The Tea Lady And The Pot Smoker. by Dennis Moriarty

In a spare room upstairs he grew weed
To smoke and make tea
For the elderly lady next door.
And when her knees swelled and her body
Stiffened
He infused her brew with the magic leaf
And waited with her
Until she drifted away with the sound of
The song he sang for her.
He listened to Dylan and Cash now and then
The reefers he smoked
Mellowing the vocals and softening the boots
On gravel delivery of lyrics.
And each Sunday at noon he went next door
Where she cooked him dinner,
Roast chicken and gravy with potatoes and peas
And after the crumble and custard
She drank her tea and he inhaled his smoke
And they faded away together.
Then one late November morning he stood
At the graveside
Listening to the priest but not hearing a word.
And when they offered her body
To the dark dank earth he anointed her coffin
With ash from a joint he openly smoked.
And when the last mourners had left him alone
He took out a flask
And toasted her final journey with one last cup
Of magic leaf tea.

Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.
In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.

after a night of drinking. By J.J. Campbell

listening to the

muse snore at

1:30 in the

morning

not in bed like

i would love

to, but over

the phone

making sure

she doesn’t

choke on her

own vomit

after a night

of drinking

i believe they

call this love

in the digital

age

J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) was raised by wolves but still managed to graduate high school with honors. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Academy Of The Heart And Mind, Rusty Truck, Horror Sleaze Trash, Red Eft Review and Mad Swirl. you can find him most days waxing poetic on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Field Sobriety Test by David Boski

congratulations
you quit smoking;
please make sure
you post your anniversaries
on social media
every year,
we’re all so very impressed.
oh, you haven’t had a drink in
15 years either?
cool, post about that too,
that just means there’s
more for the rest
of us,
and coincidentally
15 years ago
is about when I started.
so,
thank you;
you’re no better than
anybody else,
you have your vices too;
just look
in the mirror,
you
hypocritical
fat
fuck.

David Boski is a poet living in Toronto. His poems have most recently appeared in: Under The Bleachers, Down in the Dirt, Duane's Poetree, Horror Sleaze Trash, Rusty Truck, Winamop. He has a forthcoming chapbook being released by Analog Submission Press as well as Holy&Intoxicated Publications later this year. He enjoys whiskey, wine and beer, in no particular order.  

Fumbling, Searching by Brendan Smith

Shall we try to draw blood from the obsidian night
Full of stars wishing they were the sun
And I too hoped that I might
Live life before the day was done
But when our star cannot see our acts
like a parent that leaves you be
that is when you'll see the fact
of human life when it is free

Like Sisyphus until we atone
burdening ourselves because of unconditional gifts
But amid darkness, when we are alone
Modest veils, hiding shamed beauty lift
So we go out in the night, with our worse sides
Blackness blending with dark, showing only our light
And while among blessings our beauty hides
No longer feeling unworthy, we let ourselves be bright

When we look in the abyss and the abyss looks back
I'm happy to be seen
When the night is pitch and we are equal in the black
I no longer feel jealous of their happy scenes
There is silence in darkness as though light brings sound
And in darkness and silence you can fumble and fall
With no one to judge you as you try to be found
And to see which of yourselves you are after all

And the halo that forms on the earth during sunrise
Remind us we are undeserving of bounty and grace
And we return to lives we despise, never to surmise
Who we are beyond a voice and face
And we sleep through the day since we don't have the right
As the guilt for breathing weighs down our wings
Until the majestic halo is placed on the night
And after we venture where our smiles can sing

Brendan Smith is a writer from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is currently attending Albright College.

The Cult of the Mug by Riham Adly

She said to meet her in the local bar, not the office.
“Tamara.” She called out. I really didn’t like it when she used my name because, she too—my therapist—was a Tamara.
I wanted to order whiskey, but wasn’t sure I should drink at this time of the day.

“For five years, you’ve been coming to my office with nothing but stories about people after you.” Her eyes went to the pencil tucked behind my ear. Tough habit, I never do that at work, though.

“You have to listen to me and believe me. It’s what I pay you for.” I signaled to the barman and ordered beer. She didn’t have anything.

“Tamara, this just won’t work!”

Her out-burst was so out of character. She usually lets me do all the talking without interruption. I tried not to look at her lip line, at the fine fair hairs under her lower lip or the screaming-red lipstick.
“Remember what we said about letting the hurtful past surface so you can move on? Or else it would leak into your brain and life like the poisonous lead in the pencils you keep chewing? It’s never too late.”

I didn’t care about getting fixed. I wanted to tell the story of the cult of the mug and what they did to me. Here’s what happened.

I lost my favorite coffee mug, the one that had my name on it next to a pink unicorn---a pink Pegasus to be precise---and at work of all places. I get chronic migraines and anxiety attacks.  Coffee was my only cure, or at least had been.

I worked as a quantitative trading intern in Tower Research Capital. I liked their free housing, free lunch and breakfast benefits; they even offered free tickets to New York events. Didn’t cross my mind this was going to be another boring cubicle job.

I’d come in everyday at 9 a.m. sharp in my skinny jeans, and my low-neck blouses in aqua and marigold shades. I hated blazers with ugly name-tags. Kohl-rimmed eyes with my hair piled high gave a fresh look—sexy too. I’d like to think of myself as that pink unicorn Pegasus on the mug, as someone special born out of the dying belly of a monster. I liked my Pegasus pink to match the shade of my Maybelline lipstick. I could afford one now. Immigrant kids back in the day could never afford anything. They had to blend, speak the accent, and earn their keep.

I have style. I have flair, but I’m a private person. I go in straight to my cubicle, carry on with work, keeping out of everybody’s business, even during lunch break, unless we had to collaborate on a project.

I don’t know how I lost that mug. I kept it close. It went home with me home, EVERY DAY.
We had a mini kitchenette at the end of the hall, when I looked there; I caught Paul washing his mug.

“Hey Paul,” He barely looked up from the sink.  I caught my name and the pink unicorn on the mug he was washing. “Oh, so you found my mug.” We wedged in a smile in amongst each other, but his eyes were fixed on my low-neck blouse.
“May I?”  He looked surprised as I snatched my mug from his hands.

I’ve had a migraine all day; a caffeine fix would have definitely cured it. Vishen and Mark were both at the coffee machine. When I inched closer, I noticed that one of them, Mark, I think, was holding a very familiar looking mug, that pink thing near the handle? He shoved it right into the cupboard when I made direct eye-contact.

“Hey, you guys.” I tried to stay casual. Neither of them said a word, they looked like little girls caught putting on their mama’s lipstick.

On my way back, I caught Omar’s empty cubicle, number 23, his screen had a virus alert on. Where was he? Perhaps taking a leak? This was serious. I had to fix this, but what about my “keep to yourself” policy? The Virus alert blinked on and off seductively, like it was calling out for me. When I took over his seat, I noticed a white mug with my name on it next to a pink unicorn. I was still holding mine. His had the gloss of all things new.

Was this some sick joke?

“Tamara? What are you doing in my cubicle?” My hands shook real bad when I heard my name, almost knocking off his mug and mine.

“I think you forgot to zip your pants.” I had to improvise.
I weaseled my way out when he looked down at his crotch.

I just wanted to go back to the safety of my space, but then I noticed cubicle 10 had a mug just like mine and OMG, cubicle 6 and cubicle 8. They all had it!

All typing, clicking, and even the droning computer screens came to a hush. Everyone… gave this creepy stare, a “you’re in deep shit” kind of stare. That’s when I realized I was the only woman in the room. Boy, I wished I had my sneakers that day.
                                                                    
                                                                               *

“Tamara, why do you think your co-workers replicated your mug?”

My heart cartwheeled in my chest like a cheerleader on auto-repeat.

“ Is..n’t …Isn’t it obvious? They want to scare me into quitting.” I stammered as I watched her pull something out of her purse.

“Dig deeper Tamara.” She repeated our name again in that ice and cream voice, crossing one perfectly shaved leg over the other.  I shut my eyes real tight till it hurts. The deeper I dug the foggier it got. When I opened my eyes again, I watched Tamara’s manicured fingers gripping a mug with a pink Pegasus and the glittery letters of our name.

“Barrman, I want whiskey, pour in it this nice mug.”

Riham Adly’s fiction has appeared in journals such Bending Genres, Connotation Press, Spelk, The Cabinet of Heed, Vestal Review, Volney Road Review, Five:2:One, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Gingerbread House lit, Writing in a Woman’s voice, Anti-Heroine Chick, Danse Macabre and @Fewerthan500 among others. She was recently short-listed in the Arab-Lit Translation Prize.
Riham lives with her family in Gizah, Egypt.

Magazine Covers by David M.Taylor

When I was thirteen
I loved a girl
who wore three earrings
in each ear.

She lived in a group home
up the street
and was friends with my sister.

They'd listen to music
and dance around our house,
pretending they were on magazine covers,
that their lives were something more.

One day she kissed me
like the people in music videos
and I finally felt her pain,
the kind that comes
from trying to hold smoke.

I wanted to say something
but didn’t have the words.

I remember her every time
an 80s song plays on the radio
and try to remember that moment,
but it’s like trying to hold on to smoke.

David M. Taylor teaches at a community college in St. Louis, MO. His work has appeared in various magazines such as Albany Poets, Misfit Magazine, Rat's Ass Review, and Trailer Park Quarterly. He was also a finalist for the 2017 Annie Menebroker Poetry Award and has four poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is Growing up Black.

Alliteration by Mike Zone

Pummeling purple punishers
protruding through macro-cosmic protons
alliteration’s got me out of my mind
I’m not concerned about souls
nor formulation of purpose
but the reason for breathing
dead living among heavy liquid aqua-ducts rebranding moons as titan-esque oil embargo obscene gestures of hungering havoc hunger
oh, there I go with that damnable alliteration
but it’s all an experiment in wonderment
endless consumption as we rip away the skyways
exposing the fabric of time
and where did time really go?
if it was really under the surface
the entire eternity?
never going, never staying
happening all at once
oh and the fragmentation we’ve been feeling-
isn’t exactly what it used to be
maybe it’s a sickness
or perhaps it’s a cure
but there really can’t be answer
until the end
but every ends another beginning
in all this foolish hobbly-hoo
and won’t you just know it…
I just pummeled that alliteration thing
So why not grab a cup of coffee and slice of blueberry pie, contemplating a painting of someone doing the exact same thing but screaming at the sound of a calm blue sea.

Mike Zone is the author of Void Beneath the Skin, Fellow Passengers: Pubic Transit Poetry, Meditations & Musings and Better than the Movies: 4 Screenplays. He is the co-writer of the graphic novel series American Anti-hero from Alien Buddha Press. His poetry and stories have been featured in: Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash, In Between Hangovers, Mad Swirl, Rasputin Poetry, Synchronized Chaos, Triadae Magazine and Your One Phone Call. He scrapes by in Grand Rapids, MI