Satan Always Leaves The Light On For Ya By John Patrick Robbins

I question are there any new highs that await me; the pills were a letdown as the sex, well it was sex

I walk around on two feet minus my left, which I can no longer feel.
Much like my heart, I know it is there, and that's about it.

Old friends make far better enemies, and me I couldn't care less, for I always preferred drinking alone.

These are our best days if you consider struggling just to stay afloat a blast.
The good moments are now but blurry memories as my passion is a dried up well with my best pages.

A cold reminder and a question mark are not such strange bedfellows as outsider's question, just where it all went off the tracks.

Fuck if I know, and furthermore, why should I care?
When I'm just trying to survive.
There will never be a title attached to my name but I will most certainly soon be wearing a marble hat.

That shall be engraved.
Moved to a warmer climate.

Even though my life's proverbial ship is sinking, it still, in some morbid sense, holds its charm.

Cheers.

JPR, is a Southern Gothic writer and a professional recluse and in reality he does not exist for he is an AI creation.

He won't read you shit, because your not a child.

 His job is to write and run way too many magazines while crushing the hopes and dreams of writers including himself.

This is not his first rodeo let alone publication.

He enjoys drugs and juggling chainsaws in the dark.

He has been published he is not enlightend.

You look very nice today keep in mind he is also a habitual liar and the most evil writer in history just ask some dipshit thats never really met him.

He is going to stop typing one day....

But not.

Today.

sirens at six in the morning by John Grochalski

hungover

drinking water

at the kitchen sink

wishing

this fucking city

could behave itself

for just one

goddamned minute.

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.

Soup By Wayne F. Burke

I bought a newspaper and

read it while sitting on a park bench

and afterward, I went back to my a.p.t.

and washed the dishes then

vacuumed the rug;

got a call from a telemarketer I did not answer

then took a bath, then

shaved...Cooked and ate a bowl of

tomato soup, with crackers, and as

I ate

remembered

that

yesterday, around 10 a.m.

his girlfriend said

Larry died.

Wayne F. Burke's poetry and prose has been widely published in print and online (including in THE RYE WHISKEY REVIEW). He was nominated for a Pushcart by THE DOPE FIEND DAILY in 2022. He lives in Vermont (USA).

the old bar stories By J.J. Campbell

your lips tasted like some 

angel from another planet

of course, you left with 

my friend

well, my former friend

he suddenly didn’t have 

time for me anymore

i can look back at those days

and laugh, mostly because

i don’t have any fucking 

tears left

there’s an old barstool

i used to sit at for hours

think of silly poems

beat every motherfucker 

in there on the pool table

free drinks for most 

of those hours

there was one woman

who actually bought 

me a drink one night

she wanted to have me 

come over for a threesome 

with her husband

of course, she gave me a 

fake number and i never 

saw her again

not that i’m angry or anything

not every day where a threesome

comes up in conversation

J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Synchronized Chaos, Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Black Coffee Review. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Hands that Tremble By Leigh Doughty

‘I’m not an alcoholic,’

he told himself most days.

As each day he clung on  

with fierce talons to the fact that

he never drank until five o’clock

and that showed courage and

strength to fight the day.

If his hands would shake then 

so be it.

And if his mind could only scream

to have another drink,  

any drink,

as long as it had that magic spirit,

then so be it.

If he could just get to through the afternoon

idling his hours away,

like a senile workhound

refusing to give up. 

Just to make it to that heavenly release

that came at five on the dot.

Then he wasn't an alcoholic 

Leigh Doughty is a writer and a tutor from Lincoln, England. His previous work is in the Nuthatch and the Subliminal Surgery.

What could have been? By David L Painter

It was not so much as to who he was
but what he might have been.
Somehow the time seemed to have slipped by
until thirty  years had passed.
Years of rising
each morning clenching a black lunch pail
spending ten hours down in the steel mill
only to return at the end of the day 

When he was Twenty two
and much to his surprise,
that girl with auburn hair and big doe eyes said yes.
Still it wasn’t too late, he had played
the game all his life
from little league to high school.
Everyone said that he had a
good glove and a decent stick.
He had been offered a chance to play
down Tupelo way, minor AA.
It won’t be long he told his young wife,
but he just had to take the chance.

 However as dreams sometimes do,
they go by the way of a
headfirst slide into home plate
as the ump calls “You’re out.”
And the dust settles over
the rest of his life.

That two hundred a week
wasn’t enough with a baby on the way.
He could always play another day.
After all, everyone says that he had
a good glove and a decent stick.

Saturday night in front of the T V screen
as the flicker of black and white
dancing across his face,
perhaps down by the ocean where the
water washes him clean,
or at the corner bar where the foam
slides down his empty glass.
Maybe it’s the cry of a new born child and
the laugh of a happy wife.
Still in all, the question remains
What if ? If only.
Everyone said that he had a good glove and a decent stick.

David is an International published poet.He is a member of the Inner city writers’ group and penned in the city.His works have been published in Sweetycat Press,Piker press, Rye Whiskey Review,Clarendon House, Spillwords Press,The Writers’ Club,and  Dyst Literary Journal.as well as The World  of Myth,Every Writer,Ohio Bards and Academy of the Heart. He is a member of Ohio Writers Group and West Virginia Writers Group. His book of poems Thoughts Alone the Way  is available on Amazon  

The Tears of a Thousand Men By April Ridge

The impending doom looms over our heads

as we sit and discuss strategies

to prevent the lingering failure from succeeding in

shutting the doors on this popsicle stand for good.

As the coins slip out of worn, splayed fingers

the lights dim slowly,

the room becomes chilly with neglect.

The floors are four layers of eroding laminate tile,

laid by three different owners over the years.

Older than most struggling grad students

back for their second degree in old bar floor topography.

The north and west walls painted barn red,

the east wall, a horrid mauve creation mixed from three paint 

cans,

laid onto a false rock wall,

bordered in a tan grout.

The south wall is weathered brick wall inserts

scrubbed last summer to remove the decades of tar

built up from when you could still smoke in a bar.

All the stools are missing the middle ring,

the rubber stops chewed away by the decaying steel,

nicotine and whiskey and

the tears of a thousand men.

April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendor of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom.

Poets Who Drink By Gail White

They would leave the writers conference

for the nearest bar

or simply sit up late in somebody’s room

until they had recited

all the poems they knew by heart,

or argued lines into shape.

I know this only from envy.

I was never invited.

Gail White, a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine, has been writing poetry since she learned to print. Her latest chapbook, Paper Cuts (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including Nasty Women Poets, Love Poems at the Villa Nelle, and Killer Verse. She lives in the Louisiana bayou country with her husband and cats.

Divergent By Corey D. Cook

Snow falls in the divorce 

lawyer’s parking lot 

as papers are signed.

 

Lives divided.

 

Soon the asphalt 

will be dotted 

with footprints –

each set a sovereign 

and solitary ellipsis.

Corey D. Cook's seventh chapbook, Passing Cars, was published by Maverick Duck Press in 2023. His work has recently appeared in Cajun Mutt Press, Freshwater Literary Journal, Last Leaves Magazine, One Art, and Stone of Madness Press. Corey works at a hospital in New Hampshire and lives in Vermont.

Bartender By Arvilla Fee

her hands are rough, red

too much soapy water

too many dipped beer mugs,

but they have a certain elegance,

a way of moving like butterflies,

swiftly lighting from mug to tap,

grabbing bottles, swiping the counter

with a clean white cloth;

she’s thin with long, dark hair,

a lotus tattoo on her shoulder

where her black tank exposes skin;

her bright blue eyes are alert,

in tune with every movement

around her, at constant attention

to meet the customers’ needs,

and yet there are faint purple shadows

resting like little half-moons just beneath,

and her bright smile belies the ache

in her back.

Arvilla Fee teaches English and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, including Calliope, North of Oxford, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, and many others. Her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla loves writing, photography and traveling, and she never leaves home without a snack and water (just in case of an apocalypse). For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

 

 

 

Charlie Tells A Story To Jimmy by William Kitcher

Hey, Jimmy! Good to see ya. Grab a stool beside me, and I’ll buy ya a beer. I gotta tell ya about last night after ya left. Maggie, get Jimmy here a pint, will ya? On me. Thanks.

I tell ya, you thought you were drunk! Well, you know I can drink, right? Even through those times I told ya about. Remember when I was lookin’ in that store window, and I saw my reflection, and it was the face of some kinda demon. I swear it was Old Patch himself. I kept movin’ my head, thinkin’ somethin’ behind me was makin’ the picture, but no, it was me. I got closer to the window, and it turned into me again, so that was a relief, but man, that was weird. Yeah, another demon, I know, it’s a theme with me. And I ain’t even religious. Another pint for me, please, Maggie.

Well, that was nothin’ compared to last night. People were weird all night. We were watchin’ the game and it was really bad hockey, remember? And I said the league should get rid of five or six teams and disperse the players and the hockey’d be better. And Eldon said, and I don’t want to say the word he said ‘cause Maggie doesn’t like that kind of language, Eldon said, “Screw you and your socialism.” Well, what the hell does that have to do with socialism? Some people gotta buy a dictionary.

And some people, they can’t stay on a conversation. They take the last thing you say and go from there. I was talkin’ about Neville Chamberlain, and called him a lapdog. And then they started talkin’ about dogs! Never did get back to World War Two.

And that guy who said he was a scientist but didn’t know that water expanded when heated. Jeez, it was like a six-headed snake in here last night.

So everyone left, and I was here alone with Maggie. That’s right, isn’t it, Mag? Oh right, there were some people at that table over there.

So this guy comes in and sits down, right where you’re sittin’, matter of fact. Thanks, Mag. Don’t look at me like that. Lemme tell the story my way.

Anyway, so this guy comes in, and we start talkin’. Nice fella. Knows about hockey, knows about politics, movies, books, whisky. We had a right good yammer. A coupla times, Maggie told me to quiet down. More than a couple, Mag? Haha. Yeah, I guess it was more than a couple. And I’d certainly had more than a couple, so I guess I was talkin’ kinda loud, you know how it is when you’ve had a few. So, this guy, never did catch his name, and I, we kept talkin’, for a long time. Finally, Mag told me I had to leave. She was nice about it, weren’t you, Mag? A couple more pints here, please. On me. Thanks.

So I said to this guy, I have some great scotch at home, I live near here, do you want to try a great single malt? Thanks for the beers, Mag. Yeah, I’m gettin’ to the point of the story.

Anyway, we get back to my place, and the guy starts lookin’ at my books. And we were talking about books and writers. I was in the kitchen getting the scotch, and he was still lookin’ at the books. He’s really well-read. Knows all about Borchert and Lem and Borges and Machado de Assis and Tiptree and Southern.

And I was pourin’ the scotch and thinkin’ how weird it was to meet this guy, a really good guy, not a prick like Eldon or that yahoo scientist. Some people are still good people.

So I went back to the living room and he wasn’t there. I looked in the dining room. No. Looked in the sun room. No. And I thought, no, he’s not in my bedroom, is he? That’d be too weird. So I looked in there. He wasn’t there. But it was weird. The front door was still locked from the inside. So was the back door. So where was he?

And then it hit me. That guy was me. He’d never been there at all. And I figured out why Maggie had been tellin’ me to shut up. I’d been hallucinatin’ the guy. Pretty funny, right?

Jimmy, you want another? Mag, two more, please. Nah, don’t worry. I’m gonna have only six or eight tonight. I don’t wanna get in the state I was in last night. Maggie, you can confirm that’s Jimmy sittin’ there, right?

Bill’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, the U.S., and Wales. His stories have appeared in The Rye Whiskey Review, Sledgehammer, Rio Grande Review, Close To The Bone, Rock And A Hard Place, The Sirens Call, and many other journals. His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in October 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.

Behind the mirror. By Dennis Moriarty

I am laid back, at ease with myself

behind the mirror

of my exterior existence. Safe for now

from the prying eyes

that scrutinise and itemise my every

misdemeanour.

Safe from those that are quick to judge

and quicker still to condemn,

keeping a distance between me and those

that count the pills I swallow,

the slurps of wine I take, them that stand

with closed eyes, ears and minds,

against the music that I play, the poetry

that I read and sometimes write.

And I wonder sometimes why they never

look too closely in my mirror,

perhaps too afraid that they might see

their real selves staring back.

The righteous sober that long to taste the

devil’s buttermilk,

the prissy pretty prim that crave the

the chemical enhancement

of the pills that I pop, their eyes and ears

and minds wide open

to the music of sinners and the words of

the bad ass poet they long to be.

But most of all I think they’re afraid to see

their reflections,

the drunken parodies of their sober selves

looking them straight in the eye.

Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.

In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.

The Bar Built in an Old Sheet Metal Factory by Jamey Gallagher

    This was in Nashville, in the kind of rain you can’t see through, a deluge. 
    I trudged up and down some streets until coming to the bar built in an old sheet metal factory, and there was the bartender with the neck tattoo and the pretty lady sitting there watching me as I walked in. The rain had washed off almost all the blood by then but not all the blood. Nothing washes off all the blood. She must have thought I’d done something irredeemable, but she was the kind of person who kind of liked that. Looked me up and down, said that thing about being dragged in by a cat. 
    Ordered a bourbon then another bourbon and drank them one after the other until my hands stopped shaking. Then I had another. It was loud as hell in there with the rain battering the tin roof. Sounded like it was still a sheet metal factory. Nobody could stay in there long without losing their minds.
    I might have been concussed, was the thing. Couldn’t keep my head straight. The bourbon didn’t help any. I stayed there all night and might have left with the lady. 
    I had a big bump on my noggin the next day, but I was no worse for wear, and when I asked that bartender with the neck tattoo next time who that lady was was in the bar last time he looked at me like I was crazy. Lady, he said? Wasn’t no lady. 
    I left it at that.

Jamey Gallagher lives in Baltimore and teaches at the Community College of Baltimore County. His stories have been published in many journals online and in print, including Punk Noir Magazine, Poverty House, Bull Fiction, and LIT Magazine. His collection, American Animism, will be published in 2025.

BEAUTY MURDERED, JUNKY DIES by Bradford Middleton

“Hey man, cool it there…” Tony says.

“You ain’t saying we can’t be trusted now are you Tony?” Jamie responds.

“Well no, of course I ain’t Jamie… of course not… we been running for years, I just know…”

“Yeah, you know what?”

“Well I know life is busy for you and our friend the star right now and I wouldn’t want you guys to, erm, well… forget!  You understand I’m sure but what you have there is at least a couple of months rent on my place and, well…”

“Ah come on now Tony man, you know you can trust us, you know I just got to run this on over to the studio, then to the company, I got a big old briefcase of money to pick up and our star already knows I got to drop off here before she even sees it, you get me?”

“Yeah, yeah… I’m sorry man, I guess I just ain’t used to dealing with customers I see on billboards every time I leave my damn flat!  I still ain’t used to it even if it is you guys…”

“So we’re all good Tony?”

“Sure man, so you’ll be back later?”

“Sure I will, give me a few hours, get our star back into working order, get that big case of cash from those fuckers at the record company and then I’ll be right on over…”

“Cool man, so… til later my friend!”

“Til then!”

Jamie bundles down the stairs and out the front of a nondescript block, it could be industrial, it could be residential, somewhere in the mostly ignored north London neighbourhood famous for a street dominated by pubs, takeaways, street dealers and poseurs.  Walking the familiar route towards the studio and the reluctant star, the poor little girl thrust into the limelight and all because of some silly little song she wrote on the back of a fag packet a couple of years before.  All she’d ever wanted to do was sing, to sing the blues like her heroine Billie Holiday but now, well, now… no one knows where the hell she’s going now.  Walking pass the reception desk he knows that she’ll be climbing the walls waiting on his arrival and sure enough as he pushes the door open the first words he hears are, ‘Jamie? Is that Jamie?’ 

“Yes yes it’s me,” he announces spying her stalking the floor.

“What the fuck Jamie,” she says.

“Did I do good?”

“You could say that you daft fool… Crikey I better go easy with this much hanging around… You pay him?”

“Not yet, I did it exactly the way you told me boss.”

“Good man, so off you pop to those bastard suits to get our money…”

“I hope you didn’t get her too much of that shit!” this weeks’ manager demands to know, “We’ve got her on a TV special this weekend and she’s got to be on for it… it could bring in a seven-figure sum!”  

As Jamie bundles pass the reception desk flunky in super-quick time his phone pings.  

‘What the fuck?’ is all he can think after reading the message from Tony.  It pulls no punches and is already threatening violence despite the short time and Jamie knows, he just knows, he’s got to scarper.

Meanwhile inside the star is throwing another of her epic diva fits and as her manager, this weeks’ poor sucker convinced he is the one who can get her in line, loses his cool she knows there is only one thing for it.  She storms out the room and heads immediately towards the place she always feels at home.

“Vodka-tonic please Bill,” she asks the barman who’s been serving her drink since she was only seventeen.

“Double?”

“Well sure why the hell not…”

Right on cue it seems Greg, a long-time lesser-spotted friend,  walks into the bar.  

“Greg!” she hollers as she spies him walking towards Katherine, the gorgeous Russian beauty of a barmaid.  

“Oh hey, long time…” he responds.

“Sure has been, you still up to your usual?”

“Erm, you ain’t talking about my music or my drinking are you?”

“No, you know… the other!”

“Oh yeah I just about get by, got a new gig with some deluded nut-job who some record company are convinced is going to be the new… well, erm…”

“Oh dear, like we need another one like that!  For god-sake one of them is almost more than enough!”

The old friends fall into each others arms laughing until the star leans in and whispers into Greg’s ear.

“I got some real good stuff Greg but it’s hot and I got to get rid, you interested in taking it off my hands for a drink or two?”

“Well sure…” he responds, handing her a 10 note in exchange for what he reckons could last him, maybe, a couple of weeks.

“Let’s go get fixed first though,” she says turning to Bill.

“Sure” is all he says as they disappear up the stairs to the office.  Time passes as the fix kicks hard but soon both are walking back through the bar; Greg to home and our star outside for a quick cigarette.

The chaos and noise of the street cut right through the night as she steps out and straight into a barrage of bullets and to anyone it is clear death is near and almost inevitable but Greg, not knowing, simply heads on home.  He’s got to get fixed and as he walks in his flat his phone starts binging.  The news it brings is impossible, she can’t be dead and as he pushes the needle in and pumps the mixture deep into his vein he can feel something going terribly wrong.  As a nation is updated on the death of their new singing queen Greg merely collapses to the floor where it’ll take a couple of days before the smell of his decay will alert his neighbours of his fate. 

Bradford Middleton still lives in Brighton, UK but has recently landed a new job that he doesn’t hate so maybe here for a bit longer yet…  Recent poems appear in Beatnik Cowboy, River Dog Zine, Back Room Poetry ‘Rebel’ Anthology, Stink Eye Magazine and Dreich.  His most recent chapbook was published early 2023 by those fine folks at the Alien Buddha Press.  

Alone and Drinking by Steven Bruce

AFTER LI BAI

Snug

between the breasts of midnight,

I’m alone and drinking red wine.

In good company. Listening to songs

I love. Sharing a cigar with my shadow.

In this solitary night, there’s no politics

or pseudo-morality discussed here,

no tiny cock with an imbecile attached

to it wanting to prove his manhood,

no one whining about how empty

and meaningless their life became.

I wag my toes, look to the black void

where the priests tell us paradise lies.

As the moon strolls by,

I lift my bottle,

and we two keep to the gentle rivers

of ourselves.

Steven Bruce is a writer and multiple-award-winning author. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous international anthologies and magazines. In 2018, he graduated from Teesside University with a master’s degree in creative writing. An English expatriate, he now lives and writes full-time in Poland.