TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY THROUGH A BOTTLE OF WILD TURKEY, MY NEIGHBOR SHARES A TALE OF WOE By David E. Poston

I felt like Ahab’s good leg, he says.

No matter how sturdy and dependable

I was, she never noticed.

To show her my undying love, 

I gave her a small hole 

wrapped in gold.

What could be sweeter,

than letting her 

break my heart again,

the way a surgeon might 

tenderly re-

break someone’s bone?

David E. Poston’s work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Ibbetson Street, Main Street Rag, and Reedy Branch Review. He is a frequent book reviewer for Pedestal and a co-editor of Kakalak. To anyone who has a tale of woe, he will offer Wild Turkey and sympathy.

CT Scan By Alyssa Trivett

Whirring is a sport now.

I talk to God as 

the dial on the machine

winds round my being

and play patty cake in place,

waiting for the results.

It starts, then ends.

They wheel me back to room 4, 

since it’s April the sixth the door chirps and birds

trolley hop cross the windowsill.

On Rickert, I always thought that was a strange

 name for a street. 

One of my high school friends lived 

a block and a half over and 

I’m sure the sunken basketball hoop 

crater is still there.

It may not matter though. 

Time flies on and the hours fall off the clock.

The nurse told me his first CT scan ever was when

 he got hit by a pitch in fourth grade, yet he doesn’t 

remember it.

Enter evening hours, it flips on

like an automated coffeemaker,

and I am free to automated door 

hiss breeze, thankfully.

And dive into the holiday weekend

with no loose thoughts,

and I listen to the trees,

even if just 

for a moment.

Alyssa Trivett is a wandering soul from the Midwest. When not working two jobs, she chirps down coffee while scrawling lines. Her work has appeared in many places, but most recently at Ex Ex Lit, and Duane's PoeTree site.

Honest Recall By S.A. Gerber

The question often arises: 

“What did you see in drink?” 

I gazed upon a  

clear, calm surface 

inviting total 

immersion. 

 

THEN— 

I saw all nations hugging in peace. 

A cessation all war and conflict. 

My worst invented enemy as misunderstood. 

No more hatred, racism, greed, organized religion, 

child, animal or spousal abuse. 

 

I heard sounds of rain, happy children, loving 

whispers, fulfilled promise. 

The voices of Billy Holiday, Ronne Gilbert 

singing to me and me alone. 

I heard Bach, Shubert, Mahler, Franck, Rossini 

creating a soundtrack for eternity. 

 

BUT SOMETIMES— 

I saw the cruelty and pettiness of man. 

Never ending wars and threats of war. 

No redemption for our species. 

What humans can descend too. 

The dark, bleak, pointlessness of life. 

 

I heard the groans and cries of hungry people. 

The warped agenda of twisted demagogues. 

People preaching the promises of G-ds in 

spite of hard tongues and hard hearts. 

The sound of our planet gasping a last breath. 

 

Never sure of which side I 

would land on, I jumped each 

day with both eyes opened wide. 

 

Without drink, still can see and hear 

both sides, just one has brightened, and 

and one has dimmed. (Flip a coin). 

 

S. A. Gerber is a native and resident again of Los Angeles, CA. after having spent  twenty-four years in a neighboring “city of sin” in the Silver State of Nevada.  

His work has appeared in such diverse publications as Desert Voices Magazine… Subtopian Magazine…Talking Sidewalks… Mad Swirl, (where he is a “contributing Poet”)… Sediment Literary and Arts Journal… Poetica Magazine… Black Heart Magazine… The Blue Collar Review…Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles… The Linden Avenue Literary Journal…The Poet’s Haven…Stray Light Literary Magazine… Literature in Los Angeles Magazine… Opiate Magazine… Pacific Poetry… Neologism Poetry Journal…The Lyric…Free Venice Beachhead… The Shot Glass Journal…,Dove Tales-“Empathy in Art: Embracing the Other”, Writing for Peace, International Journal of the Arts, and Alien Buddha Press-Holiday Anthology-2020. 

He is also a member of the Los Angeles Poet’s Society, (where his work can be found “Spotlighted” on their website). 

His three (3) volumes of poetry, Under the Radar, Inventory, and Old School Rhyme can all be obtained on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, as well as Beyond Baroque Bookstore in Venice, Ca. The Amber Unicorn in Las Vegas, NV. The Book Monster in Santa Monica, Ca., The Book Jewel in Westchester, Ca. and  City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, Ca. 

 

True Story By Devon Neal

It’s easy to gain perspective when holding your penis

between the tips of your thumb and index fingers

and standing in Nature’s wide mossy palm

directing your shimmering stream into a great ravine

capable of accidentally swallowing a man whole

with a yawn. And as you listen for your liquids

to smack wet against the rocks below,

you turn to find yourself staring and, inadvertently, pointing

at the huge gaping maw of a brown bear,

his paws padded and thumbless,

incapable of pinching its two fingers together,

but still able to remind you, your pants at your feet,

just how small you really are.

Devon Neal is a Bardstown, KY resident who received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University and an MBA from The University of the Cumberlands. He currently works as a Human Resources Manager in Louisville, KY. His work has been featured in From the Depths and Rough Cut Press. 

8.25AM By Richard Shepherd

Washing machine rumbles

camomile tea fills half a cup

spectacles start to mist 

and I'm lost

time for a smoke?

maybe

time to write my obituary?

not yet

I exhale ever so slowly

observing each movement of my lungs

what time is it?

the time is now

Richard Shepherd 52, is a writer who hails from Seaford,East Sussex which is on the south coast of England.Writing non stop throughout my childhood my hero was Spike Milligan whose poetry really touched me,also Edward Lear.Writing in adulthood has been sporadic but heres hoping I can reignite the flame that flickers inside me

Wry Whisky Chimp By Mikki Aronoff

A single malt, Sam, I smile at the bartender, always so loose with a liquid tip at day’s end — beats the scrap pay, enough for a half pack of Camels, and I stash the cash in my bra and curl my upper lip like a chimp jonesing for figs and down the Glenmorangie in one gulp, knowing how mother would cluck-cluck-cluck if she found me, me working here, me in this floofy pink pinafore like a trained chimp might choose if they let her loose in the kids’ clothing department and, later, done with her shift at the roadside zoo, having finished her tricycle number zigzagging across the rickety makeshift stage — peanuts, whoops and hollers flying from the bleachers, she’d jump, grunt, hoot and knuckle-run past her wide-eyed keeper into sunshine, shimmy the tallest tree, bundle and pump sinew and bone, and leap, head first, eyes shut, into the nearest cloud.

Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tiny Molecules, The Disappointed Housewife, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, Mslexia, The Dribble Drabble Review, 100 word story, The Citron Review, Atlas and Alice, trampset, jmww, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.

Donald Trump Riding a Dead Seahorse By Justin Karcher

It’s a little past midnight on November 9

the best gay bar in Buffalo feels like a funeral

drag queens weeping & holding bouquets of wilted iPhones

language is burning holes in our hands

the bartender tries juggling liquor bottles

but they all come crashing to the floor

some people just don’t give a fuck

the young kids who snuck into the bar are ignoring the world around them

getting drunk & sloppily singing Beyoncé

who thought karaoke on election night was a good idea

but here we all are

my shirt’s off

some guy who looks like Roy Orbison is giving me a tattoo

the electoral college map carved into my chest

it’s turning me on

my body a canvas of American mistakes

most of me hemorrhaging in anger

whatever’s left tangled up in blue

it all seems like a dream

the way everyone is moving through the bar

like psycho strung out fish floating in the ocean

a couple of my friends look like male seahorses & they won’t stop crying

now Roy is pouring whiskey down my back & over my chest

I feel like I’m on fire

my friends ask if I’m alright 

now I’m babbling about how there’s not much difference 

between the human eye & the male seahorse

like sometimes a male seahorse will give birth to thousands of babies at once

I’ve seen it on YouTube

it looks like a sudden snow flurry

a goddamn revelation

because sadness works the same way

like sometimes your eyes give birth to thousands of teardrops at once

now I’m freaking out

scared that it really is the end of the world

because only about five out of every thousand baby seahorses 

survive to adulthood

so that means most of the sadness 

we’re experiencing right now

will drift along in the plankton layer of America’s apathetic ocean 

die alone in the darkness

now I’m telling everyone at the bar 

we gotta collect the dread all around us

we gotta scoop up all those baby seahorses lost in the wilderness 

bring ‘em home

because what kind of person would just sit around & do nothing

while the American heart becomes a desert full of seahorse bones

by night’s end Roy is cradling me in his arms & singing “Crying”

I drift off to half-sleep as the whole wide world burns to the ground 

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Trick Is to Spill Your Guts Faster Than the Snow Falls” (Alleyway Theatre).