A Quintet of Champions by Dan Provost

Five of us
sitting at the bar.

Day after day.
Year after year.

No one knew
each other’s name

Just a glance or a token
word of acknowledgement

“What’s Up” we
all said…

As one of us
stumbled in from the
cold.

No buttons
to push or
an axe to grind
with a soiled co-worker.

Just this gang
of nobodies.

On human maintenance
stools, searching
for discounted utopia.

Somewhere…
Nowhere…

When one rummy
breaks the silence
of the TV…

“Patience is a virtue
that is overrated.”

We all turn around
and nod towards
the philosophical nomad.

I tip my 2004
Boston Red Sox
Championship hat.

Someone says “hmm…”

Another softly pounds
his beer in cheap applause…

Others say nothing…

As I…we go back
to another hour
of pitiful stares…

A reflective moment
for the isolated mutants…
Now gone…

Lights dimmed…
Juke box busted…
An old cigarette machine
collecting dust in the corner

Amped and stilled
…towards
a death…that
just didn’t know
any better…to
avoid the Christmas rush.

  Dan Provost has been published throughout the small press for many years.  He is the author of nine books and lives in Berlin, New Hampshire with his wife Laura.

The Babe Cave by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

We get lost
following the GPS
and end up in beautiful
downtown Soo
Michigan.

It is the middle of the day
and everyone seems to be
stumbling around out of work.

Driving past that ugly Tower of History
that means nothing
across from the city hall,
we pull over along the side of the road
and wait for the GPS to recalibrate.

Some bum stopping to puke
over the back hood of a some jalopy
with shrink wrap windows
three cars in front of us.

Everything down to a single lane
outside the public courthouse.

Seems the justice system is busy.
Many females in black bubble jackets
standing out front
flicking smokes at one another.

And there we are,
with a new found direction.

Speeding through the back streets,
we slow down for some radar gun Nazi
waiting for anything through
a school zone.

As though he’s been waiting over two years
for 50 in a 45.
The slightest infraction.
To really drop the hammer on Valhalla.
Prove his manhood beyond
a reasonable doubt.

But we slow when we should slow.
Rightly assume the locals are crazed
with the threat of foreign invasion.

Working our way back to the I75 North,
we pass the only strip club in town.

The Babe Cave
with a sign that reads:
Topless Dancers Every Night.

Wanna stop off at the Babe Cave?
I ask my wife.
Sounds like a happening place.

She laughs
and keeps on driving
all the way back to the
Canadian border.

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, Under The Bleachers, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.

Bridge Player’s Saturday by Tobi Alfier

Lemonade ice cubes and a four-pour
of gin, sprig of mint in a rocks glass—
the fifties housewives’ mojito.

Maisie shelled peas on the porch,
could tell by the bridge ladies laughter
when it was time for refills.

It was a volume thing, shrill hyenas
that drove her dad to the pier,
a custom rod and two coolers…

fish in, Budweiser guzzled. She’ll help later
when neither of them could
handle a sharp knife for gutting.

Dear Lord, she loved them both
like cats under the birdbath
but stab her now if this would be her life.

A wholesome small-town Saturday noon.
Maisie’s highlight the mail delivery—
catalogs, college applications,

and fancy ice cube trays in coded
colors to match every reason
in the world to get out of this place.

 Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. Both “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” and a reprint of “Sanity Among the Wildflowers” were published by Cholla Needles Press. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com)

A BARTENDER’S DUTY by Brian Rihlmann

After several knocks
I opened the stall door
and there she sat,
folded in half and snoring,
head on her knees,
jeans and panties
pulled down to her ankles,
oblivious to the gift
her boyfriend had left
after unsuccessfully trying
to wake her:

a single red rose
in a vase at her feet.

From behind the bar
I'd seen her stagger
into the bathroom.
He'd run to the store
after asking if I'd watch her
while he was gone.

She was a working girl
he'd rescued from one of the brothels,
and they were getting married soon,
but he was uncertain...

He'd returned proudly
with the flower,
asked where she was,
and I pointed.

A few minutes later
he'd walked out,
said she'll probably
come around soon,
tell her I'm at that bar
across the street.

He'd gone out the door,
and here I stood,
in a women's bathroom stall,
me and the shadow
between her thighs,
and the rose,
and several petals
it had dropped
on the dirty tile floor.

I sighed, bent down,
picked up the vase
with one hand,
touched her shoulder
with the other,
and gently shook her
until she stirred

Brian Rihlmann was born in NJ, and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi autobiographical, confessional free verse, much of it on the so-called "grittier" side.  Folk poetry...for folks.  He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal Of Poetry.

315 HIGH STREET. By Chani Zwibel

Was a move up for us, 

out of the hollow

 and into a housing plan. 

Land there once made up Mom’s ancestral inheritance, 

once Howell Farm, when owned by Colonel Phillip

 who fought in the American Revolution.

  Thus, the hilly area of cul-de-sacs 

and cutesy street names like Dennis and Nancy 

was called Howell Plan; 

The Howell Brothers pieced up

 the family farm 

to build houses

 after the boys came home 

from WWII (The Big One).

The building boom was on,

 and they needed to settle down with their wives

 and have babies 

to send to school at Elizabeth Forward High.

I was 13 going on 14,

 and angry often, depressed more, 

but left alone found diversion. 

Rode my bicycle around the block, 

suburbia’s grey-green lattice, 

noticing trees with rounded tufts

 like fuzzy pigtail buns on a Dr. Seuss-like creature,

those weird trees were portals

 to an illustrated world just next door to this one.

Imagination a-fire, I pedaled,

 the vaguely sweet, like iced tea, earthy blend

 of cut-grass and pool chlorine, 

summer in the haze rising off the pavement, 

summer in the blue shimmer of distant mountains, 

viewed from our new back porch, 

summer in the fabric of the wide-leg, cut-off jean shorts 

covering skinny, tanned, young legs.

Chani Zwibel is the author of Cave Dreams to Star Portals. She is an associate editor with Madness Muse Press. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College, who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now dwells in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband and their dog. She co-hosts an open mic night called Poetry and Palette once a month at The Good Acting Studio in Marietta.

WHERE I'LL SPEND MY WINTER by Bradford Middleton

I sit here cold as winter draws in close
Mid November and the promise that from here
It'll just grow worse and worse
Until that horrible moment when I'll have
To quit the bars of this town just to keep
My little room warm.

But then again in my mind pubs are always
So much warmer than the cold confines of this
Damn little room.  With their roaring fires
And the occasional beauty to get you hot under
The collar I think I just worked out
Where I will spend my winter, at least
Until all the money has gone.

 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. 

The Crazy Lady in Turquoise by Julie Eger

Watches the man play his guitar,

his fingers dancing through the smoke,

hers along the edge of her thigh.

She knows the words to all his songs.

She knows the words and sings along.

She sits alone in this bar

that resembles a ship

with its starboard and port,

taffrail and helm.

It’s the first time

she’s been her in fifteen years.

Stout, pale ale, barley malt, 

candle in a red glass.

Reflection in the window

indicates the EXIT is outside.

Who would have thought?

She spies: trees like palms,

FIB’s in fine tailored suits,

a gay couple, lonely girl,

another round, her ex…

amidships where she saw him last.

She knows this is the Titanic

and that ship did sail long ago.

A three-time winner of the Wisconsin Regional Writer’s Jade Ring, Julie Eger’s work appears in Fictive Dream, Flash Fiction for Flash Memory, Runcible Spoon, Fifty Word Stories, the Cadence Poetry Anthology, Inner Circle Writers’ Magazine, Your Daily Poem, Spillwords and Potato Soup Journal. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and a black Golden Doodle. You can connect with Julie at https://julieceger.wordpress.com/.