The City That Never Loved Me by Kevin M. Hibshman

We held hands intermittently like two awkward,

crushing teenagers after years of exchanging backward glances.

I felt your hear beat and smelled your fears rising like steam through the gutters.

I lived both within and without you.

Our flirtatious dalliances I've long outgrown.

Your charms have worn thin.

I now require a house that can be a home.

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

Louie Louie by Mark James Andrews

“Loowee Loowee”

red headed Bridget

was singing it that way

through her cigarette

at a basement house party

in the dangerous 8th grade

where our heads were exploding

with the bomb of electric guitar

“Dun-Dun-Dun….Dun-Dun

Dun-Dun-Dun…Dun-Dun”

of the Kingsmen with the slurring

wide-open words of the vocal

“What is he singing?

What was THAT word?”

everybody was asking 

so I was heating up the springtime

for the kids in my neighborhood

with my scribblings of the “dirty words”

which were being copied in class

by everybody and passed around

back and forth, desk to desk

trying to make something happen

in our world, anything at all

and I was feeling my power with words

in my school where “U” was the flunk grade

which was always my grade in “Conduct”

at Holy Name of Jesus “grade school”

and at the party “Louie Louie” (no comma)

was on repeat for all of us juiced up 

by the frantic line before the guitar solo 

in the middle “Let’s give it to ‘em right now!”

so we had the 45 rpm “Single”  

on repeat on the record player

the needle coming down over and over 

because the words on the album version

were different being all cleaned up

and now I was dancing with Bridget

doing my geeky version of “The Pony”

and she was lip syncing the verses

and I was straining hard on her lips

because I wasn’t wearing my glasses

and Bridget was opening her mouth wider

her top teeth biting down on her bottom lip

her tongue appearing as pink as her lipstick

“Every night at 10 I lay her again

Fuck my girl all kind of ways”

and she sang it like that, like the guy’s words

and she was eye to eye with me swaying

on her high heels for me helpless, helpless

in some kind of daze, in a trance of lust

and I knew that if it wasn’t for writing up 

my own take on “Loowee Loowee”

she wouldn’t be dancing with me 

with her eyelids painted metallic green

in her hiked up skirt and nylons

when I was used to staring at her

in her uniform checkered school jumper

secretly looking up from the paperback 

I was hiding and reading at my desk

“Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes” 

and I knew she could perform miracles

raise me from the dead if she wanted.

Mark James Andrews lives and writes in Metro Detroit.  He is the author of five chapbooks,At the Ice Cow Queen on Mack (Alien Buddha Press), So I Lit a Fire for The Last Thanksgiving

(Alien Buddha Press), Motor City is Burning & Other Rock & Roll Poems (Gimmick Press), Compendium 20/20 (Deadly Chaps) and Burning Trash (Pudding House Press), as well as a

poetry recording Brylcreem Sandwich (Bandcamp).

Shruburban Apocalypse by Terrence Sykes

is there ever a good time for the arrival
of the catastrophic Apocalypse
perhaps best to wait until after tea time
for unfolding unknown Revelations

for there is laundry yet to be folded
that toilet in the den needs scrubbing
those library books are due tomorrow
should return the neighbor’s plasticware
forgot if the newspaper was brought in

already burned the supper casserole
so now is as good as ever for me
but before it all goes down and over
let me slip on something a bit nicer
don’t forget to change your underwear

Terrence Sykes was born and raised in the rural coal mining area of Virginia.  This isolation brings the theme of remembrance to his creations, whether real or imagined.  Other interests include heirloom vegetable research & foraging wild edibles .  His poetry - photography - flash fiction has been published in India, Mauritius,Scotland, Spain and the USA

Not a Fish by Susan Isla Tepper

Sex sells every product the ad manager tells me.  But you already know that he says checking out my legs.  I uncross them.  Of course I do I tell him.  He knows very well I’ve been in this ad game a while.  What a dumb ass thing for him to say.  I keep my eyes brightly wide and make sure my gums show each time I smile.  Well good then he says.  Then he says sex sells hemorrhoid cream.  Hemorrhoid cream, yes, I can understand that I say.  Ice cream too he says.  Trying to bait me.  I’m not a fish.  Overall he’s pretty pathetic.  Then again so is the ad game.  So I guess that makes me pretty pathetic.  All the garbage gets turned into pearls.  Desirable.  I can hardly wait to get home and take a good dump.  See, I like my own toilet.  What can I say?  It’s my personal oddity.  I am entitled.  He’s staring at my breasts.  I feel like saying could you sell these?  They’re not twenty or thirty or even forty anymore.  Genius could you sell these if you’re so damned talented?

 

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty years published writer in all genres. Her current project is an Off-Broadway Play on the subject of art and life.

Upon Our Winter By JPR & Tracey Sivek

Seasons change hearts seldom ever do. 

There’s a bit of agony in that, moving through the minefields left behind as we seek so desperately to feel the sun. 

With memories encapsulated masked with our truths. 

The trip was vacant as the sands that lay barren ahead. 

A wastelands postcard of sorted stories. 

We preferred not to pen. 

Still it lingers in the caverns of the heart. Stillborn dreams with haunting void eyes. There will never be a more powerful apocalypse, 

than the one we’ve created.

We stand worn full circle laughing at the shambles of society. 

Hells witness pairs greatly within your light.

Tracey is a native of Northern Michigan.  She has work on Writerscafe and Cosmofunnel.  She is also the Author of "Zero Evidence of Life" found on lulu.com. Her publications include.

The Abyss, Under The Bleachers , The Rye Whiskey Review and The Dope Fiend Daily.

JPR is a southern gothic writer.

His work has been published in Svartedauden Zine, Piker Press, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, Fixator Press, Spill The Words Press, Sava Press, Fearless Poetry Zine and here at The Dope Fiend Daily.

Just Kidding by Toni Parisi

I dialed a dumb whore up who really had been getting on my nerves as of late.
The automated voice on the phone said. 

Sorry, but your call can not be completed as dialed.
I should of known you can't call yourself.

Toni Parisi is from Alexandria Virginia she does not consider herself a writer more so a hot-mess that tries to write.

I Drank The Kool-Aid By JPR

For once, I believed the cup runneth over with shared admiration and over-inflated egos.

The poison is toxic upon every level, the addiction so very appealing as they all are.

I was consumed slowly until I found myself equally amoungsnt those inwhich I did despise.

No truth needs to interrupt your delusion as we shun all those that bear the light of reality's stain.

So, we hide as we decompose.

Rotted in self-imposed exile  buried alive in a narcissist delusion.

The window dressings allure seldom matches the truth protected behind a thin wall of glass.

This poison we share is a pleasant-tasting disease.

Are we broken or merely pleasantly demented?

Allow myself to be within your depths so I can feel the emptiness within that's equal to my own.

We are the nights burden alone a mass suicide's painted headline.

Too fractured to envision anything beyond the inevitable.

Did we not entertain?

JPR is a southern gothic writer.

His work has been published in Svartedauden Zine, Piker Press, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, Fixator Press, Spill The Words Press, Sava Press, Fearless Poetry Zine and here at The Dope Fiend Daily.