Life isn’t about
what you can
learn
it’s about what
you can live
with
I think laying in
bed at 11am on
a Wednesday
a 6 hour early
mark from
work
the sun shining
and my stomach
groaning for food
thinking about the
girl at work that
recently got on the
meth hard
I always wanted to
fuck her
and one night nearly
did
though she’s fucked
herself now
and I know there’s
nothing I can do
about it
buildings growing and
birds talking in the
distance
telling me things I
wish I could understand
while the old men sit
on milk crates under
street signs
and the children ride
imaginary horses to
far away places
and I keep telling myself
everything will be alright.
Hot off the bumper of a winnebago
Ouija reads market quotes with a practiced
slide, desperate looking for payoff
to vacation—but all she gets is
sale paper sanity brainwash—
we bought big & are selling
cheap—all you save is
MONEY—promise of a lifetime—
best time to get fingers in the till
up to the elbows and play the slash
& burn game of capital weed whack,
leaping on board bull wagon
for a revolutionary way to clean,
World Bank giddy with pleasure dough
like wrestling naked in a bucket of ice water,
a skip in the step and a cell
phone in every pocket–yes!
I want it! I love it!
I’ll take it!
Behold, you are gentrification,
you are American Dream–
you are poverty’s pick pocket,
the marked man on the other
side of Zorro’s midnite—
but Ouija predicts collapse of shapewear
revolution, reading letters on the big board
that spell shit for bull, reading
“In strikes are dreams,
in capital, only desperation”—
Ouija flips down the paper &
gets hell back to
Winnebago
Jeff Bagato is a writer and electronic musician living near Washington, DC. Some of his poetry has appeared in Zoomoozophone Review, Otoliths, Clockwise Cat, Zombie Logic Review, Full of Crow, Exquisite Corpse, and Chiron Review. His most recent book of poems, Savage Magic, came out in early 2016. Other poetry books include And the Trillions and Spells of Coming Day. He has also published several science fiction novels, including The Toothpick Fairy, Computing Angels, and Dishwasher on Venus. A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.wordpress.com.
It was autumn, late autumn,
maybe the first week of November,
and we went for a walk,
the family on a Sunday walk,
through the historic quarter
along the city walls
over cobblestones
past a cemetery.
It was the old Jewish quarter of
a town that once was home
to a famous Torah scholar, where
he built his house of study.
It is now a house of memory.
But I had never heard of Rashi then;
nor had I heard of heinous perfidy and shame.
I was five.
I asked, why is this called the Jewish quarter,
when all the Jews are gone?
Who were they? Where are they now?
Well, I had heard about them, briefly:
The people who had no country,
so they took their names from nature,
my grandmother said, denying parts
of her own family a rightful place in history.
Back then, I didn’t know this, either.
Who were the Jews? Where are they now?
I insisted. I was five.
It was late autumn,
around the first week of November.
It was cold, the streets were empty, and
my father and my mother remained silent. *German and Yiddish names of a city in Germany
Julia Knobloch is a journalist and translator turned project manager and executive assistant. Before moving to New York from Berlin, she worked 10+ years as a writer and producer for TV documentaries and radio features. Her essays and reportage have been published in print and online publications in Germany, Argentina, and the US (openDemocracy, Brooklyn Rail, Reality Sandwich), and she occasionally blogs for ReformJudaism.org. An emerging poet, she recently was awarded the Poem of the Year prize from Brooklyn Poets for her poem Daylight Saving Time.
A man shoots with a gun.
On a mission from God
Starting his own religion.
He could do anything now.
At Echo Lake
The flowers bled and died
Where she first stumbled, fell down
And cried.
Dizzy in the darkness,
Where he led her into a grove of trees.
And gunfire rang out
Like a terrible death bell.
There were no lights on the road.
Moonlight shone onto Echo Lake
Like something else.
A place from where no one else has ever come back.
Natalie Crick has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. Her poetry is influenced by melancholic confessional Women’s poetry. Her poetry has been published in a range of journals and magazines including Cannons Mouth, Cyphers, Ariadne’s Thread, Carillon and National Poetry Anthology 2013.
He’s learnt to laugh insanely… quietly.
Bites his wrist and winces his eyes
when his own cleverness gets too much.
Removed the right-hand pocket lining
from his unfashionable, dribbly trousers.
Armed with 13 sheets of toilet roll
and a damp beige face flannel
he sets off giddily upon his nightly rounds.
‘Well, someone has to tuck Mrs. Jenkins
who lives in the old Victorian vicarage
into bed now her husband’s up and left’
he chuckles to himself wickedly
as he WD-40’s the back garden gate.
He shimmies with half an erection
to the spare side bedroom window.
Where at an extremely awkward angle
he manages to catch her flossing hard.
The full moon sheen upon white buttocks
sends him squirting lucidly
and reaching pathetically for his inhaler.
Drainpipe clinging desperately
with just shins and ankles,
he momentarily blacks-out
and then catches himself
just before slipping and falling silently
upon his very own freshly made wet patch.
Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight; this too may pass, yet. Buy his books ‘Scribblings Of A Madman’ (Lit Fest Press) http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1943170096 ‘Poetry From The Nearest Barstool’ at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1326241036 And a split poetry book ‘The Raven And The Vagabond Heart’ with Bethany W Pope at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1326415204 You can also read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/
sitting on the bed
duvet crushed underneath me –
I’m a sumo wrestler, victory
drinking a drink
with another fantasy playing in my head
where everything is in technicolour
it works out
and I’m sure, i am sure
but i am not now
i am walking around
it’s like, what am i living for
you gave up
i continue my duty
it is a burden
why did your freedom get returned
while i am here
taking care of our
spastic son.
Katie Lewington is a UK based writer and has been drafting, editing and rewriting her bio since she started submitting to literary magazines and journals two years ago. It isn’t as if she doesn’t know who she is, she just isn’t sure what is relevant. Her creative writing can be read at https://katiecreativewriterblog.wordpress.com or https://gumroad.com/katielewington She can be contacted through Twitter @idontwearahat
He said he was into hardcore
and I asked him if that meant Viagra,
he seemed a little young for all that
but you never know
and he laughed and said he was a punk
which explained the leathers and
numerous piercings
I had thought him one of those performance artists
that drink warm animal piss from recycled juice jars
to old Donna Summer
records
but he reassured me
he was not that,
and that hardcore was more
of a lifestyle
than anything
like eating organic
or swingers
the habitual arms dealing
of half ironic war
amputees
ensuring the poor
have more bullets
then teeth.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a happily unmarried proud father of none. His work can be found both in print and online in such joints as Your One Phone Call, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Dead Snakes. He has an affinity for dragonflies, discount tequila, and all things sarcastic.
The rebel writing professor tickles his kitty
and sips his tea of the month
in his gentrified safe-space studio bungalow and sighs
the sigh of the high minded.
He performs his sunrise pose on his yoga pad and rolls
his do-goody eyes
at the dirty-fingernailed world
thinking,
What is going on with all these arse-hats
who don’t care about justice or equality or the earth
who never read Gunter Grass
or sat in a meditation garden with Wai Lana?
The rebel writing professor composes a letter to the editor
at Whole Foods
regarding the dearth of face protection
in girls’ softball camp
so erect and dapper in his Tibetan cap and so comfortable
in his slipper shoes
yet still feeling powerless
that others are vain
and jealous
and have the lower emotions.
The rebel writing professor putters his Volvo home
to social media and herbal bed
trims his Just-for-Men face-hedge
smears sunscreen on his yin yang shoulder tattoo
mounts his fixy bike and he’s off to the park
to strike a haiku
(or two.)
The rebel writing professor presses
the WALK button at the street intersection
a dozen times
like a paranoid harlequin
escaped from the loony bin. perhaps
sensing how the plebeian traffic fantasizes
about flattening his truffly, virtue-signaling ass
onto the palm-shaded Boulevard.
Oh how the poor writing professor has sacrificed
to teach the filthy illiterate masses
the errors of their ways.
It’s not easy trading a soul
for the privilege of giving out
A’s and B’s and C’s
punctuated with pinched notes in one-inch margins
smug with his “hmmms” and “are you sure?”s
giddy with his finger pyramids
referring to himself as “Doctor”
because he wrote a 60 page paper
on Byron’s bunions
and knows how to properly insert a foot-
note.
He takes a certified pride in his choices
of vacation spots/writing retreats
gets 6 “pomes” published per year in his student-run zine
all the while maintaining a semi-regular blog on how to write
and how to publish what you write
(comments must await approval.)
The rebel writing professor drinks his 2 and a half microbeers
on Saturday night
nearly daft trying to craft
his neo-modernist novella
thinking up new ways to cat-knife and butt-lick himself
to tenure
so he can tilt into his Ikea podium
until some janitor literally
has to dolly him away.
Against the dark night
and the dilatory commoners
the rebel writing professor raises his textbook high
prudent not to sprain an elbow
bawdy cad winking at co-eds
and skipping in the rain
(but only after he’s had the flu shot.)
Whom else but such as he would have the guts
to hate the president
to take a stand
against Stephen King’s last two novels
to call into question the humor
of The Big Bang Theory
to rally against ticket price hikes at the Loft theater
and the racist eponym
of Illegal Pete’s Margarita Hut?
This will be his legacy, well, this plus five
36-page “chaps”
of flamboyantly garnished word-borscht
a hushed-up sexual lawsuit
and a single grainy Youtube video
with bad sound
and a virus.
Mather Schneider is 46 years old. He has had hundreds of poems and stories published since 1993 in places like Rattle, Nerve Cowboy, Slipstream, Nimrod, River Styx and Smokelong. He has 3 full length books, DROUGHT RESISTANT STRAIN, HE TOOK A CAB and THE SMALL HEARTS OF ANTS, with another, PRICKLY, coming early in 2017. He divides his time between Tucson, Arizona and northern Mexico, where his wife is from. He earns his living by driving a cab.
dreams of the trailer at the
edge of the corn field, dreams of
silence and rape and
wakes up thirsty
wakes up and then
wakes up again like in the
movies and he thinks he’s still
dreaming
dreams the bed is a tiny shrinking
island in a relentless tide
of blood
wakes up laughing at the
thought of mercy
john sweet, b 1968, still numbered among the living. A believer in writing as catharsis. an optimistic pessimist. Opposed to all organized religion and political parties. Avoids zealots and social media whenever possible. His latest collections include A NATION OF ASSHOLES W/ GUNS (2015 Scars Publications) and APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press). All pertinent facts about his life are buried somewhere in his writing.
You can Google.
You can amazon.
Bitch is still alive.
That isn’t polite.
I’m sure she’s terribly kind.
Noble, even.
I’m just bitter because I’ll never
be Jessica or Elizabeth Wakefield.
California girl functioning oh so fine.
With all her talent and money
and two houses in two different countries
Francine Pascal could not write my kind.
Not even under the influence of
Advocare and mescaline.
Not even with a hot yoga fluent
ghost writer whose chakras are balanced
because at forty-three I’m still
tongue fucking the binary
in my Dollar General donut pajamas.
I’m rotten.
I’m useless.
I only cum with my dolphin vibrator
and I can’t keep a man in my Android
for longer than three weeks.
I’m surviving San Antonio
on less than $800 a month
but when in San Francisco
I always remember to tip the maids.
Men fuck me then say
DAMN THAT WAS GOOD!
I guess that means I should bake a cake
maybe blow up some balloons
and send up prayers of thanks
to Dana Plato and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
If Francine Pascal were to encounter
the likes of me
in the fertile wilds
of her moneyed imagination
I’m sure I’d be dismissed with
Um. No. That Would Not Sell.
So I remain in bargain bin purgatory.
Defying capitalism and its glittery
Hello Kitty boxes.
Misti Rainwater-Lites is the author of Bullshit Rodeo. Her latest chapbook, No Guns No Knives No Disco Biscuits, is available from DevilHouse Press.
In Between Hangovers 