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    

Distant Shores By Leon Drake

I keep your name

in the glove compartment

with the old receipts

and a map

to somewhere

we never went.

Funny how

you can spend years

trying to get somewhere

only to discover

you were already there.

We became

distant shores

not enemies,

not strangers,

just two pieces of land

with too much ocean

between them.

Sometimes at night

I still look toward

the water

as if you might be

standing there,

waving.

And sometimes

I wave back.

Not because

I expect you to see me,

but because

some goodbyes

deserve

a little kindness.

Leon Drake is a Toronto based poet.

His work has been published in Fixator Press, The Literary Underground, The Rye Whiskey Review, Spill The Words Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Sava Press and The Crossroads Magazine.

Another Broken Mirror By Juliet Cook

Then the mirror began to hate me.

Me and the mirror were smashed.

Stale breadcrumbs, vodka and glass 

falling down into another 

bathtub coffin.

Dripping blood, then drying out, 

unless I keep bleeding inside

my cracked glass coffin until 

blood covers my body and mind.

Bloody grim fairy tale entrapment

in which I visibly bleed out or else

I just disappear. 

Juliet Cook doesn't fit inside an Easy-Bake Oven and rarely cooks. Her

poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications.

She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently

including "red flames burning out" (Grey Book Press, 2023), "Contorted

Doom Conveyor" (Gutter Snob Books, 2023), "Your Mouth is Moving

Backwards" (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2023), "REVOLTING" (Cul-de-sac

of Blood, 2024), and "Blue Stingers Instead of Wings" (Pure Sleeze

Press, 2025). Her most recent full-length poetry book, "Malformed

Confetti" was published by Crisis Chronicles Press. You can find out

more at https://julietcook.weebly.com/.

After Hours By Barry Basden

The Katy Did closed

and we followed

two girls in a red Chevy,

flirting at stoplights

until we scared them home.

A man in a bathrobe

stepped into the yard.

You boys go on now.

There’s nothing here for you.

I moved toward him

and his hand lifted.

When I saw the gun,

I forgot everything else. 

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.

QUEASY By Susan Isla Tepper

When I found out

he was the kind of guy

that ate the worm

I recoiled.

Just thinking about

all our tequila kisses

made me queasy

made the walls spin.

But for the worm

there was everything

girls look for in a man.

When I told him to back off

he got teary.









Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer in all genres. Her most recent book, a Novel titled Hair Of A Fallen Angel, came out in the fall from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC. Tepper has also written 7 stage plays. Her third play titled EVA & ADAMO will present at The Tank, NYC, early fall. www.susantepper.com

Ellipsis By Manny Grimaldi

If you don’t find God 

on a freeway in Los Angeles, 

you’ve never had a spiritual experience.  

Remote qualification took place in 

a multilevel “tri-sexual” club,

where anything goes,

with a nice, nasty dance floor for

vehement grinding 

to pounding, loud industrial music.

Mommy and Daddy’s music.

Then, life in my 30’s, coming into Los Angeles,

with a Jeep was beach air and highway shimmer, 

Church’s Chicken and taquerias, 

cholos and señoritas eating 

my wife’s white chili out the back,

with the biggest jalapeños

her buck could afford, 

and pumping bass and popping screws

 in the back, Arlo Guthrie mash-ups 

with Ice Cube.

God gave her to me and God took her

away, although she said 

the Source would take me first, and nothing,

nothing but this, nothing 

but that I’m still most alive on asphalt spaghetti

where breezes blow from the West 

and the ocean will boil,

the sun takes a skinny dip 

and each nipple fizzles.

Manny Grimaldi is the author of Finding a Word to Describe You (Whiskey City Press 2025), Riding Shotgun with the Mothman (Boiled Egg Publications 2024), and the chapbook Ex Libris Ioannes Cerva (Boiled Egg 2024). He is co-founder and former managing editor of Yearling Poetry Journal. He resides in Louisville, Kentucky.

Harry Keller’s Kid by William Kitcher

The stranger sidled up to the bar, ordered a non-descript beer, took a lazy sip, and looked around the bar.

He seemed a little rough; his jeans were grubby and torn but not deliberately, his boots had holes, his jacket, unravelling at the collar and cuffs, covered a washed-out t-shirt that might have been blue at one time. He said to the bartender, “My name is Jim Keller. I’m Harry Keller’s son. Is he here?”

Annie the bartender stopped. Her years of endless day shifts had fine-tuned her skepticism.

Someone down the bar said, “Harry doesn’t have any kids.”

Jim said, “This shit is none of your business, whoever said that.” He took another sip, looked at the knots in the wood of the bar, then raised his head at Annie. “Is he here?”

“Look around,” said Annie. “What do you think?”

“If it was any of your... never mind. I’ve never met him. He abandoned my mother and me forty years ago. I didn’t even know about him until this morning. Deal with it.”

“Sorry,” said Annie. “He’s the big guy at the end of the bar. The one with the plaid shirt and Twins’ cap.”

Jim picked up his beer and the coaster, moved down the bar, and sat down beside Harry. Literally everyone in the bar watched. The silence had a hum to it.

Quietly, Jim said to Harry, “I’m not pissed off. Shit happens.”

The bar’s buzz returned to normal when the others realized they couldn’t hear details and went back to sports trivia and medical conditions.

“You left my mother. I get that. No problem. It wasn’t right for you at the time decades ago.”

“Your mother is Eleanor, right?” said Harry as he nervously pounded back the rest of his rye-and-water, and ordered another.

Jim stayed silent. Annie gave Harry an extra-large shot.

Harry took a big slug, sized up Jim’s scruff, and said, “What can I do for you?”

Jim said, “There’s nothing. I just want you to know that it’s all good. I hold no grudges. I guess I just wanted to meet you. And maybe we could become friends.”

“You’re a good guy,” said Harry. “It ain’t gonna make a bit of difference in the long run. Let me...” He trailed off.

Jim waited.

“Look,” said Harry. “I messed up. Everyone does, right? I am so sorry,” and he paused before he added “son”. Harry staggered a bit on his stool, recovered, then said, “I know this won’t make any difference between us, won’t compensate for anything. I’m sorry I was that coward. Let me do this.”

Harry took his wallet out, extracted all the cash he had, about $200 worth, and passed it to Jim. He said nothing else.

Jim took the money, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, pounded the rest of his beer, then left the bar like a dustball into the corner of a room.

Silence returned to the bar except for a few regulars failing to console Harry. The place dissipated into another time. The people calmed down without knowing why. There was a quiet that didn’t seem quite right. Semi-chaos, semi-normality, semi-everything flashed everywhere.

Some guy, smashing that vibe, hovered into the bar, ordered a beer, and said to Annie, “My name is Jim Keller. I think my father might be here.”

William Kitcher’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Japan, Nigeria, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the U.S., and Wales. His stories have appeared in Rye Whiskey Review, Ariel Chart, New Contrast, Horror Sleaze Trash, Eunoia Review, Defenestration, and many other journals. His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.

Consummated Carnage By PW Covington

There is more space between my words

Than I intended

More outer space in my mind than inner space

Out of time

Reminds me of the plane ride home tonight

Our ecclesiastical conclusion on the concourse

Through the cliches of all blood sacrifice 

One journey

Many paths

Every minute

Every coin

Returned to the slot and dropped below

Blood and red wine mixing

Tailored clothes and lipstick

Every minute

Every coin

Sacrificed upon the altar of our vanities 

Eye shadow and frosted denim

Photo-editing phone apps

Synthetic opiates of the masses

Things taken along while traveling

A smear on the lens of 

Your space telescope cognition,

Mas o menos, more or less

A question of intention

And Day-Glo apprehension

Toll booth sacred dial tones at night

Flashing in infinity

A spark and tinder

Consummated circumstance of carnage

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.