In Heaven There Is No Last Call by Paul Corman-Roberts

Everybody wants to go on tour with Orpheus

but only three lottery winners get chosen

& to be honest, it’s slave labor

all the way up to the beheading

still, it’s incredible 

what people are willing

to put themselves through

for open-source exposure:

if you don’t bond with someone on your road trip

you must prepare to drift from them forever more

last night’s footnotes kicked down the ditch 

never to be found in the light 

of mourning

of coping/processing/fixing/maintaining/ 

of leap back eye fucks

the grinder/the maker/the faucet/the car/

the life/no list in sight

the phone rings.

the tour is over 

everyone quietly asks

for the cash out line

but refuse to say

where they think it might be.

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the full-length poetry collection Bone Moon Palace from Nomadic Press (2021.) An original founder and organizer of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival he currently teaches for the Oakland Unified School District

Simpatico by Keith Pearson

“I see something moving in the trees across the river…” Brandon Shimoda “Rest House”

1

Does it matter if that poem is truth? I ran that cat over so many times nobody would know his face. Or what he said forty years ago that has stuck in my head all this time. Or why today was the day I finally had to let it out then polish it for hours like some ancient gem, or a golden turd. 

2

Go kneel by a clear stream and thank your makers for another day. Nobody truly wants to die, especially the dead. You may think of it as upstream, but it is really the past. Those whispers you hear are really the echo of those gone before urging you on. ‘Keep going, keep going. It’s okay to drink the water here.’

3

Three locals thought enough of him to kick him in the stomach and not the face. They did it over and over until they got it just right, then, satisfied with their work, cracked open their last can of Pabst and poured it over his dirty face. No beer ever tasted so sweet. 

4

He told me when he was dying how he would dream of his death, that it was like a motorcycle ride on a straight desert road but in slow motion, slowing gently until he could no longer feel himself move, as if death had come for him like a hand reached down from heaven, how even the wind stopped, and it no longer felt like a dream.

5

I am old enough to wonder what terrible things will haunt me in my final dreams, what I will throw curses at in that dying light, as I saw my father and his father before him do. I hope I have been good enough to merely dream of reaching for an apple high in some great tree and just out of reach, but I doubt it.

6

Flowers bloom, then after you have forgotten how beautiful they were, the petals fall away at your slightest touch. ’Kind of like love’ she says. No, nothing like love at all, with love, time freezes when I touch the dying petals, or maybe that’s just me. I see no reason to piss in the garden, so I smile and nod and simply turn away.

7

I want to sleep in the pines tonight. Just carry me out in an old wagon, wheels creaking, in the day’s dying light. Any place out there will do. The bugs won’t matter.

“How many lives do you think a man can live… how many lives within this one?” Sam Shepard, Simpatico

8

He told me about a dream he had, stranded on a spit of soft sand slowly disappearing under rising water, and how no matter what direction he searched, there was no sign of land, nothing but only the dark roiling water, and how it all reminded him of some old blues song and in the dream he began to sing, not much more than a moan at first, then singing and singing louder, and somehow he knew it would be alright, he would be okay, and how when he woke how pissed he was he could not remember the song, not even the slightest bit of it. 

9

I spooked a rattlesnake in a cemetery in Burns, Wyoming, ran through the tall grass to the car and locked the door, as though to keep out my fear. Later that day I went into a rundown diner in a town in western Nebraska, a town so derelict Town Hall was in a burned out Sinclair station, and saw silent folks eating their mac and cheese and fish sticks, their faces gray and empty, and understood in that moment how I would rather live among the dangerous snakes in the world than among the dead, or those merely waiting to die.

10

How does light translate into language? What is the color of innocence? If life was fiction I’d be at the window half-cocked and screaming, about baseball, or the government. Instead I am watching a young boy nibble at a bagel, maybe his first, and wonder what it feels like to have a whole world ahead on the distant horizon. The mountains I see in the distance are bathed in a purple light and only a day’s walk ahead, or so it feels on this hot June afternoon.

11

There are fireworks tonight down the grove and I am alone here with these words, pieces I have stolen from dreams. One of the cats rests in the open window sill and stares at me as though I am to blame. Perchance I am. This world is of my creation, folded and blended and honed into something real, or as real as something from a boy’s dream. The fireworks cease and the cat curls herself at my side, and soon the words stop as well, and there is only the purr of the sleeping cat and the beat of my own heart in the silent night.

Epilog

Of this I am certain. Even when we lived in caves and slept beneath freshly killed animal skins, when fire was only something a thousand years in our future, still we dreamt of flying, and held our last breath until we couldn’t, praying it all ended in song.

 Keith Pearson

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

Ecstasy by Anissa Sboui

I see your hands
Touching my hair
My breast is thirsty
Your lips are ready
Hovering over the Milky Way
You are my star, moving
Backward position
We are born
Drink, I said, but I beseech You
Be there

Ignite my lust
I am on fire
Desire engrosses me.
Goosebumps enthrall me
Sighs surmount our agony
The embrace does cure all pangs
The gallant flame
Creeps to illuminate
The inevitable sparks
Of our angelic faces
By this glimmer
Your ivory tower is devastated
Shadowed for good
My shell is wide enough
To contain you
I am Your pearl
I am no more at strife
Amidst arms, we are
Shivering, trembling, vibrating
In mutual harmony.
Ecstatic moments for our body
United we are born,

Yielding to be happy

Undoubtedly

To love is to be or not to be…

A University teacher and poet from A University teacher and poet from Sousse, Tunisia

-The writer of 5 volumes: Transcend (2018), Rebirth (2019) and Number One (2020), The Co-Avid Breath (2021) and Hurricane (2022) and 2 books of poetry in Arabic. 

- Her poems featured in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, The Writers’ Club, Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, Dumpster Fire Press, Medusa’s Kitchen, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Annual by the Elizabeth River Writers, Valiant Scribe, Potato Soup Journal.-The writer of 5 volumes: Transcend (2018), Rebirth (2019) and Number One (2020), The Co-Avid Breath (2021) and Hurricane (2022) and 2 books of poetry in Arabic. 

- Her poems featured in Writing in a Woman’s Voice, The Writers’ Club, Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, Dumpster Fire Press, Medusa’s Kitchen, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Annual by the Elizabeth River Writers, Valiant Scribe, Potato Soup Journal.

Real Diamonds in the Rough by Brenton Booth

We were unpublished and thin and mad

we slept of a day and didn’t care where 

we worked as long as we weren’t there 

much and had enough for a room dark 

enough to hide away

we kept the blinds closed day and night 

the windows didn’t open but we never

asked the landlord to fix them

we sent stories of suicide, depression, and

undiscovered answers to The Atlantic and 

the editor always sent the same form rejection

except for one time when he gave us his 

private address to send future submissions

and we never sent him again

we ate hot dogs for dinner and had small

fridges without freezers filled with cans of

the cheapest whiskey and drawers with pills 

and powder hidden in torn envelopes

we dressed differently and talked differently

and rarely fucked 

but when we did it was always differently

we didn’t have a television that worked and

threw all the magazines and best-sellers

away

surviving on Dost and Nietzsche and beautiful

Miller tramping the streets

we hated the beautiful and laughed at the wealthy

and knew morality was just another word for

loss

we lived in the red-light district and were 

familiar with the face of every bar, whore, and bum

and they were with ours

we never had any money

we knew our parent’s inferior

we sat for hours and hours gazing

at the burning sun

we were failures

we were the best

we would

ever

be.

Brenton Booth Lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in Chiron Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Van Gogh's Ear, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press. brentonbooth.weebly.com

Drinking and Dancing in Byron Bay By Stephen House

I rarely hit the booze now days. It interferes too much with the day to follow. My morning yoga and beach swim suffers. If I’m rehearsing or performing theatre, the shine dims and pace falls away. It’s an effort to write. And hangovers are horrendous at this age. Why bother?

I’m in Byron Bay right now, visiting my son where he’s living and working. Having a great time, and happy to see him again, after travel was halted for so long by covid. The other night we went out to the pub and had a few beers with some of his mates; laughs, chats, and bar-time fun. He left before me because of an early work start. 

I was ticking over after the drinks, thinking of leaving, and then a fantastic band came on, playing mostly seventies and eighties hits. The place started rocking with everyone dancing wherever they stood. And all ages were into it, from eighteen to eighty I can say. I haven’t seen that for a long time; maybe it’s normal in Byron Bay. I haven’t danced for a long time either.

Another schooner knocked back, and the crowd moving all around me, and a couple about my age who I’d been chatting to at the table next to mine pulled me up as a song by “The Doors” washed over us, and I was up dancing and getting into it, like I use to do so often in younger days.  

Someone asked me a while ago, “What’s one of the things you miss as you get older?” And I said, dancing. And I meant it. I do miss the freedom of going out drinking and getting on the dance floor, and not caring about anything else. And being sixty-two years old, it just doesn’t happen now. I’m rarely in dancing situations.

I took a break and sat for a while as the Byron Bay band played on; and three young surfers walked up to me with a full pint of beer and passed it to me. “Here you are dude, have a drink on us,” one guy said. “We loved watching you dance buddy,” his friend added, “You were going off big time! It was awesome!” I laughed and thanked them for the drink. We high-fived, and they took off.

As I left the pub later in the night the couple who had been sitting near me earlier, and who shared some dance floor fun with me were leaving too. “Hey, see you here next Friday,” the guy said. “Maybe you will,” I replied. And I had a strong inkling that they would.

 

Walking home smiling to myself, I didn’t care about next day consequences from the night out; if my yoga and beach swim suffered or were missed, if I skipped the rehearsal I’d planned to do on a quiet beach in the morning for my upcoming show, or if the hangover to come was a shocker. 

The freedom and fun shared with others back there in the bar would make up for anything I’d have to deal with. I’d had a terrific time drinking and dancing in Byron Bay, making a few new friends and having some laughs. Like the surfers who bought me the complimentary beer said, I was going off big time, and yes, it was awesome. 

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright and actor, including two Awgie Awards from The Australian Writer’s Guild, Rhonda Jancovic Poetry Award for Social Justice, an Adelaide Fringe Award, and The Goolwa Poetry Cup, and nominations including, a Greenroom Best Actor Award, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, Patrick White Playwright Award and Queensland Premier’s Drama Award. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts and an Asia-link India residency. His chapbook “real and unreal” was published by ICOE Press. His next book is out soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

The Bubble by Peter Mladinic

The bubble in the shield of my iPhone 

is flat, silver as spittle,

shaped like candy wax soda bottles 

sold in the 1950s, a bottle you’d eat

not drink from, pure sugar parents 

let their kids to buy. 

Some got allowances, lucky brats!

That laminate bubble bothered me 

but now it’s just part of my life, 

unlike my parents, both dead before data 

was stored in the cloud. Bluetooth:

That the Everly Brothers’ “Birddog” 

comes through my sunglasses

would thrill them. They’d be amazed.

On walkie-talkie banana portables 

with antennas God told them: 

Your day is coming. Phil and Don sang 

“Wake Up, Little Susie.” One night

I lost it, with a brick cracked my Sony 

46 inch screen which I then had to dump.

Today I hear my mother, 

“Bet you’ll never do that again!”  

I remember rainbow colors,

wax soda bottles I broke my teeth.

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.

An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.

 

woman as bedsore, trampled by violets by Tanya Rakh

now you see her

now you taste

everything as ash

she says mauve

she says thunder

you stay a kettle on

an electric memory

my heart is not rotten

I know because it looks

just like yours

Tanya Rakh was born on the outskirts of time and space in a cardboard box. After extensive planet-hopping, she currently makes her home near Houston, Texas where she writes poetry, surrealist prose, and cross-genre amalgamations. Her writing has appeared in numerous journals including The Gasconade Review, Redshift 4, Literary Orphans, Fearless, Yes, Poetry, and The Rye Whiskey Review. Tanya is the author of two books: Hydrogen Sofi and Wildflower Hell, new editions of both available from Posthuman Poetry & Prose.