Burroughs in the Back by PW Covington

For a long, damned run there
I could have sworn
That it was Billy Burroughs- hitchhiker
Riding stoned in my backseat
A faint, rear-view, reflection
Of decades old cologne

But, when I looked again
It was just a grease stain
In my mirror 
And, I remembered

I now drive a pickup-truck
And haven't picked up a hitchhiker
In years...

:

   PW Covington is a Pushcart-nominated poet and writer. He writes in the Beat tradition of the North American highway.

   More at www.PWCovington.com

Along Time by John Greiner

Century shocked out
to here, another year,
    uneasy,
    uneven,
    rattling
along, time straining
for ever again
further along.
Come back
shrieking
I am naked
as the day
I was born.

John Greiner is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer living in Queens, NY. He was educated at the New School for Social Research.  Greiner's work has appeared in Sand, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Valueand numerous other magazines. His chapbooks, broadsides and collections of poetry and short stories include  Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), The Laundrymen (Wandering Head Press, 2016), Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press, 2014),Modulation Age (Wandering Head Press, 2012), Shooting Side Glances(ISMs Press, 2011) and Relics From a Hell’s Kitchen Pawn Shop (Ronin Press, 2010). 

Giv'us a lift mate! by Nick Gerrard

‘You do yours, I’ll do mine. I’ll just pull over, no funny business like.’ This was the driver; I was hitching from Brum to Derby. ‘Yeah, me and my mates often have a wank together, you know we’re not gay or anything, just a good laugh!’

I wasn’t laffing, I’d only been in the car for half an hour and it was late, I didn’t wanna get out there weren’t many cars on the road. ‘No, you’re alright mate I’ll just get out up here.’

In the late seventies and the whole of the eighties I hitchhiked everywhere. Often to get to see bands, the train was too dear and I’d been caught to often bunking it. There were a lot of hitchers in those days, funny you don’t see many now? Everyone is scared of weirdoes, but back then weirdoes were par for the course. I was always getting offers and caresses of my legs. One guy offered me thirty quid for sex and forty if I kept my leather jacket on. Another guy, they always seemed to be salesmen too, offered to take me to a room and he wanted me to eat an orange in my underpants, for a tenner, while he jerked off! Go figure!

There were notetoreous roads for weirdoes. Known by the hitching fraternity. The A34 Oxford to Northampton road was one of them; I had been felt up many a time on there. Two punketttes I knew told me the story of one hitch they did. They were going to Northampton to see a gig at the Roadmenders. On the way there they got in the back and with their knives in their bags felt kinda safe. After a while this guy pulls over, comes round the side window and proceeded to take his togger out and start masturbating. After the gig, the girls stayed the night on some mate’s floor and in the morning hit the A34 again to get home. Some business man gave them a lift and after a while looked at them in the rear view mirror and asked ‘You don’t mind if I have a wank do you?’ And whilst looking at the girls in the mirror and still driving had a wank.

Hitchers were full of these stories, but it never really deterred us and no one got harmed, it went with the territory really. 

My girlfriend and me hitched from Paris to Barcelona and got a great lift off a lorry driver, almost all the way. But lorry drivers liked to talk dirty, they never made moves like stroking legs etc and were never into any gay stuff but they liked it blue!

‘So, yeah I go down to the nudist beach and park up take me binoculars and watch, I love watching people in the noddy, know what I mean? If you wanna you two can get it together in the back here I’ll just watch, no funny business!’ We got to Barcelona without having had to have sex in the cab. 

Of course there were some great lifts too. One woman gave about five of us a lift and fed us and put us up in her cottage for the night. Others bought you breakfast or fags, and some went out of their way to get you to where you wanted to go. 

As I said there were well known roads for perves. But also well known spots for getting good lifts. You jumped the tube to Brent Cross on the outskirts of London and walked to the lay by to the motorways going North and usually you only waited about ten minutes and got s lift easily. 

We had a code amongst the hitchers you always stood behind the guy who was there before you or you asked them where they wanting you to stand. Anyone who pushed in was given a mouthful and some were forced to stand at the back when they wouldn’t move. Yeah, there were some great roads but apart from the pervy roads there were infamous places where it was neon impossible to get a lift from; the most famous of these was Gordano services on the motorway near Bristol. The graffiti on the barriers on the slip road read ‘Hitchhikers graveyard’ and there were skeletons with backpacks lined up along the side of the road. I was there for two days once; people just didn’t give you a lift. And if you were heading down the West side of the country you asked the lift to make sure they were’nt gonna drop you at Gordano and disappear into Bristol. 

One of my longest hitches was from the top of old Yugoslavia to Athens. We had been on one of the Islands in Croatia and got a boat to the mainland. On the map there was a clear route down towards Albania on a coast road then take a right to Thessaloniki then a straight run to Athens. The coast road was a bit desolate and not much traffic. I was with my mate Gal and we tried to hitch together but after five hours decided it would be better to split up. We both had a little cash on us and we spilt it evenly up, we had travellers’ checks but made a bet that we weren’t allowed to cash any till we got to Athens. 

I waved him off after an hour then stuck my thumb out. I got a lift off a great guy who stopped in a village a bought me lunch, so with my cash I bought some fags for the journey, food I could do without and scrounge from punters but fags I needed. After a day’s hitching I got dropped near some industrial estate and decided to sleep till the morning, rounding a safe corner of a warehouse there was Gal! He had spent his cash on a bottle of vodka and some food, so we shared our goods and got some sleep. We departed separately the next morning and again got lifts pretty easily. After a long day of hitching I got dumped on the wrong side of a town so walked to the other side to the road leading South, there on the side of the road again was Gal. We were delighted to see each other again and decided to sleep until morning. We found some allotments and stole some fruit and got chased by a big dog. There was an empty shack on the side of the road, a kiosk kinda thing and we forced open the back door and after eating and smoking we got our heads down. The next day we departed again. And I headed further south. I was stuck on the side of a main road with the coast on one side and holiday traffic everywhere, there were no good hitching places so I walked to try and find one, with my thumb out as I walked. All the cars were full of holiday makers and their  gear so I got no lifts. Then a little Citroen passed me and then reversed. It was packed full of all sorts of junk and a nice woman said she was going to Prizrina; this was a good lift, a long way, I got in eagerly. She was Swiss and after half an hour of conversation I found out she was off to visit her Albanese boyfriend at his home, he didn’t know she was coming and the more she talked the more I realised what a nutter she was. I wanted to get out but the thought of such a long lift kept me inside. The first night we parked up on top of some small mountain and draped over each other got some kip. She kept stopping all the time to talk to locals and buy shit off people selling at the side of the road. Once into Kosovo we entered another world it was like going back a hundred years. Peasants walked with drooped backs carrying bails of firewood and farmers watched us with their pitchforks and she waved and hooted the horn. I started to get really angry with her and at one point told her to stop the bloody car and leave me here. Thankfully after an hour she came back for me and I reluctantly got back in. There were were some kids in a forest selling local artefacts, she pulled over and swapped some of her shit for the goods. We drove on, to be met in the road by a gang of angry pitchfork wielding adults who stopped the car and gave her her shit back and got their artefacts back off her, they wanted money not tat. Eventually we got to Prizrine. And she picked up every little kid on the road so I was forced to sit on top of the sunroof holding a bloody guitar. We arrived into the main square where a crowd of angry locals were gathered and guns were shooting bullets through the air. What a sight we must have looked in the middle of a rebellion, a crazy Swiss woman with a sunburnt English guy on the roof with a guitar and a car full of shit and kids. We found the boyfriends’ house. He wasn’t there. And the family had never heard of her, she started to move her shit into the house and talking crazily. The daughter translated and when she said the mother was seamstress she dropped her pants and asked her if she could fix her undies. The look from the mother and the father of this strict Muslim family send daggers through the air. I was getting worried. We were invited for dinner, Kidneys and potatoes and I was offered a shower which I took and a bed for the night which I refused. I was very polite and the mother liked me and gave me a medallion of Prizren silver. But I insisted in being given a lift to the road out of town, I could see trouble round the corner. And the mother nodded in understanding. They packed me some food and left me at the edge of town, where I got into my sleeping bag and happily went to sleep. I often wonder what happened to the Swiss woman, something horrible I hope. It took me five days to get to Athens, cashed my cheque and waited to meet Gal under the Acropolis at 11 every day. After two days we met up. I had beat him by a day and he had caved in at Titograd had cashed his cheque got some grub and a haircut and got a lift with the Yugoslavian army most of the way.

As I said before some places were just not good for hitching from and at the end of the eighties I gave up my hitching life. I had been dropped at Gordano and am now married with three kids and living in Bristol! 

Nick writes Gritty realism or social realism or as he likes to say 'Working-class kitchen sink drama! ‘ His short stories, flash, poetry and essays have appeared in various magazines and books in print and online. Nick has five books published available on Amazon and elsewhere. His short novel out last year, Punk Novelette is all about a group of friends growing up with punk in the 70s in the UK and the effect the movement had on their lives. His latest short story collection is Called Struggle and Strife; fifteen short stories covering the political and personal struggles of today, yesterday, and the future. Stories of casual workers, holocaust survivors, refugees, slum dwellers, and trade unionists. Tales of protests and fight-backs against oppression, and the daily battles of ordinary people. https://nickgerrardauthor.wixsite.com/books

Fourth of July on the Clarion River by Greg Clary

There was a time when 

 anchoring in the cove
and watching the town’s fireworks display,

while crowded stem to stern,
drinking and socializing
as darkness approached,

was as traditional
on the Fourth of July
as chilled strawberry pretzel salad.

Not this year.
Having drunks whiz fire flowers
across my bow,

listening to Luke Bryan 
blare bro-country
from a dozen ski boats

with young dudes pissing,
old women flashing, and 
freaked out lap-dogs barking

through the flash-bangs, 
arid smoke, and
the bottle rockets’ red glare

was more than my
post-pandemic self
could abide.

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle do or die.
Red-headed nephew of my Uncle Sam

Born on the Fourth of July.

Greg Clary is Professor Emeritus of Rehab and Human Services at Clarion University, Clarion Pa. His poems have appeared in The Watershed Journal and North/South Appalachia.

His photographs have been published in The Sun Magazine, Looking at Appalachia, and The Watershed Journal.

He resides in Sligo, Pennsylvania and is a Son of Turkey Creek, West Virginia

Not a Hero by Rick Christiansen

My father was past 80 when he finally began to tell us about the war.
It was his first war, when he was only 20. 
He served during three conflicts.
But it was that first war that marked him.

It started when we found the box of his medals and 
we told him that he was a hero.
He became angry.  He rejected the label with scorn.  
He told us…

That he knew heroic men.  
But that he was not one of them.  
He said…

First you get scared and you stay scared. 
You are frightened for so long and so relentlessly.

That you get angry and you stay angry. 
You are angry for so long and so relentlessly.

That you get stupid.  
You start to take risks.  
You do crazy things that you would never have imagined.

And if those crazy things don’t get you killed, 
well then, they give you medals.

But it was all just because you were afraid.  
And you didn’t want to be there.
You could not believe that you WERE there.  
How the hell did it happen?

You were pissed at yourself, and the enemy, and your mission,
and the cold, and the dirt and the bullets, and the goddam army!

He said the good war movies got a lot of it right.  
At least the newer ones.
But he said they couldn’t get at his deepest memory of it all.

The smell.
He told us of the smell of his own skin 
and of the men around him in the foxholes.

Once they had a break.  
The Major told them to put the torn and worn  uniforms that they had been
wearing for months into a pile.  
A gigantic pile of filthy fabric. 
And they doused it with kerosene to burn the stench and the lice.  
And they all got cold showers.  
And fresh uniforms were on the way.  

But the new uniforms never got there.  
Each man had to pick through the pile of kerosene soaked garments.
Trying to find something close to the right size.  
With correct rank and insignia.
  
He said he spent two more months in another man’s clothes. 
And that it took a week before the stink was his own again, 
even through the stench of kerosene.  
But they were grateful.
At least the fuel killed the lice.

He said the cold that winter was worse than the artillery.  
The shells came in waves.  
There were lulls and valleys in the action.  
But the cold was constant.
  
He said you got worried if it stopped hurting.  
That meant the cold was winning.  
So you would shake and stomp to bring back the pain 
that told you that you were still alive.

And then he showed us his three belly buttons from the bullet wounds.
But this time he wasn’t being silly like every time before.
This time he was in earnest.  
For the first time he was bearing witness.
It wasn’t a punchline anymore.

He told us all of these things almost quietly.  
Quickly, and with an embarrassment bordering on shame.
But also some stubborn pride.  
He just wanted us to know.

That he was not a hero.
You see.

Rick Christiansen has been a stand-up comic, an actor, director of the improvisational comedy group, The Underground, and a corporate executive.  His work can be found in the archives of Oddball Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review and other publications. He has poems forthcoming in Dumpster Fire Press and his poem “Killing Bob Dylan” has been selected for a Fall 2021 anthology by Alien Buddha Press. He is a member of the St. Louis Writers Guild. Rick lives in Missouri near his eight grandchildren and with his basset hound Annie. 

 

THE PHILOSOPHER WITH HAIRY LEGS by MICHAEL MINASSIAN’

When the door to the bar opened,
a fly snuck in, circling lazily.

Later, he landed on the bottles
behind the bar, pausing to check

his reflection in the mirror,
rubbing hairy legs together.

I watched the slow parade of evolution
stuck in a pretense of thought —

unable to speak, lacking teeth, 
possessing a tongue shaped like a straw,

he grew tired of his own reflection, 
buzzing twice past my ear

on his way out the door—
An open mind, philosophers say, 

is a virtue as long as we
don’t open it too wide,

letting in every bad idea—
rationality a better filter

than whatever compels 
a fly to stumble indoors.

MICHAEL MINASSIAN’s is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His chapbooks include poetry: The Arboriculturist and photography: Around the Bend. His poetry collections, Time is Not a River and Morning Calm are both available on Amazon. His poetry manuscript A Matter of Timing won the 2020 Poetry Society of Texas’ Manuscript Contest. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

Something Unforgettable by Damon Freed

At MO Psych Center there were windows
with steel grates on the outside so no one could
jump or get a clean view. About five stories up
would do the trick but I had no notion of it there,
it was all too interesting. 

I mean on the backstreets of Brooklyn you see all 
destitute types, and in art school it’s really the same. 
You’re surrounded by human beings all having 
profound insecurities and egos the size of Jupiter.

But the ward is where it all already happened. 
That’s where the broken soldiers really went to rest.
Mental slips and suicide attempts gone awry showed 
up there in obvious fashion. 

A middle aged lady scarred by her own hand from 
head to toe, leathery skin, and 80’s rocker hair 
all up in loose hardened hair sprayed curls was my
friend. She was so happy she almost managed it! 

She said, “Boy, this time I almost pulled it off. They 
had to bring me back, but boy, I know I was a goner 
for at least 10 minutes, that’s what the doc said.” 

I could tell it took her years to build up the strength 
to get that far, or I suppose, the lack of strength to fall
that low. But I tell you, she seemed happy about it, 
genuinely happy. I think some people are just like that, 
death makes them grin. Me, well, I’m like most of us, 
somewhere caught in the middle. 

And it’s no bullshit her name was Joy, and I never 
knew a girl by that name before. And as it was, she 
elicited true happiness in me when she told her story. 
Of course, I was fearful, but, the purity of her laughter
in the face of death said something unforgettable 
about strength. I recall her neck all stitched up from 
ear to ear. I think I loved her.

I am an artist who cherishes balance, reason, and ambiguity; and I express it through a variety of working methods, from abstracted realities to nonobjective paintings of grids, I believe reality exists on the edge of perception. And while my Dad has been my best and greatest influence Agnes Martin and Brice Marden’s work are among them. 

I received my B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York City where I graduated with honors. Freed taught at two places for 10 years at the college level. His first year was in ’09. His M.F.A. is from Hunter College, City University of New York. Freed has studied with such luminaries as Jack Whitten, Marilyn Minter, David Chow, Juan Sanchez, Sanford Wurmfeld, Tobi Kahn, Lucio Pozzi, Tim Rollins, Alice Aycock, Susan Crile, Anton van Dalen, Suzanne Anker, Donald Kuspit, and Katy Siegel among others. He has been exhibited in galleries in New York City, Saint Louis, Kansas City and Columbia, Missouri. 

In writing, my influences are my mom and dad, sister and brothers, and friends, mostly. My inspirations are my family and dearest friends, and the people I meet in every direction! Freed has not been formally trained in poetry but is an avid writer of works and spoken word. He has nine books of poetry published by himself. 

You may find his collections of poetry in the Sedalia Public Library as well. 

Freed may be reached at damonfreed@gmail.com or by going to his website online.