Slinkage By B. Lynne Zika

Each time he slips into my thoughts

the projectionist rolls tape.

I might be wooing

the bottom of a box of Kleenex

or riding out the current tidal wave of pain.

Doesn’t matter. Estrogen floods my body;

video begins. He’s standing, his back to me,

in the shower.

I slip through the plastic curtain

and lean full-body against him.

I commandeer the soap.

The wet, white bar nestled in my palm

strokes a line left shoulder to right,

then to his underarm, fingertips,

a slow glide to biceps, right shoulder,

then back to center.

His left arm lifts to meet me.

It knows what’s about to come.

The muscles of his back are hardened

from running and weights,

richly deserving their due.

And so I trace in soapy waves

trapezius, 

latissimus dorsi,

down 

thoracolumbar fascia,

sweet.

A decision is required:

Advance?

Retreat?

Care to vote?

Well, only the left side

has been properly addressed.

Surely this conversation

should be continued.

Long

sweep

up the right,

tracing in reverse order,

not quite so slowly.

After all.

I am not a self-sacrificing creature.

I return to the lower back.

Have you any idea

the things running does

to the gluts?

Soap in hand, I…

Really, I must stop now.

After all, this thing

is only in my mind.

B. Lynne Zika is an award-winning poet and photographer and a retired editor of closed-captioning. Her father, also a writer/poet, bequeathed her this advice: Make every word count.

Little Respect By Curtis Blazemore

Wake up this morning the ex’s stupid cat

is on my head, and I fart a warm wind

into the sails of my empty bed,

and I want some good goddam coffee,

but I sure as hell don’t want to get up,

have to make that hot black joe myself.

I think about all those dudes with wives

making them coffee right fucking now.

I think about this while Mister Bones licks

the fur around his kitty cat asshole—

all those wives, making all that coffee, me

without any sonofabitchin java at all.

Maybe I’ll get a gun at Nick’s Lucky Shot

Gun Shop, start packing some real heat,

maybe quit work at the liquor store, hang

at the Soused Spouse Saloon with my alkie

homies, maybe shoot it up until some

bitches start cooking up some coffee,

start showing a little respect, start asking

exactly what the fuck they can do for me.

Curtis Blazemore has been on the planet far too long, publishing various works in between having bad luck and making people rethink their faith in humanity. No matter. He sees sentences in the exhaled smoke and scribbles furiously. He hopes someday to be able to afford a Greyhound bus ticket to Graceland.

Tentative Maybe Earthquake by Randall rogers

All a twist

knot fist

revolving

mass

gnashing

metallic

studding

tight rivet

piston

hammering

certainty uncertainty

reality unreality

in out up down

juxtaposition

me tittering.

trembling

hold

here gone nowhere.

flashing

heightened calm

dilating

evil

eye.

He is Randall Rogers, visionary poet of the prairie.  A cowboy, yea, a beatnik; a Beatnik Cowboy.  He is an old young, sorry.  Here he exhibits new work.  More flashes in the pan.  I hope the world, nay, you editor, approveth of seeth/something here. (Currently reading "Pilgrim's Progress")  Adios!  I kind of reworked these to work in booze but they are total virgins (never put out).

Paul Bearer by Wayne F. Burke

My grandmother died.

At the funeral home I stood

aside from the crowd, hoping I did not

look like too big a jackass to

anyone.

A guy I did not know

stepped up to me and 

asked: "And you are?"

"Pallbearer" I said.

Afterward, everyone went to

my Uncle's house and

started to get smashed

in honor or remembrance, or

whatever, of my grandmother

who had been a raging alcoholic.

"Hello Paul," the guy I did not know

said. "Hello," I said.

My cousin Wally stole a bottle

and he and I went to his room

and drank it then had a wrestling

match and tore up half the room.

My Uncle appeared in the doorway,

a look of disappointment spread over

his red beefy face. He said that it

was alright to have fun and

even to raise some hell but

there was a limit to it, and

a guy had to know his limits;

he said that my father and he

raised hell when they were

young too but knew when to

stop: knew their limits; he

said my father (who died young)

had been a tough son of a bitch

and that he was a tough son of a bitch

too and that Wally and I were tough

sons a bitches, and his arm dropped

off my shoulder and he went

downstairs for a refill as Wally and 

I began to tear the rest of the room 

up, and grandma 

lay in the cemetery, no longer

to neglect or 

abuse anyone.

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online (including in THE DAILY DOPE FIEND). He is author of eight collections of poetry--most recently BLACK SUMMER, Spartan Press, 2021. He lives in Vermont (USA).

On Dad’s Birthday By Keith Pearson

Everyone froze.

The glass turned slowly

On its side.

We waited for it to stop

But it did not 

Just turning there

Slow and steady

On the smooth marble counter.

‘Do you think it’s a sign?’

Someone asked.

‘It can’t be’ I said.

‘He was always a glass half full

Kind of guy.’

keith pearson was born and raised in new hampshire and works at a local high school in the math department.

A Trained Eye By Kevin M. Hibshman

Sedition seething in market square.

A boarded up bank.

A broken, battered ATM machine.

I walk the burned out street, passing the latest homeless camps.

The stained and ripped tents briefly remind me of the remnants of prayer flags flapping

earnestly in the faithless wind.

The old gods now drowned out by the numbing sounds of near-sighted construction,

car horns, alarms that alert no one and sudden, startling shouts from a patient denied medication.

Circumnavigating a foreboding stretch of former highway,

Dodging drivers who are most likely texting, keeping barely one eye on the road, 

I pass the monolithic factory where wheezing trucks wait to be loaded with frozen meat.

We had to shelter in place recently when a cloud of wayward Ammonia escaped the plant to threaten

my unassuming neighborhood.

It takes a trained eye to witness any rewards of a life lived here in a discouraged part of town that tends to remain ignored.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide. In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011). 

 His current book Cease To Destroy is out now and available on Amazon from Whiskey City Press. 

https://www.amazon.com/Cease-Destroy-Kevin-M-Hibshman/dp/B0BYRCVHCZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=cease+to+destroy+kevin+m.+Hibshma