What I Said to the Small-Town Newspaper Reporter When She Asked About My Creative Process as I Finished My Fourth Beer at A Poetry Reading. By Jim Bourey

Pen on paper is better, mostly,

than the machine because nothing

needs to be booted, set aright, clicked,

spelt checked. Yes spelt. Oh sure,

I can cross out, black out even, words

with my Precise V5 (a high tech name)

rolling ball full of fast drying ebon. Lines

work their way down, words spill or crawl.

But in the end, machine it will be

for sending off and getting back

a yes or sad no thanks. My pen

exploded on an airplane high

above Utah one day in August.

A flight attendant was kind. My shirt

was ruined but I still wear it and will until I die.

Jim Bourey is an old poet who divides his year between the Adirondack Mountains and Dover, Delaware. His chapbook “Silence, Interrupted” was published in 2015 by the Broadkill River Press. His work has appeared in Mojave River Review, Paddock Review, Gargoyle and the Broadkill Review and other journals and anthologies. He was first runner up in the Faulkner-Wisdom Poetry Competition in 2012 and 2016. He has served as an adjudicator for the Poetry Out Loud competition in Delaware. In his North Country months, he is active with the St. Lawrence Area Poets and has taken part in Art/Poetry projects in Saranac Lake.

The Second It Takes To Shatter. by Dah

Only this reoccurrence

with spine-chilling threats

desecrated  

my sanctuary

If I were transparent

falling through glass

the second it takes

to shatter  

would be the abduction

numbing my childhood

my skin

my sanctum

Father, you were not looking

when

the old woman

grabbed my arm

I screamed. Blood

ran from my nose.

Father, her cold hands

her splintered eyes.

Father, take this memory

take it from me

before there’s another

before the old woman comes

again.

She is cunning.  

Father, I screamed.

My throat tightened  

Dah’s seventh poetry collection is Something Else’s Thoughts (Transcendent Zero Press)

and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Spain,

Singapore, Philippines, Poland, Australia, Africa, and India. He is a Pushcart Prize and 

Best Of The Net nominee and the lead editor of the poetry critique group, The Lounge. 

Dah lives in Berkeley, California, where he is working on his eighth book of poetry.

www.dahlusion.wordpress.com

fortune cookie writer. by Joseph V. Milford

some people drown their sorrows

when they should mount their horrors

Joseph V. Milford is the author of the poetry collections CRACKED ALTIMETER (BlazeVox Press) and TATTERED SCROLLS AND POSTULATES, VOL I. (Backlash Press). He is an English professor and Creative Writing instructor living south of Atlanta, Georgia. He also edits the online poetry thread, RASPUTIN, A POETRY THREAD.

THE WATCHMAN by R.M. Engelhardt

This is the hour.



Drunk with hope
And promise

The beginning
And the end

Without walls

Separating

Humanity

R.M. Engelhardt is an author, poet & writer whose work over the years has appeared in many journals & magazines such as Rusty Truck, Thunder Sandwich, Full of Crow, In Between Hangovers, Writers Resist, The Rye Whiskey Review and in many others. His new book of poetry is called Coffee Ass Blues & Other Poems published by Alien Buddha Press (2018). He is also the host of The Troy Poetry Mission/The School of Night, an open mic for poets located in Troy, New York.

Above It All By Kelli J Gavin

You’ve been elevated
Above it all
You have been placed
In a position
Above it all
The rest doesn’t matter
It is just background noise
I may have placed you there
To protect you
To make sure no one else
Could ever touch you
Hurt You
Take you
From Me
Above It all
Stay there
You’ve been elevated
Above it all

Kelli J Gavin lives in Carver, Minnesota with Josh, her husband of an obscene amount of years and they have two crazy kids. She is a Writer, Professional Organizer and owns Home & Life Organization and a small Jewelry Company.  Look for Kelli’s first book of short stories and poems in 2019. You can find her work with The Ugly Writers, Sweatpants & Coffee, Writing In a Woman’s Voice, The Writers Newsletter,  Writers Unite!, Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Rye Whiskey Review, Spillwords, Mercurial Stories, 121 Words, HerStry, Ariel Chart, The Basil O’Flaherty, PPP Ezine, Southwest Media, Otherwise Engaged, Pleather Skin, Paper.Li, The New Ink Review, among others.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Find Kelli on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @KelliJGavin
Blog found at kellijgavin.blogspot.com

Going in circles at Arlington National cemetery. By Melanie Browne

Our tour guide points

towards the Pentagon,

"the sunny side is

the side that the

plane hit,"




We shield our eyes

and turn our heads

in that direction,




"The plane actually

flew over the cemetery,"




We watch the changing of

the guard and say hi

to Jack and Jackie

but I can't stop

thinking about

the dark

shadow of

that plane

against

the white

stone markers

on a bright

and sunny day




All of those

soldiers

in one place

in precise

row after row,



a sense of order

to soften

all the chaos

Melanie Browne is a poet and fiction writer living in Texas. She has been published in various journals and 

online literary magazines such as Pulp Metal Magazine. She has also been included in several anthologies, 

including Zombies Galore and Everyday poets 2.

Where’s My Bucket? by Scott Silsbe

Three men sit in the booth of a bar
drinking draft beers from pint glasses.
They make slow, deliberate movements.
They talk about books, music, and politics.
One of them says, “Let’s prank somebody.”
The others laugh, but he’s serious about it.
A man named Elvis walks into the bar.
The merry prankster yells, “Elvis!” loud
enough that the man named Elvis hears
his name shouted over the bar-noise.
He sees the prankster and comes over
to the booth where the three men sit.
Elvis has half of a sandwich in a bag.
He’s wearing a University of Pittsburgh
jacket and he tells the three men about
his job, about driving cross-country,
about what it feels like to find yourself
in an earthquake, grabbing for a tree
to stabilize yourself but realizing that
the tree is shaking and not stable either.
When Elvis leaves the table, the prankster
pranks a plumber, not knowing that he is
a plumber, yelling, “Where’s my bucket?!”
into the phone. He pranks Jimmy, a retired
cop turned poet turned boxing instructor,
and says, “I had too many onion rings—
I just puked all over the bar. Pick me up!”
It’s just this way with poets sometimes.
Sometimes the world that they live in
needs them to give it a little extra color.

Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit and grew up down the river from there. He now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and have been collected in the three books: Unattended Fire (2012), The River Underneath the City (2013), and Muskrat Friday Dinner (2017).  He is also an assistant editor at Low Ghost Press.