Proof By Chad Parenteau

God proves

own existence

hating you so

fucking much

too often for

randomness,

earth moving

enough that

you must 

be favorite 

dumping spot

of universe. 

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

THE MILLBURY STREET SHUFFLE By Christopher Reilley

We begin at the top of Millbury Street

with the optimism of newborn Vikings—

legs steady, voices bright,

convinced we are legends in the making.

Twenty-one years alive,

twenty-one drinks ahead,

a math problem no sober person

has ever solved gracefully.

 

The first bar greets us

like a forgiving aunt—

soft lights, easy pours,

a bartender who calls you “kid”

with the kind of affection

that makes you feel both young

and temporarily invincible.

 

By bar four, colors start to bloom—

neon halos around street signs,

a warm glow under your ribs

like you swallowed a lantern

because someone dared you.

 

By bar eight, the shuffle begins:

that sideways drift

your feet invent without permission,

a kind of drunken interpretive dance

meant to convince gravity

you’re still on speaking terms.

 

By bar ten, you’re arguing

with a traffic cone

about the nature of destiny.

The cone is winning.

 

By bar thirteen,

you have made at least two new friends,

someone’s dog is wearing your birthday hat,

and you are loudly insisting

that water is a “myth invented by Big Hydration.”

 

By bar sixteen,

Millbury Street wobbles a little—

not dangerously,

just enough to remind you

that pavement is a suggestion

and not a promise.

 

By bar eighteen,

your friends are holding

a loose-formation phalanx around you,

guiding you like a ceremonial float

in the parade of your own terrible decisions.

 

By bar twenty,

you raise your glass

with the gravitas of a knight

about to swear an oath

you do not understand

but deeply believe in.

 

And at bar twenty-one—

the finish line, the altar,

the victory lap disguised as a stool—

you take your final drink

with the joy of someone

who survived their own ambition.

 

At the end of Millbury Street,

you are a masterpiece of chaos:

laughing, leaning, luminous,

a triumphant mess wrapped

in birthday-colored bravado.

 

This is the Millbury Street Shuffle—

a pilgrimage of youth,

a marathon of questionable wisdom,

a celebration so spectacular

you’ll only remember half of it,

and cherish all of it.

 

Christopher Reilley is a New England-based poet and author whose work bridges poetry, prose and fiction. He has served as Poet Laureate of Dedham, Massachusetts and is the founder of the Dedham Poet Society. Reilley’s creative reach extends into the realm of cultural preservation: four of his poems are included in the Lunar Codex — a digital/analog time-capsule archive of global artistic works that has been carried to the Moon.

 

Unnecessary By Dan Provost

As the bass lines

Strays in rhythm

With the beer orders…

Electric mayhem

Flashing while looking

Out the window—the

Wind revolving a

Purgatory riff, oh God,

My loss spills blood 

Through my eyes. Seeing 

beings spontaneously crack 

Into splinters of

Unnecessary shame.

Inside the sphere of the

Conflict, beings beaten,

Busted by bureaucratic

Bounties. Paid nothing

For crimson knuckles.

 

Dan Provost’s poetry has been published both online and in print since 1993. He is the author of 17 books/ chapbooks, including All in a Pretty Little Row, released by Roadside Press, in November 2023. Notes From the Other Side of the Bed will be published by A Thin Slice of Anxiety Press in early 2025. His work has been nominated for The Best of the Net three times and has read his poetry throughout the United States. He lives in Keene, New Hampshire with his wife Laura, and dog Bella.

The Barmuda Triangle By Bruce Morton

            (Bozeman, Montana)

Proximity and geometry, they are what

It was that got them that moniker. Three

Neighboring watering holes, a triptych oasis:

The Hof, that is the Hofbrau, a cinder-block

Shrine. The Molly, the Molly Brown saloon.

The Scoop, dive bar, since sunk, gone belly-up,

Like a defeated Moby Dick. Many have met

Their demise, disappearing from the radar,

After a night flight into the triangle, moving

From one bar to the next, guided by not-so-

Dead reckoning--instinct, luck. For beer is

An unreliable joystick, and a pool cue a poor

Crutch. Each companion a compass searching

For something resembling a true north.

Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Mort (2024) and Simple Arithmetic & Other Artifices (2014). His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.

A Step Behind A Nightmare's Veil By John Patrick Robbins

Within the act of a suicide's escape.

That silence is the comfort that is but a feathered bed embrace.

As we ascend beyond that realm that only brought you pain.

In the secrets that are only whispered from fools whose hidden agenda

is but a service to their pocket or stained sheets bed.

Can we not choose to expel one's own flame?

Or is our fate's destination, orchestrated by invisible forces?

Are there many, or but one?

The mother's proverbial womb cast aside

 to the ever-frail male ego's dominance?

Does this escape make damnation concrete?

We walk now between the worlds a beautiful imbalance.

Does the denial of light's ignorance tempt you?

Pale is the beautiful face of the soon-to-be flower's transition 

to the soon-to-be corpse.

To step beyond the chains of the mortal coil.

Is there not beauty even within death?

Behind the veil, is where all the answers truly reside.

JPR, is a Southern Gothic writer his work has been published in Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Disturb The Universe, Fearless Poetry Zine, Spill The Words Press, and The Dope Fiend Daily.

His work is often dark and always unfiltered.

How to Start a Poem, if not a Painting By John Greiner

I can’t send out an email now,

I can’t give you a critique

 of your poem.

The mere fact that I’m writing

about poetry in a poem

is an irksome absurdity.

I should be driving a cab,

but I have a fear of driving,

or prepping for the night shift

at some seedy hotel,

but I’ve already done that

and it filled me with pathetic mutterings

that no one cared to listen to.

I’m here and there are plenty

of someones who will want to

think nothing of me

and they will think nothing of me, 

so that’s something.

That’s a cocky dumb shit line

that some wannabe liar would end with

to make themselves look Bukowski.

Such bullshit artists

who have never read Vallejo,

or Ruben Dario,

or Lord Byron,

or Percy Bysshe Shelley,

or Bill Knott

and on and on

and only a bullshit poet 

would name all of those names

in a poem,

so here I am.

I wanted to paint a painting 

this morning.

I woke up dreaming

about painting a painting.

I went out into the streets

to capture the inspiration

to paint that painting

before it was even sunrise.

I had to watch that the cops

didn't think that I was some 

sort of nutcase

drifting around so early in the morning

looking for God knows what,

maybe the sunrise.

Maybe the cops are right.

Maybe I am some sort of nutcase.

I tried to keep a low profile.

There were a few true pervs about.

I came back with a thousand

brilliant ideas on nothing

and spent the day jerking off

both literally and figuratively.

John Greiner is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer living in Queens, NY. He was educated at the New School for Social Research.  Greiner's work has appeared in Sand, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Valueand numerous other magazines. His chapbooks, broadsides and collections of poetry and short stories include  Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), The Laundrymen (Wandering Head Press, 2016), Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press, 2014),Modulation Age (Wandering Head Press, 2012), Shooting Side Glances(ISMs Press, 2011) and Relics From a Hell’s Kitchen Pawn Shop (Ronin Press, 2010). 

Bathroom Stall Gospel By Heather Kays

I have met God

in the smeared eyeliner

of strangers—

who hold my hair

like it’s communion,

who whisper prayers

through cracked lips,

who cradle broken pieces

like holy relics

in the back of a club,

where saints

dance with sinners,

and the fluorescent light

never tells the truth.

This is where salvation smells

like cheap perfume

and desperation.

Where grace

is a hand on your back

when the world

is too loud to hear yourself breathe.

Heather Kays is a St. Louis-based poet and author passionate about writing since age 7. Her memoir, Pieces of Us, dissects her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her YA novel, Lila’s Letters, focuses on healing through unsent letters. She runs The Alchemists, an online writing group, and enjoys discussing creativity and complex narratives.