Lunch Spots in Syracuse 1975 by Jim Bourey

The Odessa, west of the fairgrounds,
was where we snuck off for long lunches,
and in summer that could mean three hours
of cognac shots followed by cold beer
chasers. Pyrohi, borscht and kapusnyak
from the Ukranian kitchen fortified our guts
against the booze. Lenny would always
weep for his lost land, his shot through
the head parents. When that happened
we tried to sober up
get back to the job
on University Hill.

On some paydays we’d roll out Rock Cut Road
to the strip club/burger joint near the quarry.
The burgers were okay but the chili
was hotter than any of the dancers. Tony
was in love with Jasmine and he’d drop
forty bucks for a private dance, plead
with her to run away.
She always turned him down.
We always went back to work.

Fisher’s favorite bar was Flanagan’s.
We went there on Fridays during Lent, ate
perch from Oneida Lake if the ice was out.
His friends from the Turner’s Club
hung out there. They drank Utica Club,
talked about machining jobs moving
to Missouri. I sympathized. But not much.
Wouldn’t trust these guys
with steel-cutting lathes
after their midday drinking.

Most days I had my noon break
on the south side of the quad
in the shade of Bowne Hall.
Two brown bags.
A ham and cheese sandwich in one.
A bottle of amber liquid in the other.
Then I’d go back to the stockroom.

Jim Bourey is an old poet who lives on the northern edge of the Adirondack Mountains. His chapbook “Silence, Interrupted” was published in 2015 by the Broadkill River Press. His work has appeared in Rye Whiskey Review, Mojave River Review, Stillwater Review, Gargoyle, Broadkill Review and other journals and anthologies. He is also a contributing editor for The Broadkill Review. Jim’s new full-length collection “The Distance Between Us” from Cold River Press, is set for release in August 2020.

Letter to My Poet Friends in Quarantine by Shawn Pavey

Can we write enough poems about Django Reinhardt
It’s a question I keep asking myself
Knowing if you were here
Brothers and Sisters you would have treatise
At the ready and in triplicate
So when I hear those thin scratchy recordings
When the violin player takes the solo in
The World is Waiting for a Sunset
And Django way in the back is strumming faster
Than a hummingbird wing
And man he can just make that thing swing
And then in I Saw Stars how he’s just chopping
Chopping those strings in that mystic rhythm
And man can’t he just take you with him
Then when he steps out front
In Nuages each note drips out so sweet
That maybe we think this sadness will be forever
But let him slip into a little boogie groove
Like in Artillerie Lourde oh let him speak it true
How sometimes the ammo’s heavy baby
Sometimes you just have to lay it on down

Shawn Pavey has delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, cut meat, laid sewer pipe, bussed tables, washed dishes, roofed houses, crunched numbers, rented cars, worked in hotels, worn an apron at Kinko’s, and been paid to write everything from résumés to music reviews.  Currently, he earns a living as an Executive Recruiter in Mission, KS where he lives with his wife and two worthless but adorable cats.  He’s hosted poetry readings in bars, coffee shops, haunted houses, bookstores, libraries, front porches, seedy motel rooms, and abandoned warehouses.  He is the author of Talking to Shadows (2008, Main Street Rag Press), Nobody Steals the Towels from a Motel 6 (2015, Spartan Press), and Survival Tips for the Pending Apocalypse (Spartan Press, 2019). He is a Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit.  His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications.  A graduate of the University of North Carolina’s Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, he likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single-barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue. 

The Debt by David Spicer

Dan paid Bill a C-note he owed for years.
He sent him a check by certified mail.

The check certified the end of a debt.
I think alcoholic Dan was making amends.

Dan wasn’t trying to mend a fence with Bill.
Dan told Bill his brother Bob had just died.

Thirty years back, Dan, Bill, Bob drank like brothers.
Bob killed his wife with a shotgun for cheating.

He cheated, but his wife didn’t own shotguns.
Bob lived in prison for years where he painted.

He painted prisoners for years, was paroled.
He drove to a bar, drank with Dan and Bill.

Bob and Dan drank too much. Bill picked up the tab.
Bill smiled at the C-note Dan owed for years.

David Spicer has published poems in Santa

Clara Review, Synaeresis, The Sheepshead Review, Remington Review, Steam

Ticket, Third Wednesday, CircleStreet, The American Poetry Review,

Ploughshares, Moria, Oyster River Pages, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. Nominated

for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart twice, he is author of six

chapbooks, the latest being Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His second

full-length collection, Waiting for the

Needle Rain, is now available from Hekate Publishing. His website is http://www.davidspicer76.com

The Old Sea Goat by Kevin M. Hibshman

The Old Sea Goat is no sly fox.
He'll gnaw your knees and elbows raw after biting the legs off all your favorite coffee tables.
If you happen to hear his horny roar approaching, lock up your liquor cabinet and swallow the key before he has the chance to drain your unsuspecting wet bar dry.

He can be decent company.
He is guaranteed to kick-start any dull party.
“Cheers, Here's to swill with time to kill!”
Supply him with ale and let him regale you with a whale of a tale before the Sirens call him home again.
“Bucking waves through all of eternity can really make you thirsty!”

One day as he was bleating about the pressures of being a myth, Poseidon decided to gift him with a 5th
to shut him up as the Mermaids had been complaining.
“It was either that, Poseidon thought, or I would have had to tan his hide and turn him back into little
pieces of parchment.”

The old goat knew it would soon be time to go ashore and so he trimmed his beard and filed his horns.
After applying as much “Axe” as he could stand, He set about on his master plan.
“I must find a nice little cove where they won't be annoyed if I really get ripped,” he quipped.
'I'm no sheep and I can never sleep until I am quite sufficiently tipped.”

Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide.

 In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).

Brown Paper Bag by Jason Ryberg

with apologies to Ted Kooser

We got two big double-bagged 
brown paper bags, packed tight 
and heavy with stalks of rhubarb 
from my Uncle Pico’s garden,

two big, black boiling pots, 
the kind with the speckled enameling
(like starry nights), filled up with water 
on the stove and already starting 
to roil a little,

packets of brewer’s yeast, 
a five pound bag of sugar 
and two six-packs of Miller High Life 
(plus a pint of Evan for back-up, 
because you just never know—
better to have it and not need it
and all that, as they say). 

So, let’s open a couple of beers,
take a couple of nips off that bottle, there, 
turn down this burner just a touch 
(and the radio up just a hair) and see 
what the night has in store for us.

Jason Ryberg is the author of thirteen books of poetry,

six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders,

notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be 

(loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry 

letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. 

He is currently an artist-in-residence at both 

The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s 

and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor 

and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection 

of poems is Standing at the Intersection of Critical Mass

and Event Horizon (Luchador Press, 2019). 

He lives part-time in Salina, KS with a rooster named 

Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time 

somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, 

where there are also many strange and wonderful 

woodland critters. 

Fragmented No 31 by DAH

Damned to this cage, looking
at a blotched mirror / this
divided face …

eyes flying in dreams.

Inside self, used up
/ outside this house,
winter’s heaviness …

double light of darkness.

Sometimes in the air, your
eyes appear / not glowing
but slipping …

not rising but falling.

On the street, under a rusted
sky / a young woman laughs
with another …

the wind keeps to itself.

DAH is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net nominee, and the lead

editor for the poetry critique group, The Lounge. The author of nine books of

poetry, DAH lives in Berkeley, California, and has been teaching yoga to children

in public and private schools since 2005. He is working on his tenth poetry book,

which is due for release in September 2020, from Clare Songbirds Press.   

visit: www.dahlusion.wordpress.com

liver (jueyin) by Scott Ferry

she comes over to the house my ex and i
once lived in now overgrown with roommates
and a kitchen of bottles

she asks me why i drink so much
why i don’t even interact
when i become deboned

anger—but i can’t explain it
god has dried the sand
god has and she has (the other she)
don’t make me talk please

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN. He has recent work in Misfit, MacQueen's Quinterly, and Spillway. His second chapbook Mr. Rogers Kills Fruit Flies will come out in October 2020 from Main St. Rag. You can find more of his work at Ferrypoetry.com.