UPON MEETING AN EDITOR by Bryn Fortey

I only met Kyril Bonfiglioli once
Just as he gave up
Editing SF IMPULSE
A UK magazine

I was in the area visiting relations
And thought a personal call
Might boost my chances
Of one day selling him a story

His wife was in France
He told me
Explaining his unshaven appearance
And being dressed in pyjama and dressing gown

While he wrote down
The new editor’s address
We drank gin
From large brandy glasses

Bon was an entertaining host
And an interesting man
So conversation flowed
As easily and readily as the gin

When it was finally time for me to leave
He stood then flopped back onto his chair
While offering me a lift
Which even through my drunken haze I declined.

Out I strode
Into the sunny Oxford afternoon
Trying hard to place one foot in front of the other
In as straight a line as possible

I managed to make the centre of the road

Before I stopped the traffic

Beep beep went the horns as I staggered away

Later I fell into my cousin’s house

And my wife didn’t speak to me for over a week

Bryn Fortey is a veteran writer from Wales in the UK. Widely published

over the years, he has had two collections published by The Alchemy 

Press, both featuring a mix of short stories and poetry. He is grateful that

in old age he is still able to put pen to paper and finger to keyboard.

Buk dream By Alex Z. Salinas

I dreamt  I was an Aquafina water bottle
Resting beside two bottles of expensive
Riesling on Charles Bukowski’s desk
And Chuck stumbles in clearly wasted,
Stretches his arms and cracks his knuckles
And screams like a lunatic and then hollers,
Time to get some fuckin’ work done, boys!
He grabs me like one of his favorite call girls
And splashes half my contents on his cratered face
To which I then shout at him,
BASTARD, NO WONDER YOU’RE ALWAYS
A MESS, YOUR MOUTH ONLY ACCEPTS
THE HARD STUFF!
Chuck looks at me with these wild raccoon eyes,
Moonshine tycoon eyes, then he says,
Well I’ll be Jean-Luc Godard-damned, that’s
The smartest fuckin’ thing anyone’s ever told me!
We both laugh so long and so hard that our
Abdominals cramp and all that’s left between us
Is an eerily   comfortable   hush. 

Alex Z. Salinas lives in San Antonio, Texas. His poetry has appeared in the San Antonio Express-News and in the San Antonio Review, where he serves as poetry editor.

Pay to Play by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

I started out to send a poetry

submission to a literary journal.

It was easy to get the poems

together. I entered my information

and my bio. Before I could send

the poems, a window popped up

saying the fee to submit my poems

was $26. I decided to keep 

my poems and my $26.

I found another literary journal

that did not charge a penny.

With my $26 I bought myself

two beers, a sandwich, and

a cheap poetry book. It was 

happy hour and I was able to 

get one more beer for the road.

I do not need to pay someone

to read my poems when someone

else would be glad to read them

free of charge, which is how

things ought to be.

Luis was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in the mental health 

field in Los Angeles, CA. His poems have appeared in Ariel Chart, Beatnik Cowboy,

Dope Fiend Daily, Unlikely Stories, and Zygote In My Coffee.

NOT A BAD PERSON by Brian Rihlmann

She’s at the bar beside me
trembling and
wiping her eyes
and swaying a little,
brushing against me
with her breasts
now and then.

I’ve seen her around.
We’ve talked before.

I’m not bad she says,
I’m not a bad person.
Her fists are clenched
like she’s gonna
throw a punch.

I ask, but she
shakes her head,
shuts her eyes.
I don’t ask again.

I buy her a shot.
She drinks it,
keeps saying
I’m not bad,
I’m a good person,
deep down I’m good.

Her mouth says this
as her mascara runs
and her fists clench.

I light her cigarette
watch it glow
as she sucks,
exhales through red lips,
sways on fishnet clad legs
and stiletto pumps,
steadies herself
with a hand on my chest,
as I think of what to say
that might help her
back to my apartment.

Brian Rihlmann was born in NJ, and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi autobiographical, confessional free verse, much of it on the so-called "grittier" side.  Folk poetry...for folks.  He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal Of Poetry.

Bedroom anatomy lesson#3 by Mike Zone

Every knock I here
I think it’s you
left your over night bag on the floor
half zipped open
like you were here
the bed is a lonely place of dying
staring at hairpins
strewn across the nightstand

Mike Zone is the author of A Farewell to Big Ideas, Void Beneath the Skin, Better than the Movie: 4 Screenplays and Fellow Passengers: Public Transit Poetry, Meditations and Musings. A contributing poet to Mad Swirl and contributing writer to the graphic novel series American Anti-hero by Alien Buddha Press. His poetry and stories have appeared in: Horror Sleaze Trash, The Daily Dope Fiend, Outlaw Poetry, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos and Triadæ Magazine.

The Whiskey Thief by Jeff Bernstein

Wander amid the racks
of curvaceous vessels,

broad-hipped sirens,
you could linger with

any one for an hour
or a lifetime

while obligatory showers
shine the macadam out front.

It’s just one short step
to congress with a sweet

smoky cask, liquid
seeps and flows

in reverse, amber glow
like ancient gas lamps.

That bordello of barrels
is dark, cold and beautiful.

You need one deft thumb
at the controls before

finally letting go,
letting go is an art

not a science.
And the release:

peat, fruit, spice, smoke
flowers all catch in throat

for minutes, even hours
if you are that good.

A lifelong New Englander, Jeff Bernstein divides his time between Boston and Central Vermont. Poetry is his favorite and earliest art form (he can’t draw a whit or hold a tune). He would most have liked to have been, like Thoreau, “an inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms… [a] surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes.” Recent poems have appeared, or will shortly, in, among others, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Best Indie Lit New England, The Centrifugal Eye, Cooweescoowee, Edison Literary Review, Grasslimb, The Kerf, The Midwest Quarterly, Mulberry Fork Review, Paper Nautilus, Pinyon, Plum Tree Tavern, Reckless Writing Poetry Anthology, Rockhurst Review, Silkworm and Tipton Poetry Journal.  He is the author of two chapbooks; his full-length collection “Nightfall, Full of Light” was published in December 2017 by Turning Point. His writer's blog is at www.hurricanelodge.com.

An Intoxicant Enters the Body by Heath Brougher

It seems memories of a blissful powder
are more potent than the bliss itself, ballooning the mind.
Skyscrapers of euphoric memories sprawl out before
the realest of of the Rosy Retrospection Bias
while the reality of it all exists in weaker states.

Maybe the current economic problems
are effecting the potency of these blissful powders.

Just watch out; don’t catch a cold
and don’t catch a habit—

I’ve already caught the Shame.

Heath Brougher received the 2018 Poet of the Year Award from Taj Mahal Review. He has published 6 books, the most recent being To Burn in Torturous Algorithms (Weasel Press, 2018) and The Ethnosphere's Duality (Cyberwit, 2018). His work has appeared in hundreds of print and online journals including Boston Poetry Magazine, Chiron Review, MiPOesias, The Dope Fiend Daily, Mad Swirl, SLAB, BlazeVOX, and elsewhere.