Last Night, Again By Heather Kays

If I say it was the last time

enough times,

maybe one of them

will be true.

I swear I’ll put down the glass,

walk away from the edge,

stop chasing the fire

that burns me whole.

But the night calls with familiar voices,

a siren song of smoke and shadows,

and I’m drawn back

to the place I promised myself I’d leave.

Last night was the last night,

I told myself—

but the morning never listens.

And one night folds into the next 

and into the next 

and into oblivion. 

Regret, shame, repeat. 

Regret, shame, repeat. 

Regret, shame, repeat. 

I wonder if I will ever be clean. 

I've stopped apologizing to myself... 

Because I know without changed behavior 

It's just pretty lies and lip service. 

And here I am again,

in the wreckage of promises,

counting ash instead of stars,

waiting for the next last time.

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.

Past Life Regression By Doug Holder

Sorry to tell you

I wasn't a king

A prince

that kind of thing.

I didn't fall from grace

I had none in the first place.

I saw my head

In a hangman's noose 

I dug latrines

In some ancient war

I was the groom of the stool

For many a holy fool.

I was a tosher

Looking for gold --

Redemption---

In a London sewer.

I ate the moldy bread

Off the chest

Of many a dead sinner

Yes....

That was

my dinner...

Doug Holder is on the board of the New England Poetry Club and teaches creative writing at Endicott College. His latest poetry collection is " I ain't gonna wait for Godot, no more" ( Wilderness House Press)

Co-President of the New England Poetry Club

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene   http://dougholder.blogspot.com

Ibbetson Street Press  http://www.ibbetsonpress.com

Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer  http://www.poettopoetwritertowriter.blogspot.com

Doug Holder CV http://www.dougholderresume.blogspot.com

Doug Holder's Columns in The Somerville Times

https://www.thesomervilletimes.com/?s=%22Doug+Holder%22&x=0&y=0

Doug Holder's collection at the Internet Archive   https://archive.org/details/@dougholder

Interrogated being__ By Merritt Waldon

Interrogated thoughts pop out

Becoming pop noise like

Vending and slot machines

Interrogated feelings flood

Out through pores hungry

For comfort jettisoned in a sea

If rage

Interrogated longings

Worship the idol of her eyes

Starry and penetrating

To the core

Of this interrogated being

Merritt Waldon is Southern Indiana poet who has been published in Road Dawgz, Sun Poetic Times,

The Brooklyn Rail, Be About It Zine, River Dog #1, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Americans & others anthology fourth edition, Crisis Chronicles, Cajun Mutt Press, Thye Rye Whiskey Review, and Fearless!.

At midnight Christmas night 2020, cajun mutt press released Oracles from a Strange Fire by Ron Whitehead & Merritt. He lives in Austin, Indiana.

Same Shit By Gabriel Bates

I just got the news—

two of my family members

are back in jail. 

It's always been this way, 

ever since I can remember. 

I sit down on the couch

and stare at the bouquet

of flowers

in the middle

of my coffee table. 

A couple petals fall,

and I'm the only one

who notices.

Gabriel Bates is a poet living in Pittsburg, Kansas. His work has appeared in several publications, both online and in print. Keep up with him at facebook.com/gabrieljbates.

Jack By Jenna Restel

Something about Jack,

the first sip,

gave me courage

I was able to ask

why you lack accountability

so severely

Why a womanizer,

like you,

can advise two daughters

Why a scammer, a thief,

such as yourself,

asks why I broke the law

Why a man like you,

with so many addictions,

tells me not to drink

Why the atheist 

who raised an atheist

tells me to believe

Why can you be a hypocrite?

Why are you better than me?

Alone again,

onto another sip

without any answers.

Jenna Restel is a New Jersey based writer. 

She explores grief, memory, trauma and bad habits. You may find her published poetry in Keeping the Flame Alive, Bionik Pu$$y, The Khaotic Good, and more. Upcoming issues of Cajun Mutt Press, Orenaug Mountain and Rust Belt Press will feature her poems as well. 

A Necessary Outing By Alec Solomita

The sidewalk sparkles in the lowering light.

The air is blue, breezy, blistering cold.

My hood keeps flying backwards

as I count my steps for comfort

and curse aloud over my advanced years,

grasping my bottle of 12-year-old Scotch

with stiff fingers while I entertain a dream 

of hot toddies when I finally get to chez moi,

as the French say. A crazy cyclist flies by 

wearing yellow goggles and a leather jacket.

“How cold is it?” said Johnny’s audience on cue

a half century ago, “I don’t know but I noticed

that all the witches are wearing thermal underwear.”

I laugh at the old joke; all the new ones are about

bodily functions and the fourth hole, wherever,

whatever, why-ever the fuck that is in this nasty

new world. I climb stealthily up the porch

steps so my neighbors won’t hear me

and turn to each other, nodding knowingly

about the elderly celebrant on the floor below.

Alec Solomita’s work has appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, The Lake, and many more journals and anthologies. He was shortlisted by the Bridport Prize and Southword Journal. His chapbook “Do Not Forsake Me,” was published in 2017 and his full-length poetry book, “Hard To Be a Hero,” was released in the spring of 2021. He’s just finished another, tentatively titled “Short Change.”   

“Slurred Prayers” By Richard LeDue

How can heaven exist

in both an empty and full bottle

of whisky? Prayers slurred

words circling the toilet

at 2 AM, while the next morning

waits like a vengeful god,

ready to remind me I still exist.

Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He writes poems. His last collection, “Another Another,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in May 2025.

GROWTH By Roger Singer

I saw a fire

in the distance

like a burning

blue star

reminding me

of youth

 

a photo alive

releasing pages

of images

 

the child

the adult

the grave

 

 

Dr. Singer has had over 1,200 poems published on the internet, magazines and in books and is a Pushcart Award Nominee.  Some of the magazines that have accepted his poems for publication are:  Westward Quarterly, Jerry Jazz, SP Quill, Avocet, Underground Voices, Outlaw Poetry, Literary Fever, Dance of my Hands, Language & Culture, The Stray Branch, Tipton Poetry Indigo Rising, Down in the Dirt, Fullosia Press, Orbis, Penwood Review, Subtle Tea, Ambassador Poetry Award, Massachusetts State Poetry Society.  Louisiana State Poetry Society Award.  Readers Award Orbis Magazine 2019.  Arizona State Poetry Award 2020.

Mad Swirl Anthology 2018, 2019.

 

 

Life During Wartime By Keith Pearson

“Scientists have used video cameras to show how locusts’ wings change shape during flight…”

Francesca is writing songs again about the war down the road no one else can see. She believes the world is a roomful of old deaf men.

She sits on the marble bench in the center of her spare room and peels off the t-shirt marked with government slogans to show you the scar that runs down the center of her chest, a thick purple worm like the border of two countries that refuse to speak.

You bend to drink from the fountain of her breast but she turns away and curls upon the cool marble, arms crossed and her knees drawn up, her skin pale with dust like the piece of sculpture in that postcard from Rome.

With a sigh she rolls to her back and parts her thighs but instead you are captured by the sounds outside the window and leave her to press your cheek to the cold glass.

Cannons in the hills have fired without aim into the valley and the tall trees and the water tower are afire.

From along the ridge comes the echo of the cry of ghosts, soldiers in line with swords drawn raised and ready, their faces streaked with dirt and the lime thrown into their graves.

They await the command to charge from some fearless and unforgiving 

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

Tempest By Alyssa Trivett

(Inspired by the band Driveways song “Tempest”)

As you rattle off or bed,

don’t dig up bones of our failures.

Be it with a plastic beach sand shovel or a plastic fork from the diner.

Let it go and it shall die.

And in Spring, it will bloom

into something new.

Kicking off any spiderwebs from my mind.

I may not be the same of whom I was

before I ran through this

and hell tried to drag me to it.

The tempest does not define me. It is only one “you are here” on life’s map, a temporary plot point, as a matter of fact.

I will emerge , unscathed.

I try to keep his ghost in the basement of my mind, of everything he and I had.

I drive away from Midwest air

to breathe the ocean line.

The tempest tries to draw near, and even when the memories rubberband retract on I always claw off and back to the present again.

Alyssa Trivett is a wandering soul from the Midwest. When not working two jobs, she chirps down coffee while scrawling lines. Her work has appeared in many places, but most recently at Ex Ex Lit, and Duane's PoeTree 

Veterans Day By Mark James Andrews

When my father just turned 17

he took to the sofa. 

The big tall boy wouldn’t get up

except to pee. 

That’s what my Babcia told me. 

That means grandma in Polish. 

She said he just laid there 

started losing weight. 

He quit going to school at St. Thomas. 

So what could me & Pa do 

except sign the papers for him to go.

He went to something called Boot Camp 

& then fresh out of that

they sent him somewhere else

for some gun training.

It was such a short time. 

Then straight to Japan. 

Straight to the fighting. 

He never got to wear the white hat 

& the dress blue suit that you see.

Such a beautiful suit 

but they never gave him one. 

So that’s Babcia’s story. 

I’ll skip my childhood story

growing up with my psycho Dad 

but my Mom had it worse.

He was a drinking man & dementia 

put him in a nursing home at 62. 

Korsakoff syndrome does that.

It comes when a drinking man 

doesn’t take time to eat. 

Shot & a beer & malnutrition 

is bad for the brain. 

The court appointed me 

his guardian & conservator 

because no one else would do it 

& he just wouldn’t die. 

He kept on rolling 

in his wheelchair & in his diaper

long after his fighting days 

& drinking days were over.

His legs & his bladder were ok.

The big tall boy just didn’t want 

to walk or get up to pee.

Mark James Andrews lives and writes in Metro Detroit. He is the author of five chapbooks, At the Ice Cow Queen on Mack (Alien Buddha Press), So I Lit a Fire for The Last Thanksgiving (Alien Buddha Press), Motor City is Burning & Other Rock & Roll Poems (Gimmick Press), Compendium 20/20 (Deadly Chaps) and Burning Trash (Pudding House Press), as well as a poetry recording Brylcreem Sandwich (Bandcamp).

Word Basket By Rita S. Spalding

I have a word basket where I save delicate thoughts.

Silver braided with a ribbon down the center, 

between beginnings and endings that were or were not.

Sometimes tied and tangled, at other times turned 

and angled into a wide bow. It is a little bit of Jerusalem today.

Beneath the shades of wistful grays, there is a pallid lightness

in my loss of words to comfort, holding my throat in all its weakness.

We smiled and said goodbye years ago, not knowing

it would be our first and last and only wrinkle in time.

It would be our silver ribbon curling at the edges.

Now there is a gathering of goddesses who sort through life’s pages.

We are peaking at left over love letters never meant to be seen.

Papers you wrote in pencil, unfinished sentences that are lost forever.

None of it matters any more. We find the remains of your colorful shirts 

and hold them high above our heads; they make us smile.

We wonder, where did you wear the embroidered purple one?

Did the feathered straw hat perch above its collar?

Your brown leather jacket wears creases on each side and sleeve.

We wonder, what are the memories buried in its folds?

Did the wind hush them in soft whispers?

Your heart led to other worlds, other places, across oceans.

We could not follow you there and dared not try.

I smelled the bottle of unopened bourbon hidden in your boot, 

the drink you carried followed in your journey,

and now rests in my hands.

This is my word basket, where braided silver hides.

I cry, shout, and wonder why, oh why, oh why.

Now here today, here today, oh here today, 

all of my wonderings belong to Jerusalem.

Rita S. Spalding studied in London and graduated summa cum laude from Murray State University in December 2024. She is recipient of the 2025 Murray State Outstanding Senior in Sociology Award. She has been published in 18 Calliope anthologies, National Library of Poetry, AX-POW Magazine, The Heartland Review, Kentucky Monthly Magazine, Keeping the Flame Alive, Fallen, Rebirth, The Rye Whiskey Review, Walden’s Poetry and Reviews, Poet-Tree Magazine and Kentucky Humanities. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons, was published in 1992 and her two most recent books, published in 2025, are What is Beauty, and The Eighth.

Rita was formerly director of Women Who Write, where in 2006 she helped to establish the annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival, and had the pleasure of meeting writer and activist bell hooks. She also served as panelist for the Dorothy Clay Norton Fellowships at the Mary Anderson Center, and was on the committee to nominate Maureen Morehead as the 2011-12 Kentucky poet laureate. 

Observations from a Holiday Season Nightshift By Joe Couture

He told me that he was a fixin’

to kill a prominent politician.

Wry smiles came from his fellow patrons

As he explained his deal with the ancients.

Jesus arranged the intricate details

along with the boys, a group of angels

Who set on a sum of many millions

they’d bill to world leaders for the killin.’

Christmas lights danced off the can in his hand

that waved as he weaved, unable to stand.

After his loud oration, he announced

the pay’d go in the “Pete loves beer account!”

in the bank of heaven.

As he laughed at the politician’s fate

regulars laughed in his sunken old face

I couldn’t help thinking

His first time swaying by lights and garland 

when the smiles of watchers weren't so hardened.

Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. He writes for his health. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social

Learning About Romance at Jake’s, Explained Badly By Greg Clary

Standing in the TJ Maxx checkout line

fluorescent lights humming like cicadas,

I stare at a display of modern salvation:

sleep gummies, alertness pills,

“Stamina” powders, menstrual mercy,

gas relief,

all the physical poetry of being human,

alphabetized under SALE.

I turn to the young mother behind me,

her buggy stacked with frosted wreaths

and peppermint scented illusions.

I ask:

“You trust this stuff more than the gas station racks?”

She laughs without looking up:

“Honey, I barely trust gravity.”

And suddenly, 

I’m back at Jake’s Texaco in Greenbottom,

a kind of community safe house

for boys who liked Elvis,

pickup trucks,

and the idea that life 

was about to begin any day now.

And Jake, our local wizard of

life-skills wisdom and moral confusion,

kept the good stuff behind the counter:

rubbers, apple wine in Mason jars,

pint crocks of moonshine, 

Playboys ragged at the edges,

and one deck of French poker cards,

strictly medical, showing nekkid people

engaged in cardio activities 

unfamiliar to us. 

One hot July day, a buddy and I,

fueled by hope and ignorance, 

sent five dollars cash

to an ad from the back of Argosy Magazine

for a packet of Spanish Fly,

advertised as a romance enhancer,

but we would’ve been happy

if a girl simply nodded at us.

It never arrived.

We checked the mailbox every day

as if it cradled 

the future of our hearts. 

Sixty years later,

I see that same friend at funerals,

reunions, and campfires.

He always pauses and asks,

“Has it showed up yet?”

And I always answer,

“Yes, in a way.

Just not by mail.”

Greg Clary is a retired college professor who was born and raised in Turkey Creek, West Virginia. He now resides in the northern Appalachia Pennsylvania Wilds.

His photographs have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review, Pine Mt Sand & Gravel, Tiny Seed Journal, Watershed Journal, About Place, Change Seven, Appalachian Lit, and many more.

His writing has been published in Rye Whiskey Review, The Bridge Literary Journal, Northern Appalachia Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Waccamaw Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Trailer Park Quarterly, Black Shamrock Magazine, Rust Belt Review, and Tobeco.

His new book of photographs and poetry, “The Vandalia in Me”, was published by Meraki Press and is available on-line at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

PLATO SPEAKS OF SALOONS By Dan O’Connell

  At Pop’s Bar, established 1937.

Real bars open at 6 a.m.

has no food but peanuts 

and a potluck on Thanksgiving

regular crowd as diverse as the liquor shelf

ghost names engraved in tarnished gold plates

ash trays at the bar and every 

tiny round table arising 

from threadbare red carpet

like buoys

juke box of timeless rock and blues

and TV for the most exciting two minutes 

pool table doubling as a slab

toilet room held together by stickers

no windows or if there is one

it’s curtained or covered with posters

of sexy women holding bottles 

eliciting jokes and memories  

always something strange, here, e.g.,

a defunct phone booth used as bird cage

  

real bars have real drunks

Plato slurs as he studies the forms

at 6:55 a.m.

 

Dan O’Connell is a four-time award winning poet, and multiple finalist and honorable mention. His poetry has appeared over one hundred times. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, and several chapbooks. A former philosophy professor, Dan O. is an attorney representing the oppressed. Find Dan O. at www.danoconnellpoetry.com.