What Was She Gonna Do? By Kevin M. Hibshman

School was a drag.
Her parents weren't interested in hearing about her

 teenage blues.
The town she lived in was ruled over by the cruel

and moneyed few.
She was passably pretty, not a bombshell by any

means, with a bird-like figure and freckles.
What was she gonna do?
She got a car and they all took her for a ride but

she knew where she was going.
Right down to the curb of the nearest dead-end 

street.
What was she gonna do?
What kind of job could she get save for serving

 the masses with their bad manners and snide

comments?
She hung out at the bars and the bowling alley.

Places for those with zero prospects where the

thrills were cheapest.
It was all she could afford.
She made time with anyone who came by.
Drifting on the sullen tide.
It was just another Saturday night.
It wasn't that she wanted to be a bad girl.
Perhaps we might label her as misunderstood?
What was she gonna do?
Anything she damn well could.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide.In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).

His current book Cease To Destroy from Whiskey City Press is currently available on Amazon. 

Dancing angels and a murder ballad. By Dennis Moriarty

The fire is fed, the whisky poured,

the joint rolled.

I poke, sip and inhale, watching a

clock that does not tick,

a pendulum that does not swing, time

tonight is on my side.

I sing along to a murder ballad, my

finger poised

on the trigger of an imaginary gun, a

midnight showdown

on my lips. The room flickers in the

shadows cast by firelight,

the hearth a stage occupied by a 70’s

dance troupe of angels

gyrating with the devil. I hear spiders

spinning their webs,

talking out loud, openly discussing my

state of mind.

Suddenly the clock begins to tick, the

pendulum swing

between sanity and madness, time no

longer on my side. I squeeze

the trigger and the song lays dying on

on my lips, the fire spits

and hisses like a snake on speed.

The spiders scream

in an agony of their own spinning.

The glass is drained,

the joint smoked, ash falling, silent as

snowflakes from the tip

and through the grate. The angels are

consumed by flames.

I close my eyes to the crackle of the

devil’s laughter.

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.

Between Dragonflies and Socrates By Rita S. Spalding

On the bridge a swarm of golden dragonflies.

They circle around me like a honeybee's hive;

not knowing if they want dinner or a dance,

standing still long enough for them to decide,

i laugh aloud at their circling dilemma.

The great blue heron balances on one leg.

He looks like a silent king with his thin crown;

perfectly held in place he weighs my existence,

flies into the setting sun nodding his wings,

as if he remembers me, his lost earth child.

Wind blows the sketch of lacy hemlocks my way.

Air delivers their itchiness into my fair soft skin;

suddenly while standing on this sacred bridge,

i think of brave sadness and cold suffering, 

Socrates’ dear enlightened hemlock tea.

Wondering how bad it all tasted for him to leave.

Past the wisdom and youth of this beautiful world;

wondering about the dragonflies and their song,

and if I’ll ever see their golden wings again,

the sun pulling a blanket of darkness to her chin.

Rita S. Spalding has had poems published in numerous anthologies and magazines. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons, was published in 1992. A second book, The Eighth, is currently at a publisher. She has received awards for poetry from Jefferson Community and Technical College, Elizabethtown Community College, National Library of Poetry, Kentucky Monthly Magazine and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. In 2024 she was a presenter at the Kentucky Writers Celebration in Danville and Historic Penn’s General Store, the Last Insomniacathon and she gives poetry readings regionally on a regular basis.  

Whiskey River By Richard Stimac

Some prisons are their own escape. Like memory
pours itself into its own Platonic forms,

our recollections make the past, not recognize it.
That’s why whiskey is a magical genie. Rethinking

becomes free form, as Willie Nelson sang, partially
right. The whiskey river takes us, yet we do not drown,

but like runaways confused of the compass points,
float downriver, some of us Huck, others Jim.

We don’t often get to choose. I tell myself,
when I pour a fourth small nip of a bottle I saved,

in theory, for others: Huck chose Hell and the West.
Jim? What exactly did Jim choose? To be decent.

I select a $50 bourbon and the Midwest. Twain
would have understood. There is only so much

America a white person can stomach. Before vomiting,
experts say drink water. Mine is from the Mississippi.

When you add water to whiskey, the oil separates,
floats on top in small threads, like the yarns

river boatmen told, or the slicks at the refinery
near Wood River, where Lewis and Clark first camped

for the winter before poling their commission upstream.
My privilege is that my freedom resides in a bottle.

Richard Stimac has published a poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region.