drinking white wine By John Grochalski

drinking white wine

instead of vodka

stone cold sober tonight

watching sitcoms on the couch

the world seems

so goddamned funny to me

that i want to reach out

and strangle it

until it hacks up a lung.

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.

Front Row By Jake St. John

I was in Deadwood, South Dakota 

an old mining town

famous for its gold rush

and like most of the prospectors there

I'd busted flat.

I was staying at the oldest hotel in town 

or at least that's what I was told

and to add to my luck

I’d gotten into yet another fight 

with the girl I was traveling with.

So as I learned to do 

in grim times such as these

I took myself down to the hotel saloon 

which seemed like a good place to fall apart

I had a few drinks and between sips 

I noticed the bar was nearly as empty

as my wallet.

I asked the bartender what the deal was

she told me that Merle Haggard 

was playing a show at the amphitheater 

on the other side of the ridge 

and everyone in town had tickets. 

I lowered my head defeated 

knowing with a little preparation 

I could  have been in attendance

rather than sitting here alone 

on a barstool again.

I finished my beer

headed to the elevator 

closed the rattling gate 

in front of me and realized

that these iron bars 

seemed more like jail cell doors

than safety equipment 

that were now slamming shut on my evening.

I finally made my way back to my room 

on the top floor

hoping to salvage whatever fun 

I could have for the night. 

Opening the door 

and receiving the silent treatment 

I grabbed a bottle of whiskey 

and made my way to the rooftop

which had a makeshift patio,

the kind you’d see in a hobo camp

down by the rails.

There was a wobbly table 

and two of those old 1980’s

metal folding chairs 

that would stick to your back

in the heat of summer days. 

As I sat in the darkness 

like a lonesome fugitive

reevaluating some of my life choices 

that now stung like misery and cheap gin.

Suddenly 

as if someone had plugged in the jukebox

came that unmistakable 

gravel road voice of Ol Hag

rising up and over the ridge!

The tunes spilled out 

through the shadows

like yesterday’s wine

and at this very moment

he was singing directly to me. 

One hit after another 

filled the night air

of what was becoming

my own personal

honky tonk heaven

and I thought to myself 

as I raised the bottle 

one more time

I think I'll just stay here and drink.

Jake St. John has been referred to as “a neo-beat adventurer” who spends his time scratching down poems from aloft barstools and tree stumps scattered around New England. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including his latest, The 13th Round (Six Foot Swells Press, 2025). He is the editor of Elephant and is considered an original member of the New London School of Poets. His poems have appeared in print and online journals around the world.

His current book, The 13th Round is published through Six Ft. Swells Press and is available everywhere please pick yourself up a copy today.

https://www.amazon.com/13th-Round-Jake-St-John/dp/B0F2KBGR8M

Denial By Jenna Restel

I can't dream anymore-

there's a face I cannot make out

or that I don't want to

I have another coffee 

at 9pm, and he asks what I'm doing

but this pain is mine

so I can't explain

I'm left alone 

again

the way I like to be

Laid out on the couch

background noise

a game on my phone

distracted

But I hear a word

I smell a reminder

I brew another cup

Now I'm wide awake

I see without question

So I take melatonin

and something PM

I pop open a beer

I need to sleep

because now it's too clear

In my dream it's distorted

and I can pretend 

that I don't recognize it

But no matter where

or who I'm with

My heart says

Liar

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, Rust Belt Press, Crying Heart Press, and more. 

Days By David L Painter

It makes no difference as I unscrewed the cap.

It could be any day of the week for all I care.

I watched the amber liquid fall

and kiss the ice in the bottom of the glass,

clacking some with its sudden warmth.

Looking down, I thought, Is two fingers enough? 

My mind shot back the answer as I continued to pour.

It is early morning, but already it’s hot.

Most days start like this,

even the sun makes a bee-line for the ice,

no drought to cool itself off.

I pour another, hoping that this one will last longer.

The mailman drops off the mail a few read, past due

then he melts into the heat of the day.

Sitting on the front porch, even the

occasional breeze is warm.

I pour another just to cool off.

So it goes most days,the sun eating my ice

and me trying to stay ahead of it.

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  

Eye Know, Right? By Renee Williams

Don’t worry. I drink bourbon, I tell

the dry eye tech as he apologizes,

fears the alcohol rubbed around 

my eyes might bother me. I miss

that sweet, smooth, almost cotton candy

aroma of Blanton’s, but I sink

into the moment, still wish for one. 

The procedure goes well at first, 

almost spa-like but without the hint 

of lavender and warm towels. 

When the heat intensifies, burns, 

that smell…so many memories 

of skin cancer surgeries:

I swear, you never forget the odor

of your own flesh burning—

bacon grease followed by that sting,

that sting, that sting that isn’t quick

like a snap of a rubber band, but

continues like spilling hot McDonald’s

coffee on bare skin.

I talk to myself. Relax your jaw. 

Relax your shoulders. 

This guy is trying to help you, 

trying to halt your non-productive tears, 

trying to keep you from looking like Alice Cooper

with your mascara running. I breathe. 

I talk to God, ask for forgiveness 

for skipping Easter Vigil because last year’s 

four-hour session with frankincense and myrrh 

made my eyes burn, like I chopping 

three onions for spaghetti sauce. 

Breathe. Blink. He stops the zaps.

Warm UV light envelops me now 

like a heated blanket, I sink into light,

light that I deny myself outside.  

I can see light through my closed eyelids, 

sure blindness is coming. 

So white, so white…claustrophobia.

I concentrate on ocean waves, 

sand melts beneath my feet, but 

I want to run.

I try not to blink. I try to breathe evenly.

I try not to have a panic attack. 

Then…I imagine the forest, darkness

surrounds me, white pines, dark eyes

peek at me from behind a tree, black fur 

shiny, damp. 

Renee Williams is a retired English instructor, who has written for ONE Art, Alien Buddha Press and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel. 

 

Sobriety Looks Ugly on Me By Heather Kays

No one tells you

how loud it gets

when the buzz wears off.

How you start noticing

the hum of fluorescent lights,

the weight of silence

pressed into your ribs like a bruise

you can’t drink away.

I miss the blur.

The softening of edges.

The way vodka used to kiss me quiet

when my thoughts started screaming.

Now it’s just water.

Dry lips.

The taste of everything I used to avoid.

They call it “clarity”

but it feels like punishment—

like looking in the mirror

under hospital lights

with no makeup

and every regret

etched into the skin.

I miss being reckless.

I miss the glittering edge of a bad decision.

The way it made me feel

alive

and already halfway dead.

Now, I count days

like sins.

Fill notebooks with cravings.

Sip soda at parties

like it’s penance.

People clap when you say

“I’m sober now.”

But they don’t stay long

when you start shaking.

When the high is gone

and all you have left

is the person you were hiding from.

Sobriety looks ugly on me—

not because it’s wrong,

but because it’s honest.

And honesty has never been

my best angle.

But here I am.

Sober.

Still.

Unsmiling.

Alive.

And sometimes

that has to be enough.

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.

What Your Choice of Scotch Says About You By Jack Mackey

We’re in the cocktail lounge.

Mrs. Gilani orders her husband 

a Chivas on the rocks and asks me, 

her waiter, for a cigarette. “I need something 

to do with my hands 

while I’m waiting.” The Shah––a title

he answers to––is late 

getting back from the thirty-six 

holes he played today. 

Her British accent 

almost masks her annoyance as she talks 

to us staff like we’re people. 

We are charmed. 

As a couple they weave 

an illusion of patriarchy and 

the nobility of capitalism.

It’s almost sunset when he arrives,

fresh from shower and massage, in

a silk achkan, dark, his Scotch now

watery. He orders another. The room turns 

its head, he’s assumed to be 

Indian royalty and the turban

makes him look taller.  

Some members are relieved––

the Club risks becoming monoethnic––

no one questions his provenance. 

We are charmed. 

Many decades from now 

I’ll will find his obituary on-line: 

she gets a mention as his first, 

but his golf trophies dominate 

the long write-up. 

There’s no mention of “shah.”

Another search reveals 

the title is not Indian.  

Jack Mackey’s first book of poems, Up, Out & Over (Kelsay Books, 2024) won awards from the Delaware Press Association (first place) and from the National Federation of Press Women (second place). A Best of the Net nominee, Jack was awarded a fellowship in poetry by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Individual poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Broadkill Review, Anti-Heroine Chic, Argyle, and other literary publications. Jack lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. 

Weep Yourself to Sleep By Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

You weep yourself to sleep.

You wake up with dried tears.

You feel as if a cold

river flowed over you.

You know it is not true.

Your face does not agree.

But you feel you must take

solace in the dreams you

had. At the same time you

cannot stop the weeping.

There are too many tears.

Sleeping becomes the one

thing you are counting on.

You weep yourself to sleep

on a drunken boat drenched 

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and

works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA. His poems have appeared

in Blue Collar Review, Crossroads, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, The Rye

Whiskey Review, Unlikely Stories, and Yellow Mama Webzine.

EIGHTIES ELEGY By Philip Ash

Whaddaya want for a buck? Subway token accesses

all Five Boroughs. Warriors! Come out to play-ee-ay!

Pierce Manhattan’s underbelly like how a grave worm

devours a corpse. Smoke! Smoke! Crack! Crack it up!

Forbidden Planet near Union Square: purchase latest 

Heavy Metal or Judge Dredd comic. I am the Law!

Don’t laugh at the longshoreman wearing that dress 

within SoHo’s West Boondock. 6’4”, full of muscles.

PiL rehearse in a loft across the street unless eating 

N. Carolina style ribs. It’s not a Monopoly game.

Silver Diner’s open 24 hours for a coffee or burger,  

4 a.m., post-clubbing. Skim Voice music listings.

Trendy late ‘80s line forms for CBGB’s Sunday hard-

core matinee (party started with Warhol’s Factory). 

Punk is dead! So are Andy and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

Grow your hair long. Go home. 

Philip Ash surfs the Dark Wave spectrum in your dreams. His work has appeared in Fixator Press and Beatnik Cowboy. He lives in San Diego.

All Our Yesterdays By Brenton Booth

When I was twenty-one attending 

drama school, our female 

Shakespeare teacher gave the 

whole class a Macbeth 

monologue to learn and deliver, 

in front of the entire class 

six weeks after. She had won 

many awards for her 

Shakespeare performances over 

the years, doing regular 

film and television gigs. I put 

off learning the speech 

until the night before, memorizing 

the complete part after 

midnight, on good speed, and 

whiskey. The following day, 

she was totally brutal. With not 

a kind word for a single 

heartbroken student, following 

their best attempts at 

Macbeth's final, timeless words. 

I went second last. Moving 

onto the compact stage with a 

wicked, pounding hangover. 

Reciting the words, I still remember 

to this day. At the end of 

the monologue, the entire theatre 

was silent. An instant fear 

violently attached itself to me. 

"Robert, you are the only 

student I have ever taught, who

will convincingly play this 

role, or any of the other epic 

Shakespeare parts. Bravo!" 

she calmly declared, triggering 

the entire room to a mad, 

deafening applause. I left the 

school not long after. 

Choosing poetry and instinct 

over theatre and teachers. 

Unpublished until I was thirty-three. 

Never forgetting that day.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in Gargoyle, New York Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Heavy Feather Review, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press.  

Revere Beach By Doug Holder

City of tanned, brawny shoulders

Diversity is not linked with perversity 

Local Michealangelos sculpt the sand

Into castles

Where no royalty resides

And disappear with the elements

But don't we all...?

I heard there was once a wooden rollercoaster

On this first public beach

Bikers like sentries

Lined outside the bars

Fried dough

The manna of the street.

Now..

A ton of Goya

In the markets

Beans, rice

And all that exotic spice

Piles of pescado

A bazar of sardines...

My own tongue

Is a foreigner here

I hear the staccato

Of Spanish

That musical rush of words

So flush with emotions.

The Jewish Delis on Shirley Ave 

Are gone

Katz's Dr. Brown's Cream Soda

The solid blocks of knishes

The endless brisket on rye...

Revere Beach

You are still straight, no chaser.

But the micro apartments pock

The street

For the fleet—footed commuters

And their computers.

Revere Beach

Wind swept by the seminal ocean

The gulls scream at this gray-bearded

Whitman

Munching on a bagel

As he slouches to

The sea.

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

Big man By Ron Riekki

I was bartending

at a golf club,

which is like cooking

at a laundromat,

and the customers

weren’t there for alcohol

and they weren’t there

for golf

either,

but were there

to get away

from jobs

that were as boring

as middle school

study hall

and they’d walk in

with their neat-shirted

bodies

that hadn’t seen running shoes

in years

but they could ride

a cart

and have someone else

carry their clubs

with such grace,

such agility,

where they rarely

crashed the carts

or dropped the clubs

they weren’t carrying,

and one day

one of the guys

came in

and he told me he was a millionaire

and told me he just bought

a 3-D TV,

that it made the 3-D better

than film,

that films

made 3-D look like shit

and he said the TV

was the size of an outhouse

or something like that

and he said that

he was the first person he knew

to ever buy one,

pointing around the room

saying

I guarantee none of these schmucks

can go home tonight

and watch House of Wax

like you’ve never seen House of Wax

in your life

and I said something that I forget,

and he sipped a couple drinks

and walked away,

out into the Vincent-Price dusk

and I looked at his bill

and his money

and the professor

or whatever he was

stiffed me on the tip.

Gave me nothing.

Not a penny.

Just enough for the drinks

and that’s it.

And I wanted to punch him

right in his Blu-ray

and I wanted to shatter his

3-D glasses,

but he was gone,

probably watching the crappy 2005 version

with Paris Hilton

failing at acting

in such vivid

detail.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize.  Right now, Riekki's listening to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' "Technically, Missing" from the Gone Girl film score.

Mixing By Robert Thomas

The shaker top is twisted away

Metallic foreshadowing whirl

The shaker was lifted

With mock deliberation

From a rank of shakers

Polymorphous and slick

Give me cold!

From its dark frozen nest

I dig out a flask

Of thick freezing gin

Wrench it right out

Admire its patina

That it grew while it nested

That numbs the fingers

Now to move quickly -

A handful of cubes

Plucked from the bucket

A neat retro ice bucket

Insouciantly tumbled 

That distinctive sharp cackle

Into the shaker

The awaiting shaker

Followed close on

From a right-proper jigger

By four parts of gin

Thick freezing elixir

Two halves of a lemon 

Compressed with numb fingers

Two parts of Vermouth

Cold French dry Vermouth

Two parts of Cacao

White and not dark

Seal the shaker

And abuse the air

In confident rigour

With ice-cracking metal

Ice tumbling and crashing 

That back-and-forth smashing -

The shaker then forming

Its own cold patina

Give me cold!

My darling nearby

Thirsty and waiting

I twist off the cap

Fill two frozen glasses

Shake out the last drop

Make a thin flow of ice

Herbal

Fruity

Sweet

Sour

Rich

Cold

Numbing

Gone

... shall I mix another?

Robert Thomas writes poetry and short stories and is currently working on an alternative history novel. His poetry has appeared in Paper Plates, Autumn Sky Poetry, Witcraft, Panoply and The River, and his fiction in The Mythic Circle, Dark Horses and Fabula Argentea. He also likes camping and canoeing and cooking. His published works can be found at robertthomasauthor.com.

Reunion By Mike Casetta

A treasured friend

since our high school days,

back when Vietnam  

was percolating

& a draft

was coming

& civil rights

was brutally unfolding

& great men

were being assassinated

& rock & roll

was exploding

& alcohol flowed

like crazy medicine

& many doors

of perception

were opening

& God was free

from the constraints

of all religions,

 

is arriving today

on a shuttle bus

from the airport,

a 90-minute ride up

the mountain.

I am grateful

not having to drive

into the big shitty

in the valley

to go get him.

I’m excited. We

regale exceedingly

well together.

I have one book of poetry titled, The Certainty of Looking Elsewhere & many poems published in many small presses over many years! . 

THE ENCOUNTER By Michael Minassian

A woman sits next to me

at the bar, and glances

at my pint of ale.

I hear her say, the same, 

then I turn to her

to say good choice.

But she points to the clock,

you have 30 seconds to recognize me.

Running through several scenarios

from my past, I wonder 

if I slept with her,

or brushed up against her poetry.

One-night stands less embarrassing

than workshop frictions,

collaborative writing,

or open readings.

When I glance in the mirror,

the woman is gone,

her empty glass on the bar.

I never find out who she is.

My past crowded with characters

in the topography of memory,

uncertain landscapes

that belong to someone else.

MICHAEL MINASSIAN is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, A Matter of Timing and Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. His collection 1000 Pieces of Time was released October, 2025 by Sheila-Na-Gig, Inc. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

 

 

The Geometry of Retraction By Joe Garvey

The porch holds smoke.

Not a room. A line.

Neighbors on the rail.

Shoulders set. No give.

Sailors kick the Atlantic

off their boots.

Salt hits wood. Stays there.

Chains strike hull.

Iron on iron.

A buoy rings once.

Fog takes it.

The dock hums.

Low and constant.

Tide pulls back.

Mud shows.

Black.

Wet.

Holding what it took.

Rot. Salt.

Old weight.

Salt keeps the record.

In the grain. In the throat.

Poets in the corner.

Hands marked.

Match flare.

Paper burns down.

A bottle passes.

No label left.

Whiskey sits heavy.

Does not ask questions.

Diesel in the lungs.

Smoke layered on smoke.

Coffee gone cold hours ago.

Still on the table.

Engines tick as they cool.

Metal pulling in on itself.

The radio leaks static.

A voice almost there.

No one turns it.

No one talks.

Boots on planks.

Weight carried forward.

Day shuts without asking.

Neighbors.

Sailors.

Smokers.

Up the incline.

Breath in.

Burn.

Breath out.

Less of it.

Grit set deep.

The air keeps moving.

Does not need a body.

It goes.

They follow.

I stay a moment longer.

Hand on the rail.

Feeling the wood hold the score.

Then I go too.

Same as them.

Nothing said.

Everything carried.

Joe Garvey is an American poet from Worcester, Massachusetts who lives in Narragansett, Rhode Island. A former linebacker at Hofstra University and later an actor in film and television, he writes about labor, salt air, endurance, and the quiet machinery of modern life. His work has appeared in Expat Press, Mad Swirl, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, and The Rye Whiskey Review. His writing can also be found at https://poetking.substack.com

Cher at the Casino By Paula Hayes

The sequins made her seventy year old something body look forty something. 

I am talking about Cher.

Yes, the Gypsies, Thieves and Tramps, Cher. 

Just walking through the casino like nothing. Displaced with a glass of something cool with a cherry swimming inside it.

Her hair, still an impossible black. Vampire maroon blush across impossibly high cheekbones constructing an architecture like a Klimt painting.

Absolutely no one is looking her way. She is pushing her tongue up against the back of her teeth.

A restless mass of worshippers are gathered just a few feet away with their phones lifted above their heads making an offering to their goddess. 

And at the center of it all is another Cher.

A drag queen in a sheer illusion of a gown, nothing but shimmering silver dripping. The wig is enormous, cascading, theatrical, and everything you would imagine it to be. Voice, a lower register. Eyeliner drawn more like Elizabath Taylor in Cleopatra than Sonny’s Cher. Bombastically she is calling out to the crowd: I got you, babe, as her false eyelashes snapped in a wink. 

A table covered in red linen. A Sharpie. Stacks of glossy photographs. The line coils. 

Someone squeals, “Oh my God, you look exactly like her.”

Someone else whispers, “This is better than the real thing.”

The drag queen signs the glossies with a flourish. There is a large gap in between her front teeth. 

“Oh girl, if you only knew how fucking hot it is underneath all this synthetic hair. I think the devil himself may be coming for me, or maybe I am just in menopause. It must be a hot flash!” The drag queen breathes in and tugs at her equally synthetic breasts. She lets out a husky giggle. 

A security guard walks straight past the real Cher never looking at her. A woman brushes against her shoulder and murmurs “sorry” without looking up. Perfume and liquor molecules stir throughout the room like awkward men at a mixer. Cher takes a step forward but just then the crowd surges and starts closing around the table where the drag queen is seated.

“Umm hmmm,” Cher clears her throat as she rattles the ice around in her glass watching the scene. Even her “Umm hmmm” was a perfect pitch. 

A sudden explosive applause breaks out. The drag queen flips her hair back and makes a raunchy joke about her breasts being bigger than the real Cher’s. 

As Cher looks down at her B cup sized breasts, her heel gets caught in a snag on the old casino carpet. Wham. Face plant. Prostrate before the drag queen. 

Someone shouts, “We love you, Cher!” The drag queen presses a hand to her chest in mock astonishment. 

“I love you more,” she says, in a voice rich and buttery this time. 

A hundred phones flash like fireflies on a summer night. 

The real Cher looks like a sequined mannequin crumpled onto the floor that someone forgot to undress. Her long black hair spills forward covering her face. One long, still rather toned, leg is folded under her. Her ass is sticking straight up in the air. The cherry has rolled out of the glass and onto the floor. 

A woman steps backward, nearly onto her hand, laughing, adjusting herself for a selfie. The corner of her shoe grazes Cher’s sleeve. She moves and squishes the cherry instead. 

The drag queen is posing now with her arms stretched out wide. 

“Am I Cher or Jesus? Who do you say I am?”

“We don’t care who you are!”

“Turn this way!”

“Do the hair flip!”

“Say it again—say I got you, babe!”

She does. They scream.

Cher pushes herself up and leans herself on one arm. Half-sitting her gaze moves across their faces, noticing their round eyes and their curved mouths. How open and hungry they all look.

Paula Hayes is a would-be-poet in Memphis where the ghost of Elvis still roams around at the Arcade. Whatever that feeling of existential aloneness is in the fiction of Raymond Carver and the paintings of Edward Hopper and the fascination with eccentrics found in Flannery O'Connor, that is the feeling she keeps trying to capture, but it is too damn elusive to be held down too long in words.

Exhausted Hotel Rooms By Trish Saunders

The sound of your shoes dropping, ​

thwack!​

                           and another thwack!

tells me our careful trestle has collapsed,

our lunchtime détente, over.

Never mind, this is the reason for a bag of books,

why I dump out Heaney, Hemingway, Joyce, Gluck,

and read madly under the monkeypod tree.

And still your silence stays with me; 

only thing to do is swim to the pier,

return to find a plover pecking 

at the flyleaf picture of

James Joyce.

We will learn to tolerate.

Become happy.

Eventually, news of each other’s deaths

will not trouble us.

But just now

you were watching from our hotel window,

I saw your muscled back

retreating.

Trish Saunders has poems published or forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, Gargoyle Magazine, Chiron Review, and Open Arts Forum, among other places. She lives in Seattle.