Talking Baseball with Mom by Melanie Browne

I am talking baseball
with mom even though
she is more of
a football gal & dad is a
football guy
Growing
up he screamed at our  T.V.
The  Dallas Cowboys could
never do right,
"You're so stupid,
how could you not intercept
damn Idiots."

I am talking baseball
with mom and She tells me
about a friend of
hers named Carl,
"He was killed by a batted
baseball." I look it up
on ancestry.com, my drug
of choice and Carl did
in fact die in 1958
 almost instantaneously,
from a batted baseball at
an away game in Dallas.

I wonder about the boy
at bat and if he lost his
love for the game,
was he was able to
leave the past behind,
shield his eyes from
a flickering sun
and write
his name on the
home plate
forehead sweating
from the effort?

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.

Savage dream by Alex Z. Salinas

I dreamt I was translating a poem by
Roberto Bolaño but that his words
Resisted my touch, my gaze,
Squirted hot mescal into my dark eyes
Of which my tongue refused to lick
The dripping drink due to its teetotaler master,
And in this way, every way imaginable,
My native tongue has resisted me.

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. 

Attachments area

The Journey. by Dennis Moriarty

I have seen you devour pills between
Old episodes of Colombo,
Watched you suck and deflate
The helium balloon.
Now you occupy the space between
The ceiling
And the soft leather chair where I sit.
Your laughing words are borrowed from
The language of insanity.
Raven dark innuendo, the mockery
Of crows delivered by
The serrated edge of your cutting tongue.
I watch you soar, looking for cracks
In the ceiling,
Cracks through which you might enter
And discover
That other worldly acceptance you so
Desperately crave.
But you will not find it there among the cobwebs
And faded coving, it will never be there.
I see you retreat, slowly at first, floating like a feather
In the silence that follows the shot gun's blast.
You pick up speed, falling, nose diving
Through the void,
Eventually landing at my feet.
You ask how long you've been away and I answer
With a question of my own;
Was the final destination really worth
The journey after all?

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.

Angel by John Drudge

We have tasted much and swam
In the tender moonlight
Of misgiving
We have walked with shadows
And drank away our sorrows
With desire
We have breathed the fickle scorn
Of creation
And touched with trepidation
The ever faster flutter
Of the angel's waiting wing

John works as a clinical social worker and is the president of a national disability management company. He holds degrees in Social Work, Psychology, and Rehabilitation Services and has studied philosophy extensively.  He is an avid traveler and a long-term student of the martial arts holding a 3rd degree black-belt in Kempo Karate. His diverse educational and experiential background gives him a broad base from which to approach many topics in his poetry. John currently lives with his wife and two children in Caledon, Ontario, Canada.  

Low Tide by Tony Pena

Though an old tale telling
wife or two may consider
the odd gesture bad luck,
I wear only a black fiddler
cap to bed, full of blotted chits
with the names of ex lovers
folded tight for the picking.
A washed up Romeo who fell
like Lucifer right off the bar
stool with any looks and charm
lost to the drainage pipe
by the amusement pier.

Now I lie in bed like a bloated
body hooked out of the tunnel
of love with house of mirrors
jowls and a personality crusty
as a fish shack’s lobster special
with bound claws itching to snap
off the nearest appendage.
This one man romp
of a routine in the sack,
with champagne memories
over ripening on a grapevine,
the only exercise I ever get.

Tony Pena was selected as 2017-2018 Poet Laureate for the city of Beacon, New York.  

A new volume of poetry and flash fiction, "Blood and Beats and Rock n Roll," is available now at Amazon.  He also has a self published chapbook, "Opening night in Gehenna."  His publication credits include “Chronogram,”  "Dogzplot,"   "Gutter Eloquence," “Hudson Valley Transmitter,” "Red Fez," "Slipstream,"  "Underground Voices," "Zygote in my Coffee,"  and others. 

Colorful compositions and caterwauling with a couple of chords can be seen at:

Www.youtube.com/tonypenapoetry

Www.facebook.com/tonypenapoetry

as his fist crashed against my head.

A Wheatus Moment by Bruce Hodder

At Sarah's wedding in that field last summer,
strong mead was served, Sarah being a witch.
Some wedding guests couldn't handle it.
Your family gathered round you, Jason.
Remember the circle on the grass they made?
They sang songs. One was 'Teenage Dirtbag'.
It stirred there among your children first,
then everybody picked it up together
They giggled as they sang. And so did you.
Nearby, the soldier mate we’d brought
was bladdered, screaming, as he chased his wife
round tents and toilets. He was being a prat.
He’d come here with biker denims on,
and a giant Iron Maiden patch
across his massive back;
not that you had seen him,
Jason, or that's what you said.
Sometimes guerrilla warfare's best.

Bruce Hodder lives with Michelle in Northampton, the most statistically average town in England. He has been published in quite a few magazines over the years, most recently ‘Academy of Heart and mind’ and ‘Winedrunk Sidewalk’.

HAPPY HOUR by Darryl Graff

Tired of
Windmills
I turn
To olives
And
With my
Plastic sword
Slay three
The girls
Next
To me
Arch
Their backs
And smile
I leave
As I
Came
alone
inscrutable
and
smoking

I am a NYC construction worker and writer.  My non fiction stories have appeared in Akashic Books, Hipocampus Magazine, Foliate Oak,

Da Chuna and elsewhere.