[ i've canceled prior appointments before ] by john compton

the gas coddles me
like we've been lovers 
and it is affectionate 
kissing what little body 
i am willing to offer 
but it tends
to that small area of flesh
like it is infinite 
and all of me. 

i want to die
but it is too kind
and tells me not today,
today you must live.

john compton (b. 1987) is gay poet who lives in kentucky. his poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. he lives in a tiny town, with his husband josh and their 14 dogs and 3 cats. he feels his head is an auditorium filled with the dead poets from the past. poems are written and edited constantly. his poetry is a personal journey. he reaches for things close and far, trying to give them life: growing up gay; having mental health issues; a journey into his childhood; the world that surrounds us. he writes to be alive, to learn and to grow. he loves imagery, metaphor, simile, abstract language, sounds, when one word can drift you into another direction. he loves playing with vocabulary, creating texture and emotions. he has published 1 book and 6 chapbooks published and forthcoming: trainride elsewhere (august 2016) from Pressed Wafer; that moan like a saxophone (december 2016) from kindle; ampersand (march 2019) from Plan B Press; a child growing wild inside the mothering womb (june 2020) from ghost city press; i saw god cooking children / paint their bones (oct 2020) from blood pudding press; to wash all the pretty things off my skin (september 2021) from ethel zine & micro-press. he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

Pretty in Pink by John Doyle

I'm standing all alone
Dennis Wilson tells me for the 19th time since 1978,
Bray, County Wicklow
 
asking grifters like me to send its ashes home to France;
two men on bikes at Cassoni's remark
how boring trains look these days 
 
as I hold Bray's ashes, as rain delays itself, graciously.
Listening to Frank Furillo save J.D. LaRue’s soul on Youtube
I call one half of team Raleigh to come collect his chips,
 
the other mutters that his brother's wife's a cunt - I think that’s his brother
briefly becoming my shadow,
nightfall nude as someone's baby five doors down -
 
taking their first bath, pink and safe, chuckling.
France isn't stamped on this horizon -
not yet - be patient my child, all beauty fuses us as one,

then leaves us standing - all alone

26th July, 2021, approaching 9 p.m.

 John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch.

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.

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)