Palmer Method by Wayne F. Burke

we studied penmanship in school,

wrote long lines of "C's"

like waves coming to shore,

and "e's" like little heads;

Miss Good, 3rd grade teacher

blind as a bat

and batty

beat our knuckles with a ruler

and loved us up afterward

with smothering lilac-scented flesh;

she lived alone in a brick house

wore a red dress

or else green

on day she broke a yardstick

over Jimmy Bush's shoulders

and the broken half clattered to the floor

and we all laughed

and laughed.


About Wayne F Burke:

Wayne F. Burke has published four volumes of poetry with Bareback Press and two chapbooks with Epic Rites Press. He lives in the central Vermont area, USA.

Too Young By Smokey Dodge

Your just too young and maybe I'm far too old to see you that way.

The child always wants to view the tiger through the bars of the zoo.

She smiled and he simply licks his chops.

Both wanted a taste.

About Smokey Dodge:

Smokey Dodge

Is a poet, Musician , Teacher and drifter of this world.

We may never meet more than today.

But just Incase this is goodbye.

I got nothing but love to share.

Gas Chamber By Ahmad Al-Khatat

My life lately seems like a gas chamber,

Everything appears in different colours nowadays

My name is no longer important since I’ve got

A number and soon I will have a legal price tag

I thought the snow would cover the cruelty of blood suckers

Yet, I saw a broken cage in spring with blood and

Feathers of the love birds above the winter rain

With no tweets to welcome the depressed autumn

The sun shines at midnight and it looks as if the

City is on fire, with flames around my glowing path

So many times, and nobody is bright to reveal the

Sun before death starts collecting my soul

I have been blinded as I wish to go back to

The days where my sight always smiled and never

Cried for watching my old pictures of memories

With tears falling in silence of my depression

About Ahmad Al-Khatat:

Ahmad Al-Khatat. He was born in Baghdad on May 8th. From Iraq, he came to Canada at the age of 10, the same age when he wrote his first poem back in the year 2000. He also has been published in several press publications and anthologies all over the world. His poems were translated into Farsi, Albanian, German, and Chinese. And he currently studies Political Sciences, at Concordia University in Montreal. He recently have published his two chapbooks “The Bleeding Heart Poet” and “Love On The War’s Frontline”. With Alien Buddha Press. It is available for sale on Amazon. Most of his new and old poems are also available on his official page Bleeding Heart Poet on Facebook.

Fuck Traditional Haiku by Johnny Scarlotti

I sleep well, eat well, 

kiss well, I smoke well, drug well, 

fuck ‘em well, I write.

      About Johnny Scarlotti: 

https://www.facebook.com/JohnnyScarlotti

It's Too Late For That Now By James Diaz

You know Doug

from Clifton

they got him on possession

he's doing fifteen

and his momma died

week after they sentenced him

broken heart, they reckon

Gracie had them kids taken

last month

they done lost all that money

Doug had buried out in the back yard

it was a fuckin' horror show out in front of Stanely's Motel

Gracie sobbing out on the curb 

and them kids carried off in the hands of strangers

with their daddy gone

till they're 25

shit's gettin' deep out here

way too deep.

About James Diaz:

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018). He is founding Editor of the literary arts & music mag Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared most recently in Occulum, Moonchild Magazine and Philosophical Idiot. He lives in upstate NY and occasionally tweets @diaz_james. 

Sunday By Jonathan Butcher

That slow sky staggers down. 

Over the soot-stained slates 

and mile-wide pot holes, over 

the smashed shop fronts and 

unmanned privet hedges.

That sky drifts over feet, that 

slowly wear down grass verges

with constant half miles. Past 

the day walkers that nod politely,

but without recognition. 

That same sliver of despondence,

that flows from food banks to up-turned 

parks. The same eyes that look with

nothing but contempt, like cracked marbles,

that reflect anything but light.

The brick houses still remain the same,

any attempt at white wash has now faded. 

This road still twists like mattered hair, 

dragged back from its scalp. Just to continue

seems enough to keep the wolves at bay. 

About Jonathan Butcher:

Jonathan Butcher is a poet based in Sheffield, England. He has had work
appear in various print and online publications including: Popshot, Sick-Lit,
The Transnational, The Morning Star, Plastic Futures, Picaroon Poetry, Amaryllis
and others. His second chapbook 'Broken Slates' has been published by Flutter Press.

 

Happy In Hell By John Patrick Robbins

It was a hot day in July and being writing didn't pay the bills and the bottle had her needs I was here yet again busting my ass.

And with any group of drunks the morning after made crabby bastards even out of the best of us let alone someone who hated people as much as I.

"Fuck It's hot as hell today ain't it brother"?

Scotty said.
And unlike me  and Jerry he usually had enough fire water in him the hangover hadn't been kicking his ass like it was us.

"Fuck I wish I just had stayed at home today is going to suck ".

Jerry said.

"Goddamn Jerry all you ever want to do is sit on your ass how the fuck you afford weed is beyond me motherfucker ".


"Cause your his dealer you dumbass fuck,  half the time he's just working to pay off his debt ".

Scotty and Jerry both laughed at that one.

"Fucking John's grouchy today probably cause he didn't jerk off this morning ".

All the years I had worked for Scotty it never failed that he had to mention jerking off at least once in a conversation and his strange obsession  about if me or my fellow coworker had or hadn't jerked off today.

And although I was miserable as hell my friend and boss who looked like Kenny Rogers on steroids never failed to crack me up.

We were in Virginia beach building a garage the old lady who hired us would come out from time to time listen to us bickering back and forth shake her head and laugh.

"You boys fuss more than a married couple I swear sometimes I wonder if your going to get into a real fight".

"Don't worry miss Vogel were just joking besides these boys are like my kids they know I love them".


Jerry just looked at me and shook his head.

Scotty was the biggest bullshit artist and con man I knew.
He busted his ass in talking finding every excuse in the book to have to leave the job.

While me and Jerry did a majority of the work.

Then come pay day he found every excuse in the book to short us but few jobs could you catch a buzz and dick around like we did.

The day was moving slow I was sweating the past nights drinks off I felt like death and probably resembled it as well.

I went to the cooler we were out of beer once even though I wasn't a fan I was in need of at the moment.

It was almost twelve.

"Scotty we got to make a beer run dude unless you want me to knock off ".

"Yeah too hot not to have any beer you got any money".

"No I figured we would hang outside the seven eleven let Jerry jerk guys off till we had enough to buy a case jackass ".

"Damn we better knock off before the grinch blows a gasket Jerry Lee".

"Scotty can you loan me ten bucks "

"Damn Jerry I just gave you twenty five bucks two days ago,
what you do with all your money spend it on crack "?

"I will spot you ten Jerry lets just get going for fucks sake".

I had no patience anymore and even though I over the years had lent Jerry more than I could recall never seeing a dime back.

I truly could have cared less I had no patience in the heat and especially hung over .

We rolled up leaving only are tool bags on the job .
Went to the closest gas station grabbed a case and parked at the beach.

There we sat on the tailgate drinking cold millers and watching the one perk of working at the beach.

Virginia beach was a tourist trap but there was some great sights on the beach today women from all over the globe barely clothed in all shapes and sizes.

The beer was cold the sights were good.

"Damn look at the ass on that one damn I love a big old fat butt".
Scotty said as he laughed I couldn't argue with the man we both preferred are woman thick.

Jerry just laughed and lit yet another cigarette.

"Hey look Jerry there's more your type over there building a sandcastle ".

Scotty busted up laughing as Jerry always had a track record for dating younger girls he may be broke but he always drew them in like flies.

"Fuck you John your such a dick"!

"Yeah but a dick that bought the beer so drink up sweetheart you can pay me later".

"Damn John you ain't right ".
Scotty said as he reached in the cooler for yet another.

"I swear you two are like my retarded sons I love the broke writer is looked to for the refreshments ".

"Hey we know how being broke inspires you artist, so we try to keep you that way so people one day will be calling you a genius ".

Jerry said as killed the last if his beer making a face like he just tasted poison.

"Damn how you drink this shit ".

"Yeah it's a little ruff but I'm more amazed how you party everyday on someone else's dime".

We sat there for awhile drinking looking at women and talking shit as always.

Three friends who shared a passion for a good time.

We lived hard and played hard.

"Boys it's hot as hell let's just go home besides I hate beer I'm  ready for a cocktail".

Scotty was done for the day and honestly so was I.

We watched as a blonde in a white bikini went running by everything bounced and jiggled in all the right places.

It was hotter than hell today and so was she.


We worked hard at finding a reason to always not do just that.

We were brothers in hell and they say the devil always looks after his own.

We didn't get back home till the sun was meeting a new day.

It took a lot of dedication to be drunks like us.

And from that view of that beautiful body running  along the shoreline that day I was happy in hell at least for awhile.


About John Patrick Robbins: 

John Patrick Robbins is the editor and chief of the Rye Whiskey Review.

He is also a full time drinker and writer whose work is often bar influenced and a hundred percent unfiltered.

His work has been published here at the Dope Fiend Daily , Synchronized Chaos, Romingos Porch , Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash , Piker Press , Boned Magazine , Inbetween Hangover , Blue Pepper , Rasputin, Your One Phone Call , Academy Of The Heart And Mind , Angry Old Man Magazine , Outlaw Poetry Network , Spill The Words , Five Two Poetry, Blognostics.

Coin Laundry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

I walk over to the coin laundry

without a name

down the street

to listen to the spinning

dry cycles.

Arms crossed

eyes closed

falling asleep in a

cracked blue bucket

seat by the

door.

It is cheaper than cable.

And the girls from the peeler joint

next door come by to wash the cum

out of their dainties.

They talk about everything.

I am almost sleeping, but it is

good company.

When the machines stop

I get up and leave.

Walk home in the rain.

Past the beggars

with their hands out

shaking a single wet polystyrene cup

out of its last black magic.

About Ryan Quinn Flanagan:

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, Horror Sleaze Trash, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Scrap By Joseph S. Pete

Harold’s hands trembled. No junk remained. He tore through the bankers boxes of what little stuff he had left, what he hadn't pawned or unloaded online, and overturned piles of unwashed clothes, rifling through the pockets.

Nothing.

He’d have to go out scrapping again, see what he could find and get for it at the salvage yard. He grabbed his keys and hacksaw and bounced out the door.

Harold strode down the street, scanning for anything metal that might have value. Overhead, the power lines buzzed. He heard someone, some straight-up legend, jacked them in downtown Gary and sold them for scrap, but didn’t know how they pulled that off without being electrocuted.

Then it loomed up above him, glinting under the streetlight, a towering bronze statue of a Polish Revolutionary War general on horseback. It was huge. He could get a fortune for it, score enough to stay right for months, maybe years. It was a lot of metal they could melt down.

Harold looked around. The streets were empty. Moonlight reflected in lonely puddles.

Huffing in to gird himself, he scaled the pedestal and started sawing away. It was rough, repetitive work that drained him of every ounce of strength. It was so taxing he had to take breaks, before his burning need for junk got him back at it.

Suddenly, the statue began to teeter.

Finally, he thought, leaping back to safety before realizing too late the toppling statue was bearing down on him. There was no time to react, and he would've been too bone-tired to dodge the tumbling general anyway.

Everything went black.

When he roused maybe hours later, he was pinned under the statue of the general. His cheek felt damp, then he saw his face was surrounded by a pool of blood. An arm was bent out of shape, and his legs were insensate. He was hyperventilating, felt his rib cage was crushed. Maybe a rib punctured a lung. Every breath was labored.

“Why, why, why?”

Harold replaced the scenario in his head over and over, running through all the ways he could have avoided such a terrible fate. But there was no undoing it now. Second-guessing wouldn’t get him anywhere.

No one was around. It was night, and he was in the middle of a desolate park in an isolated neighborhood where half the homes were vacant or burned down. He had to think. He needed a plan for how to extricate himself. He needed...

“Well, what do we have here?”

Frack, it was Husky. He was a killer. They called him Husky because he had kicked a dog to death. He once killed a man too, and got caught trying to dump the badly beaten corpse after-hours at the marina. Did some time, now he dealt but consumed his own product. He lived more or less like a vagrant and wasn't right in the head. Everyone in the neighborhood knew.

That kid Zach, from the Harbor, was with him. They circled around Harold like coyotes, not that he was going anywhere.

“Get his phone.”

Zach started tearing through Harold’s pockets but didn’t turn up anything.

“You got to have something man,” Husky said. “We need something if we’re going to get you help, something for our troubles.”

“The statue,” Harold croaked weakly. “The statue, I liberated it for you.”

“Shoot, what are we going to do with that?” Husky asked. “That’s probably like 10 tons. Ain’t no way we can haul that off. Besides, who’s going take that. Who’s going to melt that down?”

“The statue. It’s yours.”

Husky scanned around, then directed Zach to go grab an oil pan out of a pile of litter.

“You're bleeding everywhere, man. Your plasma, we’re going to take your plasma,” he said, brandishing a needle. “We can sell that down at the new plasma center down on 34^th Street, make this worth our while.”

“What are you talking about, that's crazy.”

“Nah, my cousin sells his plasma all the time, gets $30 a pop. It's like straight cash for blood. And blood is free. Look at all this goddamned blood, just going to waste.”

“You're crazy. They're not going to just accept some random blood off the street.”

“Shhh, shhh.”

“This is dumb. This is crazy,” Harold shouted, before he was wracked with a shuddering pang. He wheezed in pain.

“Shhh.”

“This is...”

Husky drove his first into Harold's jaw, bouncing the back of his skull off the concrete.

Zach started trying to mop the blood from the pool into the oil pan with a wadded-up newspaper, while Husky jammed the needle into Harold’s shoulder and drew more out.

“You don’t need it, man,” he said gently. “You’re going to get a ton of fresh blood at the hospital if you make it. They’ll fix you right up with all the blood you need, all the blood you could ever dream of.”

Harold burbled.

“They'll take good care of you. That's what they do at hospitals. They...”

A patrol car slowed, flashed its lights. Husky and Zach scuttled off, with dank crimson splashing out of the oil pan.

“Hey, what the hell,” a cop bellowed, looking down over Harold. “What the fresh hell did you do to General Kościuszko?”

“I… I…”
Too late, more scrap on the heap.

About Joseph S. Pete:

Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, a photographer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio in Merrillville who lives in the Chicago metropolitan area. He is a 2017 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee who was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His writing and photography have appeared or are forthcoming in more than 100 literary journals, including Dogzplot, Stoneboat, The High Window, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Steep Street Journal, Beautiful Losers, New Pop Lit, The Grief Diaries, Gravel, The Offbeat, Oddball Magazine, The Perch Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, Chicago Literati, Bull Men's Fiction, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Prairie Winds, Blue Collar Review, Lumpen, The Rat's Ass Review, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Euphemism, Jenny Magazine, Vending Machine Press and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He once got his nose broken in a fistfight, believes the secret to good cooking is to add more olive oil and overuses the "rule of three" in his writing.

Step Outside The Circle By Treznor Kane

We question punishment but never are desires.

The night does not ask it only embraces the naked form upon the altar.

Please join me and feel the freedom that no other can grant but yourself.

Spite him and embrace your fears in the flames.

Take the need and allow the senses to overload.

The flesh is warm the words are cold.

We shall gather in a black mass on another setting sun to know the happiness in total fulfillment. 

Why question the taste when you can have it now simply step outside and allow the sheep to question.

Freedom is there.

Only the ignorant care to hide from there true nature.

She is a vessel and you but a device to create pleasure and let the sin wash over you and drown you within the chaos.

I am the dagger upon the altar.

The bleeding of one must not always be in spite.

 For pain is much a part of pleasure as the rain is to drown yet give life all the same.

Feed the want and you will never truly need.

All you need is to take that step.

Outside the circle is the place where order does not exist and freedom does thrive.

Bleed in thought and drown in pleasure.

Death approaches.

The darkness is the only path that will not deceive you.

For it exists no matter how you perceive it.

About Treznor Kane:

Treznor Kane is an occultist and student of the black arts a man of many interests and with many tastes for finer things.He respects all peoples believes he simply prefers to be left alone to practice his own.

Old Jukebox By Smokey Dodge

It holds many memories a quarter a play.

125 is my favorite.

We danced many a night to that one.

Pick your own memory for this one is mine.

About Smokey Dodge: 

Smokey Dodge

Is a poet , Musician , Teacher and drifter of this world.

We may never meet more than today.

But just Incase this is goodbye.

I got nothing but love to share.

I Was A Boy Of Blue Midnights By Christopher Hopkins

In my jaw-bone youth,

I’d watched the great stone drift from the blackened lush.

I could see how the night slid on it’s fault-lines

into day,

as I was a boy of blue midnights.

My late hours

were not wasted in life dreaming-absence.

My dreaming would run with a wolf heart in its mouth

and up the necks of the flowering vision,

as I was a boy of blue midnights,

in nights

of electric easy

on warm dimpling perfect skin,

scalding in our youth,

making our fortunes on the bodies of others

to tip toes farewells of early hours.

That walk in light,

that walk in golden light,

when only the morning moon knows my happy trail

and drivers in the passing cars

who reminisce on watching me,

on their youthful openings in single beds,

of their soft conquests of happiness.

On watching me,

remembering the windfall names

on the tips of wet tongues and teeth of beer,

those mornings

where the sun puts the colour back in their hair,

plucked white by the thieves of being,

how love’s short longings had long been fed to age’s fire,

the burning of hopeful touches,

and the last drops of the hourglass sands drop,

piling high on pillows

to be turned again on love, love, my love.

I was a boy of blue midnights and a man

in the threads of gold mornings.

About Christopher Hopkins:

Christopher Hopkins was born and raised in Neath, South Wales. He currently resides in the Canterbury area of Kent with his wife and daughter. 

His debut poetry chapbook ‘Take Your Journeys Home’ was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing House in November 2017 and has received a nomination for the IPPY book award for poetry and two of its poems ‘Sorrow on the Hill’ and ‘Smoke and Whiskey’ have also received nominations for the Pushcart Prize.

His second chapbook is due for release June 18, entitled ‘The Last Time We Saw Strangers’, again with New York base publisher Clare Songbirds.

Christopher has had poems published in The Morning Star, Tilde, Backlash Press, Riggwelter Press, The Paragon Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Indianapolis Review, Mojave River Review, The Blue Nib Magazine, Ibis Head Review, The Journal (formally the Contemporary Anglo – Scandinavian poetry), Rust & Moth, Harbinger Asylum, Scarlet Leaf Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, VerseWrights, Tuck Magazine, Dissident Voice magazine, Poetry Superhighway,  Duane's PoeTree, Outlaw Poetry. 

His spoken word poetry has also featured in a podcast of Golden Walkmen Magazine podcast, which also is to be included for their ‘Best of the Year’. Christopher also has had work feature in the MIND Anthology called 'Please Hear What I'm Not Saying' (February  2018). Christopher also has a YouTube channel dedicated to his poetry readings.