The Crow's Nest by Barbara A Meier

The Crow's Nest, 

where the alcohol swirls 

in glass orbs of LSD glass

where the anger melts and drips 

down the sides and laughter 

creases the vinyl stools.

Buck up to the bar, boys. 

The women play Keno and speak 

of spanking butts and the men laugh 

at spiders the size of fists.  The ocean

plays a tune outside the bar window

where the smell of grass permeates the parking lot. 

The  sadness in the silliness of a beer.

 Barbara A Meier teaches kindergarten in Gold Beach, OR. This is her last year though because she no longer wants to be a child tamer. She has to self medicate too much. She has been published in The Poeming Pigeon, Cacti Fur, TL;DR Press Women’s Anthology, Bangor Literary Review, Sum, and Founder’s Favorites. She has a micro-chapbook coming out this summer from Ghost City Press, Wildfire LAL 6.

Drunk all the time by Michael Estabrook

Fascinated I watched Barfly
the movie about the young
Charles Bukowski living
in his rotted underwear in squalid
boardinghouse rooms infested
with cockroaches or sleeping
it off in the gutter or behind some
damn dumpster drunk all
the time, writing stories and poetic
murmurings when he could see
long enough through the clouds
of his wretched existence.
And I wondered as I watched how
anyone could live like that in
the world but not in the world,
bruised and coughing, underfed,
smoking, drunk all the time,
wondered how anyone could
live like that and still
be such a great poet. And after
the movie (damn me damn me!)
I found myself rummaging
like a demented bear through
the kitchen cabinets and shelves
hoping to find an overlooked
bottle of wine or
some cooking sherry.

Michael Estabrook small press poet since the 1980s striving always for greater clarity and concision rendering language more succinct and precise more accessible and appealing a Sisyphean adventure for sure. Retired now writing more and working more outside just noticed two Cooper’s hawks staked out in the yard or rather above it which explains the nerve-wracked chipmunks. The Poet’s Curse, A Miscellany is a recent collection (The Poetry Box, 2019).

The Pipe by Brian Gore

    Where is my pipe?
I shall not have a night without it. Who then has failed me?

A foot drags slowly behind the chair
of the Confident, yet, no pipe arrives.
     It was his last, last anyone saw it,
  so while his foot slowly slides behind the chair
his head falls cumbersomely upon the table.

A pipe is placed on the kitchen counter, but
    the master is asleep. Brian takes the pipe out for a smoke.
He peers down through the fog toward the alligator swamp
    thinking of nothing.
    He is warm, the smoke billows upward, and his mind seeps
into the slurpy bog beneath him.
Brian finishes his contemplation, damps out the pipe, and then walks it to
    his master’s table who never knew it was not in his mouth.

BrianSGore is a writer of short stories, poems, and songs. He has published several collections of original works including Barstool Ballads, Eleven Stories for Short … Attentions, and Tangled World, as well as coordinating a collaborative project entitled A Collection of Poems by Various Poets Regarding the Line '10,000 Miles of Farewell’. His newest book, Drawn Thread, is now available, along with his new album Going, Never Stopping, at briangoing.bandcamp.com. 

A WEEKEND LOST TO THE MADNESS. by Bradford Middleton

The weekend was destroyed by the time
It had started, a bottle of port, some beer
A bit of tequila and the ubiquitous smoke
Before I’d even really begun.  Old faces
Returned and bad habits came calling again
And the many many times I’ve said NO
In all the previous years this Saturday
Afternoon I got the baddest of urges again.


Up it went
And out I went
Out of my mind
Crawling the walls of the pub as time disappears
Gripped by madness
I plunge in elation

As it takes hold
Numbing, ever so temporarily, my worries
My problems
As still the
Drink and smoke
Continued to offer their assistance in getting me
Out of my mind
Afternoon became
Evening and still it
Went on but I have no idea until when!


The Sunday came and with it
9 hours of checkout action
A day battling the nausea
A day dealing with my middle-class wine drinkers
Who’d have no idea of what
It is I’m going through until
That moment, that sweet beautiful
Moment, 10:59pm, finally came
Around and I dropped to my knees
Delirious at last it was over.


Today, at last, is Monday or at least
It was until about 8 minutes ago and
This morning I woke and felt still a
Little bit shaky,
A little unsteady
But again there it was; another 9
Hours at work
And again by the
End I felt mostly better
Bit jittery but nothing
One big last smoke won’t cure…

 Bradford Middleton was born in south-east London during the summer of 1971 and won his first poetry prize at the age of nine.  He then gave up writing poems for nearly twenty-five years and it wasn't until he landed in Brighton, knowing no one and having no money, that he began again.  Ten years later and he's been lucky enough to have had a few chapbooks published including a new one from Analog Submission Press entitled 'Flying through this Life like a Bottle Battling Gravity', his debut from Crisis Chronicles Press (Ohio, USA) and his second effort for Holy & Intoxicated Press (Hastings, UK).  He has read around the UK at various bars, venues and festivals and is always keen to get out and read to new crowds.  His poetry has also been or will be published shortly in the Chiron Review, Zygote in my Coffee, Section 8, Razur Cuts, Paper & Ink, Grandma Moses 'Poet to Notice', Empty Mirror, Midnight Lane Gallery, Bareback Lit and is a Contributing Poet over at the wonderful Mad Swirl.  If you like what you've read go send a friend request on facebook to bradfordmiddleton1. 

Boulevard Louis II by John Doyle

If I ever made Monte Carlo

I swore I'd start upright piano-scored

bar fights

where men never bled,

then a colonial-sigh on arrival

from the Roger Delgado sacre bleu chief of police.

I've made Monte Carlo -

dawn captured me

shortly after moonlight burned to a crisp

and rarely-seen formations of cloud

aided its grappling hold.

There are no phallic miscreants in light-speed cars,

though the sky has become a lashed messianic-corpse -

I ask the vapor trails to lead me to Christ

 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. 

You ain’t no window, babe, but won’t you shut it? by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

I don’t care if Ivan can’t get it up
and Lily is looking elsewhere
and Carmen saw Lolita for the first time
and left her husband
and Desmond is a sloppy kisser
and Peter was in a wreck last week
refusing physio because he thinks it’s witchcraft
or that May blames her parents for getting lazy
and just naming her after a month instead of a real name
and how Sam needs root canal
and that Tiesha is stockpiling water for a race war
that will never come
and that Bryan told you most of this in the strictest
confidence
or that no one has any confidence
especially Tony who signed up for self-defence
in the evenings to meet girls
and Marsha who won’t see a shrink because
that means she has problems
or Terry who keeps buying used cars
even though they fail him
and Anastasia who believes herself a princess
and not a dollar store cashier
who can’t pleasure herself
or how Crystal roams the streets in sleepless black hoodies
because of insomnia 
and that Mario has started a squirrel sanctuary
because his mother died
and how Dale keeps calling and hanging up
and Don breathes heavily into the other side of the phone
when he thinks I am you because you gave him a dandy handy once
in his cousin’s Nissan Altima
and how Clare can’t stop painting pictures of flowers
instead of Vaginas because she can’t quite get there
and that time when Randy took the bus so far
the driver just told him to get out
and how your mother hates me for existing
and you only hate me the rest of the time
and all the other people or places or idiocies I may have left out
because I stopped listening a long time ago.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, The Rye Whiskey Review, Outlaw Poetry Network, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.

 

Whiskey Thrift by Ben Nardolilli

Have I spent my money wisely?
I guess that depends on your definition,
And better yet, on my own,
I have spent it knowingly, even drunk,
And even when drunk I get to see
Where it all goes in the morning
When the online account
Processes my procession of funds,
Ripe and withdrawn only after a swipe,
I guess I’m not fooled
By the newest thing, everything I buy
Is old, used, or else aged
In fine wooden casks for several years,
Barrels of burnt hickory and oak,
Whose ancient dark confines
I try to replicate within me,
As I move every dram of fire water
From those old chambers
To my gullet, prematurely aged

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Inwood Indiana, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel.