriel to help her up on the bar. She stripped off her sweater, revealing her breasts in a very tiny black and red bra. She lip-synced to the long, tall woman in a black dress. At the end, she did a split. Everyone was happy until the beginning light of another day began its creep into the din of disrepute. The bartender signaled that the party had ended.

On the outside, he remembered the bartender’s face looking distorted through the glass as he locked the door. It was a cloudy, cool morning. He heard distant thunder when they all fell into the street. The girls and Gabriel vanished into a yellow cab. The ad on top of the cab was for Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club.

Lighting a cigarette almost burned off his eyebrows because the flame was adjusted too high. He grasped the lighter in his right hand like a pitcher about to throw a fastball. It crashed hard in the gutter across the street, curling into a ball, throwing up its last gasp of flame. He walked over to see. It was like a punk rock. It was something very sharp and dangerous.

Tim is a widely published author, poet, and songwriter with BMI. In other times, in New York City,

Tim was an actor and frontman for his numerous rock bands. His new novel, A TASTE OF HEAVEN,

is being shopped to agents.

The Only Trouble is Car Trouble By Jeff Weddle

The road taken and taken away, 

left for dead, 

left at the rest stop 

with a broken coffee machine. 

Left with an empty tank, 

a flat tire, a dead battery

and it looks like rain. 

The gas station is closed 

and, anyway, the clerk is crazy. 

No chicken for you, no taters.

Beer won’t help. How strange. 

The road veers unseen

in a distance so far 

that even time makes no sense.

Lightning splits the doldrums. 

Nighttime daytime midnight noon. 

Singing old songs that become hymns. 

Everything leads everywhere 

when you are undone. 

When you are unfinished,

unprepared and hungry. 

When you are left behind.

 

Jeff Weddle is the Alabama Beat Poet Laureate (2024-2026). His latest books are High on Rose (Keeping the Flame Alive Press, 2026), The Things We Do to Protect Our Own (Meat for Tea Press, 2025), and Letter to Xhevdet Bajraj (2025). He opposes fascism in all forms and grieves that such opposition has become dangerous in America.

William Carlos Williams, volume II By Janette Schafer

This is just to say

if you had written

more like this, steeped

in affection, tongue

firmly in cheek,

lush enough to taste

cold fruit in my mouth,

I could have 

even loved you—

but since you didn’t,

keep your hands

off my 

fucking

plums.

Janette Schafer is a poet, photographer, playwright, and realtor living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. She is the author of three collections of poetry and the chief editor of two poetry anthologies. Her writing and photographs have appeared in numerous journals, newspapers, and websites, including Vox Populi, The Missouri Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Eunoia Review. She is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize.

Pondering By Keith Pearson

I was sitting on the porch at dusk, the faded boards silver in the last light, thinking about Ecclesiastes, and an old friend gone a few years now.  The book covers some hard country that everyone passes through, where wind covers the ground and rivers run their course. Where plans made by man get blown away like footsteps in the dust.

 

My friend used to laugh at such talk, said folks spent too much of life trying to outsmart time. I can still hear that laugh some evenings, especially when the sunset is fading into unnamed colors and the wind is out of the west in a faint breeze.

 

Ecclesiastes isn't a place to go for comfort. Maybe that's why I like it, the same reason I make this place home. There's not much comfort found out here. Life here stands tough, boots in the dust, telling hard truths. There's a time for every thing under heaven. Seasons arrive and seasons leave. There's no bargaining, and no appeal.

 

I have learned over my time here how the dead travel along with you. They show themselves here in different ways. A gesture. A word. In the way a gathering storm sends a warning chill along the spine.

 

The sun goes down and leaves only a promise it will rise. I take comfort in that. Out here we keep things simple.

 

They put her in ground where she never wanted to be. I take the blame for that. I was the only one that knew, and I forgot until it was too late.  They chose a bright green patch of fake grass fenced in by tidy rules. Her ashes rode there in a cardboard box decorated with paper roses. I could hear the wind calling her from the far off canyons she loved. The people standing over her meant well in their grief. Meaning well doesn't get you far out here. Handfuls of dirt fell softly. My eyes were somewhere beyond the cemetery, to the west. Across the hard plains to the mountains beyond

Across the seasons where she travels beside me.

keith pearson was born and raised in new hampshire and works at a local high school in the math department.

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. NOW O EN 24 HOURS By Trish Saunders

You might think we’ve stumbled

onto hard times

here at the Blue Moon tavern.

Our neon sign doesn’t slice

through the air 

like it used to.

Payroll is cut

to three, including 

the mop and pail. 

We require only a twenty

on the table to run a tab. 

Not complaining, mind you.

The cat still gets fed, 

our landlord seems 

the understanding type. 

Hard times everywhere, but

you’ll always be able 

to get a drink on us, 

so long as you can still find 

a Blue Moon mug somewhere.

It shouldn’t be hard in a big city like this. 

Trish Saunders lives in Seattle. She has poems and short fiction
published or forthcoming in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Gargoyle, the late lamented Fat Damsel Review, and here in the Rye Whiskey Review. 

They Called Him Norm By Matthew Ussia

because he looked like that guy from Cheers

but that was before he got a giant scar

across his whole face 

from flipping a car

at over 100 miles per hour

somewhere in Maryland 

but that was after he got expelled

though he still came up most weekends

to perform his famous frat party trick

of drinking until his heart stopped 

when the LifeFlight copters would come

on Saturday night we always shrugged

Oh, that's just Norm

lately I've been asking around

he was a nice enough guy

but no one remembers his real name

so we'll always have to wonder

about the slim possibility

that he lived

Matthew Ussia is director of Duquesne University’s First Year Writing Program in spite of the fact that he got a C- in freshman writing and was rejected from Duquesne’s MA program. He is also an editor, podcaster, post-doom thereminist, softcore punk, postpunk backup singer, social media burnout, and sentient organic matter. His second book, Saturday Night on Earth, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2025. His first book, The Red Glass Cat, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. His writings have appeared in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, Future Humans in Fiction and Film, North of Oxford, MadSwirl, Trailer Park Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Pittsburgh Quarterly among others. More information can be found at www.matthewussia.com.