I am
in agony
fumbling
through tubes
in the bathroom
looking for
the topical pain killer
I can’t find
it
so I throw
wart cream against
the wall
and when it hits
so does another
sudden rush of pain
AAARGHHH!
I scream
and decide
to go get drunk
Dan Flore III’s writings have appeared in many publications. He is the author of several books, the latest being EVERYTHING MUST GO. (Cajun Mutt Press)
I was with Curtis at High on Rose
on a stormy afternoon.
We were on maybe our fourth pitcher,
maybe our fifth.
“Holy shit!” Curtis said,
pointing out the window.
“That car just fell through the road!”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“Yes, but that car still fell through the road.”
I swiveled and saw a small foreign number
with its left front tire
swallowed by the street.
“Well, shit,” I said.
Of course we went outside.
Maybe we went to help, maybe to gawk,
but there we were.
A woman sat behind the wheel.
She might have been thirty,
a little chubby, a lot pissed.
“My fucking car fell through the road,”
she said.
“That’s what I told my friend,”
Curtis answered.
“He didn’t believe me.”
“Well, let’s fix this.” I said,
embarrassed at being a nonbeliever.
We made the chubby woman
get out of the car.
She wore jeans and a white cotton shirt
that quickly became transparent
with the rain. Nothing underneath.
That didn’t bother her
and it didn’t bother us.
Curtis and I crouched down
and put our backs into it.
In no time at all, the car was free.
The chubby woman in the transparent shirt
said “Thanks” and drove away.
“That was a hell of a thing,” Curtis said.
“A hell of a thing,” I echoed.
We went back inside
and finished our fourth pitcher,
or maybe our fifth.
Then I guess we had one more.
Some days are for peaceful drinking
and some days are for cars
falling through the road
in front in the bar.
This was that first kind of day
until it became the second.
The hole is long since filled
and Curtis is recently dead.
That’s the whole story, but I wonder
sometimes if the woman told it
over the years, and if she did,
what she had to say about us,
her wet shirt,
and the providence of chance.
Maybe we became heroes
to people we never knew,
our story, a legend.
Maybe we were just
a couple of drunks
Jeff Weddle is the Alabama Beat Poet Laureate (2024-2026). His latest book is Letter to Xhevdet Bajraj (Uncollected Press, 2025). His work has appeared in Albanian and Spanish translation
(Note to self don’t die, Ryan Adams)
I had a Zippo, your initials carved on the lid; smokes cost less than a buck a pack. We were two wannabe outlaws lambing our way to oblivion. Where do you keep your hope nowadays? Tethered to a bad joke? Do you bear the weight of belief in the faded tattoo ink over your heart? I could verb with the best of them but can’t adjective worth a good goddamn anymore. Can’t hold my liquor these days & cigarettes make me lonely for the happily-ever-afters we dreamt about that night at Aqua City Motel. Neighbors pounding on the wall for us to turn down the tinny radio blasting The Clash. You never know when your luck will run out. Can never tell when the sky will decide to fall. Keep your trigger finger warm baby; there’s a cold front moving in.
Alex Stolis has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Burningwood Literary Journal, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press. He lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.
The clock is broken, as the people sharing the space.
As the world outside is more fractured than any poem
penned by some pretentious soul.
The best are read and never heard.
The lights are off as they should remain.
Extinguish the ego and give life to the page.
Your plight, is your burden alone.
Ashley Karlsson, is a North Carolina based writer who's work has been published in.The Dope Fiend Daily, Off The Coast, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Outer Banks Quarterly.
they call the place
the harp & fiddle
but i still call it rooney’s
though i haven’t been here in a decade
until i got the itch again
there’s a gloss on the bar now
and seats with cushions
a row of tvs above us
playing sports and the carnage of war
a beer garden for the summer
and a trivia night on tuesdays too
they’ve raised the beer prices
three-dollars
to keep the riff-raff out
and now the decent people sit here in quiet
with their heads buried in the phones
as pop music plays
trying to find a sign of life in here is impossible
there’s no mona fucking anyone
on the bathroom sink
no benny to go mad
because the bitch cut him again
there’s just the bartender
updating her instagram account
showing everyone her vacation photos
as i sit here nursing a beer
hating that damned thomas wolfe
for being so right.
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You could sandblast the right-on sanctity from his bare vulnerable soul,
join school teachers twiddling their thumbs during his passion play -
then clapping in rehearsed agreement;
you could slam his poetry on the floor,
but that just wouldn't be active listening, would it?
You could be mindful of his struggle,
seeking a diagnosis to fit his trope,
politicians looking at their phones
while a brave soul like him takes poems
to the outer-edges of some shit or another;
he likes girls to think he's the first man who’s ever cried
forgetting a billion of us who watched Alan Ladd slumped on his horse
trot towards that graveyard -
then he takes commissions from toxic men
to enlighten us on toxic masculinity -
I guess getting that diagnosis is better than what he seems to think is poetry.
He stands facing his acolytes, brave pioneer, standard issue mullet and mustache,
telling us “there’s so much begrudgery in Ireland…”,
and that chestnut about online abuse
that only happens to D-List types, the first man in history
to acknowledge his emotions, fumbling fragile fingers on his appearance fee
when none of these schlumps are looking
He rang to say he was almost home,
walking down a street of bright bars
and rumbling nightclubs,
the rain slow and warm.
As she answered
his sluggish heart
came back to life.
She was in the woods, as far north
as he was south, she waded through a stream
edged with ice and scrambled
up the frozen bank as he said
“You’re so far away,”
“I’m right here,” she answered.
He walked up the metal steps
to his flat above the shops
rain gone, cold air pressing in.
“Where are you now?” she asked
“Outside the flat” he said, the wind picking up
his words bringing her thoughts back
to shadowy thoughts of the city..
She stood on a bare rock in the moonlight.
He felt her breath against his ear
“Feels like you’re just a step away” he said.
“Feels like I’m there,” she replied.
She walked on the path through frozen grass
and then sat at the table in the cabin.
He opened the door to his flat
and flopped on the old sofa –
both of them silent for an hour
still together.
Paul Bavister's poetry has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Dark Winter and Dream Catcher.
I am in agony fumbling through tubes in the bathroom looking for the topical pain killer I can’t find it so I throw wart cream against the ...
