Looking Back at First World Behavior in the Apocalypse by Puma Perl

It was all about improvisation.

My shades fell down.
I tucked ruffled checked pillowcases
into the window sills.

A ghetto Scarlett O’Hara.

My left hearing aid broke.
I put the phone on speaker
and used ear buds.
The only one I talked 
to at length, three dimensionally,
was the dog.

A recluse at a younger age than planned.

I started to get used to masks.
It was hard to breathe 
and, glasses always fogging,
even harder to see.

I experimented with dish soap
and eye glass sprays,
left the house regularly
without them, and seemed to see
just as well as before.

Salons were closed;
I cut and dyed my hair,
tweezed my eyebrows,
filed my nails.

All that stuff I never did anyway,
back in the days of cutting real needs
into halves and quarters.

I burned out five car batteries
because I had no place to go.
My apartment walls are dingy
and my intercom rings at night.
The elevator’s always breaking
because the delivery guys 
block the doors on each side.
Amazon boxes line the hallways.
There are fewer deaths
and more arguments.

And it continues.
First world problems in the apocalypse.

Photo by Ellen Berman

Puma Perl is a poet and writer, with five solo collections in print. The most recent is Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque Books, 2019.) She is the producer/creator of Puma’s Pandemonium, which brings spoken word together with rock and roll, and she performs regularly with her band Puma Perl and Friends. She’s received three New York Press Association awards in recognition of her journalism, and is the recipient of the 2016 Acker Award in the category of writing.

Beer Hall Rule By Tim Heerdink

Catching a breath & a brew with Brewer
after a stretch of poetic rendezvous
in a state earning its name misery,
Hofbräuhaus welcomes us after 5.

Sitting in majestic hall
where many of drink
found their glorious end,
I ask my tour mate,
Half-liter or whole?

That’s an awful lot,
he says with uncertainty.

Off in the great place of Munich,
the rule to this day remains:
If you’re going to be in this hall
after 5 when the day draws long,
you better get yourself a grown man beer.

So, we clink, drink,
sink, & think
until forces call us
to come home.

Tim Heerdink is the author of Somniloquy & Trauma in the Knottseau Well, The Human Remains, Red Flag and Other Poems, Razed Monuments, Checking Tickets on Oumaumua, Sailing the Edge of Time, I Hear a Siren’s Call, Ghost Map, A Cacophony of Birds in the House of Dread, and short stories, The Tithing of Man and HEA-VEN2. His poems appear in various journals and anthologies. He is the President of Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana.

are you sure hank done it this way? By Keith Pearson

another cold back seat. shaking under old wool blankets. bad country roads. no seat belts then. hockey game on the radio. remembering a song he heard one time. blessed sleep. dreaming. the pain that comes with never waking up. maybe sometime after midnight. the way he did.

Keith Pearson

I live in southern New Hampshire and works with special ed students at a local high school.

A 47 Year Old Teenager by Brian Rihlmann

on my day off 
I sit here in my car at the park
where I’ve come to
get away from my
new roommate/ landlady/ ex-girlfriend/ friend
who’s turned out to be
a much bigger pain in the ass
than I’d ever imagined 
 
she works from home
and her computer sits right
by the front door so I
cannot come and go
without a certain scrutiny 
and there’s always some problem, lately—
I shit and my shit stinks
and I didn’t close the bathroom door 
and turn the fan on
or I parked wrong
and blocked the neighbor in
or she thinks I was too rough 
with her stupid, precious mutt 
because he’s agitated and
acting like a maniac (as usual....
but it must’ve been me)
or I snubbed the neighbor 
by not returning his hello
even though I truly didn’t hear it 
as I was preoccupied as usual
and now I’ve made 
a bad impression....
like I do by sitting on the front steps 
after work and picking the toe jam
out from between my toes
because my socks are black
and linty and I know that tracking it
through the house 
would also get me a talking to...
and would I mind vacuuming my room 
regularly? as the carpet’s brand new, and....
 
well, you get the picture 
 
I feel like a goddamn teenager here
but I guess that’s my own damn fault
for the way I’ve lived
for my hatred of responsibility 
for not buying a place of my own here
back in 2010....when I could’ve afforded it
for never going to college 
never choosing a career path
for being unwilling, now
to work 60-70 hours a week
like a good American slave
just to afford a one-bedroom apartment 
in this town
where I’d be able to sit around
with my balls hanging out
(and without the dog trying to lick them)
drinking beer and farting openly
a place I could bring home whores
to fuck on my second hand couch
or more likely (these days)
to watch porn in the living room 
on my big screen tv
with the volume up
instead of through headphones
on my laptop 
in my little 10x10 foot bedroom cell
 
maybe I’d even
get a cat, you know?
that grace they have...
maybe a little of that
would rub off on me
god knows
I could use it

Brian Rihlmann lives in Reno, Nevada. His work has appeared in many magazines, including The Rye Whiskey Review, Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal Of Poetry, and New York Quarterly. He has authored three collections of poetry, most recently “A Screaming Place,” (2021) by Cajun Mutt Press.

-

 

to be something By J.J. Campbell

 

another bottle

of scotch

coltrane bleeds

out of better

speakers now

you have reached

a time in your life

where you are

expected to be

something

for some damn 

reason

a drunk is never

good enough

J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) was raised by wolves yet managed to graduate high school with honors. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Synchronized Chaos, Dumpster Fire Press, Misfit Magazine, Terror House Magazine and Horror Sleaze Trash. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

In London during the War by Rick Christiansen

In London during the War—
The sound of dripping syrup methodically tapping a tattoo on the shelf below,
from a can of peaches pierced by bomb shrapnel 
while sitting on a London apartment shelf 
during the blitz.

In our plague year—
The sound of an ICU respirator 
wheezing to a stop 
after the code has been called.  
Time of death marked by the patient’s cell phone 
now unplugged and placed in the bag for her children.

This Plague year has changed us all.  
Time speeding up and slowing down to the rhythms of serotonin.  
Anxiety creating brilliant focused experience 
like a microscope being dialed in to the cellular level.  

 
They say that in London during the war, 
people felt more alive. 
The Spector of sudden death from the sky 
made them love faster, drink longer, fuck harder.

In our Plague year— 
We endure the Spector of slow death.  
Not from the sky, but from the air.

Droplets like shrapnel piercing the lungs/slowly stealing breath away.  
We only grow heavier.  
Eating and watching and hiding from the miasma.

They say that in London during the War, 
people died alone trapped in the wreckage of bombed buildings.  
In our Plague year— 
people die alone trapped in hospital beds.  
Tethered to machines instead of family.  
Each breath more shallow than the last, until the ragged sound stops.  

They say that in London during the War, 
each morning people would emerge blinking.  
Wearing masks against the dust and smoke.  
Marking the demise of another shop or restaurant to bomb or fire 
as they navigated the minimums of life.  

    Picking up a prescription.  
    Trying to find milk or toilet paper.  

Because children are still thirsty 
and we must shit until we die.  

Wandering for items that would fill the hole 
of uncertainty and named fear.  

The anonymity of masked travel.  
    Making the eyes do all of the work of the face.  
    Trying to connect through fabric and fear.  

In our Plague year—
It is the same.

They say that in London during the War,
 everyone pulled together.  
They had the connection of a shared enemy.  

In our Plague year—
we are denied that connection.  
False news and finger pointing make us misdirect our resolve
away from shared purpose. 
Toward disconnecting conspiracy and suspicion. 

They say that in London during the War,
Everyone became stronger.

In our Plague year—

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. 

 

Blue. By Cheryl Snell

 

Saxophone mutes the fog in his lungs, mouthpiece clamped to a kiss.

Brass throats on a crying jag throb behind him. His breath slides down a pitch, pinches it like a bleeder. 

The woman at the front table crosses 

her legs to show the rips in her stockings       

twitching like a cat’s tail. She loved     

somebody once, and knows what it means 

to be a smashed thing,  her best parts held  

to the spinning light  and appraised. 

The man squeezes his eyes and smokes  

blue notes, burring and buzzing his lip. 

All night, his train will run beside her bus.

Each one will stare into the shared dark, 

willing the next stop to look like home.

Cheryl Snell is a poet. Novelist. Pianist..An aficionado of old music and new art. Fluent in subtext.