this girl thinks
she is scamming
that guy who keeps
her in booze & sushi /
she she she doesn’t care
about him what a fool
whatever happens later
hardly matters
who remembers
hey big spender
she gets to eat Maki drink saké
for free /
she she she doesn’t know
when he grins at her
across the sticky table
he sees her pink & raw
rolled up tight
on his plate waiting to be
chopsticked waiting for
his teeth his tongue
rice is pure not her /
he knows everything
about Sushi Girl is fishy
he doesn’t care
she gives it away
practically
for free free free
Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. Look for her work in these diverse places (some forthcoming): Anti-Heroin Chic, Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Foliate Oak, Failed Haiku, I Am Not A Silent Poet, In Between Hangovers, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, Wild Plum and elsewhere. She has two micro collections, THE SEA AND A RIVER and BOXBOROUGH POEMS, on the Origami Poems Project website. Tricia believes there’s no place like her own backyard and has traveled the world (including Graceland). She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois / in a town called St. Charles / by a river named Fox and keeps a Poetry Box in her front yard.
Hi, Jack M. Freedman here introducing YOU to a new drug on the market that will change your life
forever.
Will you ride white horses as your hair blows in an autumn breeze and forget about how you
contracted genital herpes from the horse?
Will you hit the game winning home run as the crowd goes wild, never allowing your Irritable
Bowel Syndrome to ruin the rest of your adult life and the outfield?
Will you run through tall grass barefoot, throwing caution to the wind as you keep your Type II
Diabetes under control…even if said grass is filled with broken bottles and dirty syringes?
Will you stop caring about your medical condition long enough to actually enjoy life?
Anything is possible…until you learn the side effects and discover that the medication you are
taking can lead to death by zombie apocalypse…also known as Capitalism!!!
You may be happy to know that this drug isn’t an antidepressant that will cause you to have suicidal
ideation due to the sex drive you traded in for a sense of self worth.
You’ll be glad to know that it won’t help you lose weight through leaky anal discharge and get it
half off with an economy sized package of Depends.
You will kick social anxiety to the curb with your restless legs.
Hopefully this pitch won’t put you to sleep, unlike the mononucleosis you contracted by kissing
your responsibility to your temple goodbye.
The jolt you get from life will be a huge departure from atrial fibrillation and will be significantly
less expensive than that EpiPen you bought for your allergies to a healthy lifestyle free of the
chemicals your pharmacist already pumps into your ever increasing fragile state of mind and body.
What is this drug you might ask?
This drug is none other than:
SUCKER!
Jack M. Freedman is a poet and spoken word artist from Staten Island, NY. He is the author of Serotonin Seas, Never Lick the Spoon, and Tobias. Publications in which his work can be found include Third Rail, Unquiet Desperation, First Literary Review-East, Espresso Ink, Boston Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, Acoustic Levitation, NYSAI Press, St. Gorge Day StoryBook, typoetic.us, di-verse-city, Advanced Chapbook No. 5, POSTblank, Madness Muse, and Rat’s Ass Review.
she plays with that zizzy thing
in her brain
and one anorexia later
floats out of the pond
in a bag
to the drumming of alcohol and sex
she sees wrinkled seas from a plane
false visions of ageing skin
and yielding sofas
but do we love each other?
her facebook page
is mirrored in fluff
Athens reflected in lenses
lips and lashes
her spooked image held
in crowded adoration
her pupils wide in the gathering snow
a trending pieta
Colin Crewdson lives in Devon, England, and has followed a career investigating the mishaps of life and history. His poems have appeared in The Journal, Ink Sweat and Tears, The High Window, The Open Mouse amongst others.
I, as a bystander witnessed you bustling
in the whirlwind of social vows.
Intersection of our eyes had you piercing
into mine with such indemnity, fuse
of our anthem was fixed on parchment
of this pledge, composing our quodlibet.
Coupling needs another acoustic.
Evaluating emotional postmortems are akin
to moping about not snagging one more portion
of entremets at the previous night’s wing-ding.
Palilogy of pleasure is for some.
I have lived with varmints.
SANJEEV SETHI is the author of three well-received books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). His poems are in venues around the world including The Penmen Review, Red Fez, Indiana Voice Journal, Dime Show Review, Zoomoozophone Review, Chronogram, Stanzaic Stylings, Visual Verse, Poetry Pacific, Transnational Literature, Meniscus, Bluepepper and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Other side of The Severn Bridge wandering.
I’ve been banned & thrown out
of so many places now…
it’s getting ridiculous & funny!
In one Town in Middle England
they had the police escort us
from Traveller Site into the Centre
just to sign & cash our Giros,
so we could afford enough diesel to leave.
I always return, at least once,
just to remind them how cute I fucking am.
Wombling away the night-time
‘Picking up things that the everyday folks
haven’t locked up or nailed down’
A-tatting and ‘Ra-Ra-Rag-Bone-ing’
the hungover, early afternoons.
My terrier’s name is ‘Get Off My Land’
she makes the Old Dears go ‘Aww’
and open their coin-purses faster
when I shopfront-busk harmonica.
There’s a charm and a wild beauty
in always a-roving and a-rambling.
Though the trail through the villainous day
be treacherous and ‘Hard As Nails’
But, it’s the custom for this Welsh Pikey…
‘Here’s Me Hand & Here’s Me Heart’
for I would not have it any other way.
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/
“Every day I look at the computer
and cry,” she said
Then she went to a candlelight vigil
for some group or other
and I considered whether
to relapse on drugs
or write something down
It seems to me
by the time we figure out
who should go to which bathroom
we will all have been lined up
and shot
Big T will have it all sewn up
and the candlelight vigils
will be for our fallen.
Jon Bennett is a writer and musician living in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find his music on Pandora and iTunes, and a selection of his writing at http://www.jonbennett.info. For books, correspondence, or cds, email jonbennett14@hotmail.com.
booby traps
in the meniscus
oaths sworn
into the dire waiting faces
of complete
strangers
think what you will
of rhinoplasty
and the 40 hour
week
of suicide cults
in the name of
closure
I have drawn a picture
no conclusions, just this single
picture
which I will tear into strips
and try to eat in under
forty-five minutes
the dark so full
of itself
and bear traps
and torn labrums
and crates
of international shipping
at the bottom
of the stymied
toothache
sea.
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.
My cheeks are as clear
as a baby’s bottom.
I have a friend in Chile
he says he’s gonna take me hiking
when I go visit.
I also have a friend in Germany.
He says people cut their hair themselves there.
They are individualists
and they talk about Shakespeare
and Goethe
while doing their laundry, like, I know
right?
I’ve got a very global
perspective, it just comes
natural.
I feel terribly for those people starving
all over the place
and I wish there was something I could
do about it
and the bombs and killing and I mean
why do people have to
fight all the time?
Why can’t they just
do yoga
they’d surely feel a lot
more wholesome.
I work part time at the co-op grocery store
so I can buy my American Spirit cigarettes
which I smoke between classes
at the foot of the Cesar Chavez statue
who did so much for the
people from Peru.
I’m a comparative religion major
with a minor in poetry
as you can see from my dread locks I have a
very rebellious soul.
Look at me
walking down 4th Avenue
toward the Moon Coffee Shop
and wallow in the glow of my humility.
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.
Deep in
Delirium
Tremens
With the
business
end
of a
double-barrel
shotgun
over
his own
blazing
heart
he
silenced
the demons
We had an open casket
Nathanael William Stolte is the author of four chapbooks, A Beggars Book of Poems, Bumblebee Petting Zoo, Fools’ Song & Unformed Creature. His poems have appeared in Ghost City Review, Guide to Kulture Creative Journal, Five-to-One Magazine #thesideshow, Rusty Truck Zine, Poems-For-All, The Buffalo News, The Rising Phoenix Review, & Plurality Press. He is the Acquisitions Editor for CWPCollective Press. He was voted best poet in Buffalo by Artvoices’ “Best of Buffalo” in 2016. He is a madcap, punk-rock, D.I.Y. Buffalo bred & corn-fed poet.
watching the snow
from the second floor
a bar, a reading, Christmas presents
in the window, strings of lights above the frame
today it was confirmed
I knew it was coming
laid off in a few weeks
this is the second, maybe the third
year in a row that I’m rolling the same scenario
I’m tired
I think over unemployment past
it seems to come with the winter
it seems now to come more frequently
2000 was high on the hog
working twenty hours, funemployment
if you will. I was making more money
than I’d ever made, I guess that was
the good old days now
05 was a fucking mess
no part time jobs, benefits had been cut
you did your best to stretch and pay
the rent while living out of bars
12 was running full speed
a season on the road milking
a severance package, figuring
it would all come together
it never did
14 it was grilled cheese
twice a day, an indian buffet
for a treat, a box of wine a week
and an unfinished novel
four people living in a one
bedroom apartment
Last year it was living off
a princely sum for selling off
a nice jazz collection
last year it was losing my mind
my moorings, there was no way to sit still
today john glenn died, rather than
wonder what’s next, I think about
past america’s, the one trump
wants to resurrect, the one you can’t
resurrect. there seems to have
been a future once, we looked at stars
other worlds, even the working
class had optimism, each generation
building off the last. those dreams
now seem so far away
Consider my mother still working
two jobs at 62, she raised me on social
security after my dad died, she put
herself through school at the same time
if that was an option now, it won’t be anymore
she deserves better, we all do
Still I wonder what happened to those dreams
if anyone still dreams them
a Edward Bellamy world
A Eugene Debs world
a new deal world
a new frontier world
instead we get nightmares
instead we get the dawn of 1984
Jason Baldinger has spent a life in odd jobs, if only poetry was the strangest of them he’d have far less to talk about. He’s traveled the country and written a few books, the latest of which are The Lower 48 (Six Gallery Press) and The Studs Terkel Blues (Night Ballet Press). A short litany of publishing credits include Blast Furnace, The Glassblock, Lilliput Review, Green Panda Press, Pittsburgh Poetry Review and Fuck Art, Let’s Dance. You can hear audio versions of some poems on Bandcamp, just type in his name.
In Between Hangovers 