Once You Loved Me By Susan Isla Tepper

See— it’s written on the wall

with my blood.  

A bucket full

(I'm so ashamed)

collected over these months.

You sent me here 

to clean up my act,

this foul place.  

Now I have been ordered to

wash those words clean. 

Clean— Clean—

 all I ever hear.

You great keeper of the flame

clean these damn floors

and while you’re at it 

the mold growing

under the sink where

the pipe curves—

that wall.

Then talk to me about my wall.

It's not your wall 

for that matter not your blood  

Why can’t I keep it as a memento.

Susan Isla Tepper is a a twenty year writer and author of 13 published books of fiction and poetry. Her latest new release GIRL UPSIDE DOWN is a Novella published by Wilderness House Press. www.susantepper.com

The Pit By Robert L. Penick

Melville dropped into the Whirlaway Lounge one evening after work, not quite ready to confront the quiet of his home. It was an odd move; usually he slid into a coffeehouse next to the university.  This day he needed different stimuli.

When he pulled the door open, he knew he had made the right choice. The place was dark and nearly deserted. Two old men excitedly whispered across a corner table. Strange place to engage in intrigue. Taking a seat at the bar, he looked at himself in the mirror for a moment. In a bit, the bartender disengaged himself from a conversation with a hunched figure at the other end.  

 “The pit, Lenny. I was in the fucking pit,”the figure called after him. “I know, Frank,” he called back, then greeted Melville, who ordered an imported draft he recognized from TV commercials.

 “I was in the Goddamned pit,” the man repeated.  

Melville passed a couple of quiet hours in the dark, sipping beer and letting his mind unhook from the demands life was making from him. The grumbling continued from the other end of the bar, breaking occasionally like thunder, followed by the barman’s gentle reassurance. More patrons trickled in, each looking beaten down in a different way. When a guy in a John Deere cap fired up the jukebox, the “Goddamned pit” man pushed away from the bar and pinballed his way out the door, hitting every table he passed.  

“What was his deal?” Melville asked the barman.

 “Some kid fell into the gorilla pit at the zoo. Frank jumped in and protected him until staff got them out.” 

     “Good Lord! When did that happen?”

     “About twenty years ago.”

     “And he’s still upset?”

 The bartender looked at him like he was a fool.

“He was in the pit, man. That’s not something you get over.”

In addition to The Rye Whiskey Review, the poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in well over 200 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems is now available from Hohm Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net

For the Watchful By John Swain

Sister drink your wine

with milk

in the vineyard

on the table

of the stone hill.

We taste black grapes

made sweet 

with summer amethyst

in the summer dark.

You span the height,

you burn a likeness

of the new moon

at the harvest

for the watchful.

John Swain lives in Le Perreux sur Marne, France.  He has published two collections of poetry, Ring the Sycamore Sky and Under the Mountain Born.

Escondido By Barry Basden

Saturday mornings she drives

down the coast to Andre’s.

He talks her into highlights then

slowly turns her blond.

She likes how his cut makes her feel sexy.

She drives the brown hills for hours,

running through the gears,

pushing the little roadster

through the curves.

Near Escondido,

she parks in front of a cantina.

Chalupas and squash gorditas

with guac and salsa picante.

Rosie and the Screamers

and a stuffed horse in the bar.

Wine margaritas and pitchers of beer.

Giddyup.

She wakes in a small room,

a stranger beside her,

a foul taste in her mouth.

Barry Basden lives with Bean, his little rescue terrier, in the Texas hill country where, among other things, he drinks good wine and occasionally writes.

An Evening of Blues By Wayne Hebb

 The lead guitar

Picks out the 

Slow blues from

The jukebox as

He sits in the 

Corner cuddled by

Shadows

His weathered hands

Holding whiskey

In a dirty glass

Sighing he touches the

Wrinkles on his cheek

Left by years of smoking

Cigarettes and cheap cigars

His hair cast

Across his forehead 

In a sorry attempt 

To hide his 

Baldness and a

Crumpled leather

Jacket hid a

Crumpled frame

Taking another sip 

He lets the whiskey and

The lonely music 

Ease his tortured 

soul

Wayne Hebb is a retired RCMP officer living in St. John’s, NL, Canada with his wife of 50 years. He enjoys writing poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, and novels.  Several of his poems have been published in Verse-Virtual, The Dark Poets Society, The Horseshoe Literary Magazine and The Galway Review.  

Whiskey from the Bottle By Brenton Booth

None of us

had fathers

living in our

homes. The

only men

that were ever

there spent

the majority

of the time in

our mothers

bedrooms.

We rode

skateboards

and pushbikes

and listened

to the heaviest

imaginable

metal with

long unkept

hair. Smoking

grass and

drinking

whiskey almost

every day.

Sean's uncle

owned the

corner liquor

store and 

sold us any

alcohol we

wanted.

When we

didn't have

enough money,

Dave would

steal it from

the busy

chain liquor

outlet by

the highway.

He'd go in

there with a

loose shirt

and trousers

and come

out with several

large bottles

of top shelf

whiskey every

single time. It

was amazing.

He was the

only one of 

us that could

do it without

getting caught.

We all played

instruments

for unknown

bands. Not

dreaming of

fame or 

success: only

escape from

our small

backwards 

suburb, and

to not turn

out like our

mothers

or their

boyfriends.

Doing 

everything

we could

not to be

like our

mothers or

their

boyfriends.

Squandering

our entire

teenage

years on

this. Never

realising, 

they had 

once done

exactly the 

same.

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.  

After Byron__ By Merritt Waldon

She walks in beauty like night 

At great heights beyond this skull

In my eyes a forever light

That succumbs to her gravitys

Pull

Searching cloudless climes 

& Byron's mimes

I find Beauty is beyond the

Times

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.

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.

The Inevitable by Connie Johnson

it’s when I dove into the wine of memory 

each sip revealing what I told you so righteously 

jazz turbulence  / & I reflect on everything 

caress my ear 

with notes of clarity / clear water

w/ waves of  nostalgia 

& Nina Simone!

tears   overflow     into distant waters 

Immortality! / & everyday this becomes 

more clear to me 

I’m no high priestess

I never implied that I 

was built for this

o soul baptism

I always knew 

I always knew

I always knew

you’d make me 

drown

Connie Johnson is a Los Angeles, CA-based Pushcart Prize nominee whose poetry has appeared in San Pedro River Review, Syncopation Literary Journal, Cholla Needles,  The Rye Whiskey Review,    and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. Everything is Distant Now (Blue Horse Press), her debut poetry collection, is available on Amazon; In a Place of Dreams, her digital album/chapbook, can be found at www.jerryjazzmusician.com