Without a Notebook By Michael Minassian

I did not write anything 

down today.

I count my breaths

and sit with eyes

half closed, visualizing

a set of words

scrawled across the page,

but lacking pen or pencil

and wanting paper

as thin as air,

I imagine 

what life would be like

if ink flowed in my veins

and I pricked my finger

every time a new thought

pushed its way out.

MICHAEL MINASSIAN lives with his wife in Southern New England. He is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing as well as a chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

Once Again, America Chooses Fascism By Garrett Schuelke

 "America this is quite serious."—Allen Ginsberg

No big surprise there.

Election 2024 has once again shown me that we want a country that is run by a president who did everything he could to commit a coup,

Who basically runs his own cult,

Who inspired an online cult that'll probably be reborn when he once again takes office,

Who wants the military to occupy our streets, run our borders, and round up brown people as a show of strength and illusion of safety,

Who demonizes immigrants in hopes that they'll be attacked by militias, street gangs, and white mobs,

Who collabs with Christian Nationalists to sell autographed Bibles,

Who claims that Israel has a "FINISH THE JOB" as they invade neighboring countries and lay waste to entire cities and villages,

Who proclaims they're anti-war, but then brags about all the weapons we sell to countries engaged in blatant war crimes,

Who thinks we're still the mighty capitalist empire that we can make any country bend a knee to upon threat of a sanction or tariff,

Who sincerely believes that he need to constantly present America as a threat to the world in order to get his way,

Who sincerely believes that he need to constantly present himself as a threat to the American populace in order to get his way,

A president who is mad that he doesn't get the respect and power he believes he is entitled to.

***

Election 2024 has once again showed me that we, as a populace, are proud that an attempted insurrection took place (which we then claim all who took part in it were feds after they inevitably failed),

We adore a president so damn much that, when he's obviously fucking up, we tell our friends, family, and other loved ones, with a straight face, that he has a "SECRET PLAN" to save America,

We only consider free speech something that can be used for slurs, threats, and making content where, to everyone with even a smidgen of self-awareness, comes off as unhinged, annoying, and weird,

We beg and plead for faceless, dystopian soldiers to take over the streets of major cities that we complain are the source of our small town problems (and will never visit unless it involves the chance to fuck shit up while being protected by cops),

We want pregnant women to be monitored like cattle,

We target trans folks the second they express a sliver of their true selves,

We cheer whenever Israel blows up a hospital or refugee camp, since that feeds our unquenchable thirst for Muslim blood,

We mock Native Americans as their lands are turned into hellscapes for a substance that is decimating the planet more and more each year,

We condescend to black folks, telling them they should have just "OBEYED THE LAW" when they're openly being brutalized and murdered by pigs,

We claim we're anti-war, then froth whenever the possibility that we'll get into a conflict with Iran, North Korea, Mexico, or China arises,

Who adore American war criminals, and believe we need to emulate them to win wars,

We dismiss mass shootings with thoughts, prayers, and calls for mental health services we’ll never support,

We will gladly submit to laws, policies, and changes to our lives—from healthcare, to censorship, to infrastructure, etc. —that will clearly make our lives worse, because we're so stupid, masochist, and vengeful that we'll do anything to fuck each other over in order to feel superior.

We're a populace who are mad that we don't get the respect and power we believe we are entitled to.

***

Election 2024 has once again showed that, despite being the late-thirties hardened, haunted, graying, high-blood pressured socialist I am, there's still a microscopic part of me left over from my years of being a teenage lib and optimistic, early-twenties anarchist, that believes that things will change for the better in large, quick, definitive ways.

Someone that sees the ending of something atrocious and believes, "Welp, THAT’LL never happen again."

Then the fucking thing happens again, and I fall into a despair that most often manifests an angry outbursts akin to a Patton Oswalt, David Cross, or any other 2000's-era Alt Comedy act—where I react by throwing up your arms, and screaming, "SERIOUSLY?! We're doing this shit AGAIN?! Oh, COME THE FUCK ON!!!"

I get slammed with every statistic, reasoning, ideology, historical precedent, and observations that tells me I'm wrong to feel this way.

I immediately get hopeium shot into my brain from all types of posters—from liberals doling out inspirational quotes while blaming Green Party candidates and wishing the worst to happen to oppressed populations who didn't vote for their genocider candidate, to leftists telling me that my feelings are valid, but also that I'm stupid and cringe for thinking anything better can happen within this capitalist hellhole, and to stop being a whiny pussy and organize.

The mostly rational side of me agrees that there's still hope, that things can change for the better, and that we’re all part of a long chain of working people's struggle. 

It'll sink back in eventually, but until then I despair.

Not even the generally optimistic words and lyrics of Woody Guthrie, the person I look up to the most in regards to my morality, values, and hopefulness, can get me out of this funk.

***

It's so hard having socialist beliefs while feeling so goddamn hopeless most of the time.

Joe Strummer is absolutely right: People CAN change anything they want to.

Unfortunately, in America, that change is, most of the time, for FUCKING FASCISM. 

GARRET SCHUELKE is a writer, podcaster, and musician that currently resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the author of the GODAN series (Bakunin Incorporated), Anamakee (Riot Forge Studios, 2016), Whup Jamboree: Stories (Elmblad Media Group, 2017), and three ebooks. He is also the host of The Garret Schuelke Podcast, The Cheeseburger Blues: An Exploration into Dad Blues Rock, and A Riot of my Own. He makes music under the moniker Neobeatglory.

To learn more, visit Garret Schuelke’s official website: garrxxqxx x wzx,wx

q 1xX ×- etschuelke.tumblr.com. 

My Fake Vagina By Brian Rosenberger

In my younger years, I worked at a college bookstore,

In shipping and receiving on the 2nd floor of the building.

It suited me fine. I worked mostly alone, didn’t have to deal

With my coworkers, mostly 20-something college students 

Except for the older owners in a family-owned business.

I listened to AM news and CDs of my choosing.

Boxes of books could weigh 50+ lbs.

I was 20-something and could handle it.

I could bench-press the book weight, sexism, racism, 

Marital affairs, and in-house bullies with little effort. 

I did say it was a family-owned business, right?

I always figured I could take the owner, his wife, his dad

In a fist-fight if needed. Their kids too.

One morning, I delivered the discarded cardboard 

To the dumpster in our parking lot.

There I discovered the artificial vagina.

The dumpster was empty except for the rubber pussy.

It had become a shrine, some holy place overnight.

It may have glowed. Writer’s embellishment.

The object was smaller than a basketball. Still magical.

Abandoned, unloved, and unwanted.

Maybe, not unwanted.

It was hairless, flawless. Immaculate.

I took the pussy home.

Washed it. Loved it. Fucked it.

Repeatedly.

There’s your Happy Ending.

Brian Rosenberger lives in a cellar in Marietta, GA and writes by the light of captured fireflies. He is the author of As the Worm Turns and three poetry collections - Poems That Go Splat, And For My Next Trick..., and Scream for Me.

After You Sold My Horse and Maybe My Dog By Trish Saunders

You warned me: don’t go into this memory toolshed 

In a parallel life, none of it happened 

you didn’t die of ALS, you stayed married

to my mother who didn’t lose her brother, 

his parachute opened safely over Lorraine,

and just why is that my middle name? 

What have I to do with occupied France? 

Grass under my window was trampled by tots

playing hide and seek, not by your boots.

A rifle slanting across the barn door  

casts a thin shadow that looks like you. It’s not. 

I haven’t seen my appaloosa mare in weeks,   

my poodle, too, is missing, it’s been a long while  

since I heard his tail thumping on the rug. 

Did any of this happen? I can no longer be sure. 

I’ve been practicing saying, “fuck off” to old photos 

in case anyone in them is still alive, or maybe

I’ll leave flowers on some stranger’s grave.  

 Trish Saunders hates an oxford comma. She was fired from her last editing job.  

Angels and outlaw ballads By Dennis Moriarty

The fire is fed, the whisky poured, the joint rolled.

I sip and inhale

watching a clock that does not tick, a pendulum

that does not swing,

time tonight is my best friend. I sing along to an

outlaw ballad,

my finger poised on the trigger of an imaginary

gun, a midnight showdown.

The room shimmers in the firelight, the hearth

a stage occupied 

by a seventies dance troop of angels gyrating

with the devil.

I hear spiders spinning their webs in darkest 

corners, openly mocking.

Suddenly the clock begins to tick, the pendulum

begins to swing

between sanity and madness, time is a two faced

lying bastard.

I squeeze the trigger and the song lays dying

on my lips,

the angels scream and melt into the devils arms.

The fire spits and hisses

like a bad tempered snake on speed. The glass

is drained, the joint is smoked.

Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.

In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.

Struggle Bus By Alex S. Johnson

Take the wheel she

said this

Will not move. The ruts 

exhaled a bittersweet smell

It did not smell like victory.

Whoever, eventually, in this case

it's you,

Dies alone. Mourning the gradual 

decay of their faculties and

The perfume of pre-morbid 

Death.

A slab of marble already

etched in

Heaven

With words that singe, black

Imperishable

A spiral of dark

Energy driving it down

like sex

Over and over and over. 

Alex S. Johnson is a journalist, dark fiction author, poet, editor and publisher. A few of his books are THE DOOM HIPPIES, DOCTOR FLESH, BIZARRELY DEPARTED, FREAKS OF HELL, BUREAU OF DREAMS, THE FLOWERS OF DOOM and SKULL VINYL. He runs Nocturnicorn Books, does THE SMOL BEAR N' PICKLES YOUTUBE SHOW with his partner Alea Celeste Wiliams, and has inhabited a body lacerated with terrible pain for the past seven years. He lives in Carmichael, California with his family. 

Proverbs 32 By Catherine Zickgraf

Wise women have said

don’t play with scary friends. 

Don’t run straight for a path of distress 

if you already see where it goes.

 

And if your young eyes are still opening,   

remember don’t play with danger.

Wise women have warned you,

and they’ve lived enough you can trust 

they see around some corners.  

 

Listen: 

don’t bond your spirit with evil people

who will abandon you so deep 

in the darkness you’ll never be seen again. 

 

Wise women have said 

choose your paths wisely because 

you can’t go back to where you began.  

 

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. You can find her in the Bluesky. Watch and read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com

Morning Ghazal By Wendy Cartwright

Tart sour locks up churning guts, relieved only 

by bitter in the back of my throat, hold on,

chased with sweet nicotine, deep breaths,

ruminations, and all I can think is hold on.

Marching band in my skull, sousaphone bells

clang against one another in rhythm, hold on,

with clarinet reeds chipped by preteen braces 

and too little spit, just trying to hold on.

Fists clenched around palms full of air,

The only way I know to hold on.

Wendy Cartwright is a poet/author/photographer/reporter/columnist/weirdo (among other things) out of Columbus, Indiana. Her travels have taken her as far as Mayan Ruins and as near as the filling station. Her undiscerning tastes allow her to find creative fodder regardless of location. She has been published in various print anthologies and featured in online publications. She has also self-published 3 books.

Extinction By Manny Grimaldi

I once sacrificed everything in the world for her, 

my sales cases filled with cold leads and racing magazines.

Ledgers a jumble of numbers drawn up the middle 

and edges burned—I’m as solid a failure 

at slinging vacuum cleaners as ice cubes bragging 

they could resist mint, bourbon, sugar and heat.

Not having a sale and needing one fluffs me up,

pulls my soles up through my shoes on to the back

of my teeth where I stop, a worrisome son of man.

I can’t talk my talk with her anymore—a clown fish 

in an anemone put off by the searching fingers inside 

her thoughts waving in the salt. She’s gone.

Now, I am a meaningless collection

of vinyl records to entice you near me for a night

of salacious boogie-butt screwing—the Grappelli, 

the Reinhardt, the Brubeck, the Davis, the Coltrane, 

the Mingus, Queen and the Tubes—but still I do better. 

I find stillness deep in a world made for love,

a field of swept roots and tubers and dewy lettuces.

It’s that I’m tired, talking about talking about talking 

about being a man. I feel like a ghost in need of security. 

Planting a bed. Burying. Slow the beat. Blues and roots 

fill me. Memories of pause.

Manny Grimaldi is a father of two beautiful children that receive letters in the mail from him when he isn’t with them, and a Kentucky poet. He is the author of the full length poetry collection Riding Shotgun with the Mothman, and chapbook ex libris Ioannes Cerva (anonymus scriptus). During the year he also serves as managing editor for Lexington, Kentucky’s Yearling Poetry Journal under Workhorse Writers.