Things Never Go Right by Peter Magliocco

It’s going to be harder getting up
every morning:  all the aging
residue of everything kicking in,
leaving you a murky mirror face
to stare unrepentantly back at.

When the rug you sweep life under
has had enough for the time being,
the noxious squirm of it all will
invade your pores incrementally
with the expired odor of ages:

Never mind natural sounds of sunrise
clocking in for the day shift
or being a semi-loser again,
twilight lurks in the background
promising another restless night

Priming you for a fall
from homely gracelessness
into your oft-sequestered retreat
where things never go right,

even trying
to end
this poem.

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he occasionally edits the lit-zine ART:MAG. He has forthcoming poetry in HARBINGER ASYLUM, POETRY PACIFIC, MIDNIGHT LANE BOUTIQUE, and elsewhere. His speculative sci-fi novel The Burgher of Virtual Eden is now an ebook available at all the usual places.

 

Untitled 2 by William C. Blome

Huffing, huffing in a peach orchard,
trying to reach ripe clings for the likes of you,
and wishing I could take a load off
on any lower branch that’s still too high
for even my Great Dane to arch and woof
and spray upon: oh I have zero doubt
I could have been swell pals with Mussolini,
a baldy Benito stomping the railyards
while his bullwhip dragged the ground around
the many ties he crossed, and as I say,
that’s my-guy Benny puffing like a prostitute
just to make the choo-choos come on time.

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such wondrous places as In Between Hangovers, Poetry London, PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Phenomenal Literature, and The California Quarterly.

Angry Sex Poem by Paul Tristram

I am just SO very into you…
you fucking cunt!
Look at me shaking in fury.
I broke a tooth last week
cursing your gorgeous/bastard name
drunk up to the demented heavens.
I’m normally placid and even natured…
but, this ‘Thing’, whatever the fuck it is?
has filled me full to the brim
with hellfire & deso-fucking-lation.
Don’t wash… so I can taste you more.
Cry… so I can cradle you warmly
to my loving, caring chest
and strangle the fucking life out of you.
I am possessed by love
or something just as ych y fi awful.
I dare another girl
to even ask you the time of day…
I’d take her fucking head clean off
with just one single reaper-glance.

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/

Company by Alan Catlin

The fictional character she most
resembled was a badly aged
Blanche DuBois. Her skin was
no so much pale as faded as if
she had been leached of life one
corpuscle at a time. The dress
she most favored was a bridesmaid
gown left over from the almost
wedding of Miss Havisham; not so
much dirty but reeking of old age,
sweat, and oily skin, grimed in a
way no washing could ever cleanse.
What was left of her hair was the kind
of in-between blonde and gray,
an impossible to define coloration
of something long buried once again
seeing light.  If she partook of food
none of the nutrients had been retained
and added as fat to her bones.
Was more a spectral presence than
something that had either been living
or dead. No one had spoken her name
for so long she’d almost forgotten she
had one.  Spoke in whispers to people
no one else would ever see. Company,
at last, she thought, a reason to go on.

Alan Catlin is the poetry editor of misfitmagazine.net. His latest books of poetry are American Odyssey from Future Cycle and Last Man Standing from Lummox Press

Cowgirl Poet by Tricia Marcella Cimera

don’t fence me in — cole porter/robert fletcher
horses, horses, horses, horses — patti smith

you want to rein me in
crack your whip
break my stride
but I’m a cowgirl poet &
my poems are horses
horses running free
I write them & I ride them
when they give the word
what makes you think
my wild   my galloping
my bucking horses
would ever stop   for you?

Tricia Marcella Cimera will forever be an obsessed reader and lover of words. Look for her work in these diverse places: Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Foliate Oak, Fox Adoption, Hedgerow, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones, Yellow Chair Review, and elsewhere. She has a micro collection of water-themed poems called THE SEA AND A RIVER 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.

Quagmire by David Spicer

Death row and dominoes keep Mercedes
alive after the last breakout months ago.
From the rubble of flaunting handshakes
by mistresses of expatriates’ hell
to the small club of repressed eminence.
She is muse and sage alive
in a dynasty of deflated pride.
A coterie of one who presents herself
sixteen roses each birthday. Her crime
an ancient merger of truth and nonsense:
she dismembered a husband, dumped
his artifacts from a chauffeured biplane.
Now petite chancellor of life’s
grey tower, Mercedes has decided to wangle
down’s gambit manifest with a shy demeanor—
she challenges the warden to a boxing match,
wins by nurturing him to near death
with her poison punches, watches the referee
count him out to inmates’ cheers.
Her sentence is not commuted, the cardinal
sin an outbreak of naïveté. She kicks kilometers
in the yard every day, clips her shadow
each step she climbs up
and down over and over,
burning days away like an angry zipper wick.

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Easy Street, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Santa Clara Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Midnight Lane Boutique, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. His latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press.

Overt and Covert by Sanjeev Sethi

When excessive glue is placed on the throat of an envelope
it escapes, while fastening the seal flap. As with mucilage
it’s the makeup of secrets to stumble. Some of us keep
elements of our existence hush-hush but chroniclers
slide into coverings. Unlike historians, quidnuncs hew
their version with pepper-uppers. We land up as artifacts
in the minds of  those in our acquaintanceship. No point
in concealing treasure-troves, interest is temporal. Of
the substantive issues, those who have to know will.

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: London Grip, Skylight 47 Poetry, The Curly Mind, With Painted Words, Spillwords, Indefinite Space, Mad Swirl, Olentangy Review, Yellow Mama, New Mystics, Soul-Lit, Futures Trading, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Lilly, Lonely Trailer Prostitute (V2) by Michael Lee Johnson

Paint your face with cosmetic smiles.
Toss your breast around with synthetic plastic.
Don’t leak single secrets to strangers-
locked in your trailer 8 foot wide by 50 foot long
with twisted carrots, cucumbers, weak batteries,
and colorful dildos-you’ve even given them names:
Adams’s pleasure skin, big Ben on the raise, Rasputin:
the Mad Monk-oh no, no, no.
Your legs hang with the signed signatures
of playboys and drifters ink.
The lot rent went up again this year.
Paint your face, walk the streets
again with cosmetic smiles.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, IL. Mr. Johnson published in more than 925 small press magazines online and print. His poems have appeared in 27 countries as of this date, he edits, publishes 10 different poetry sites, with over 103 videos on YouTube. Michael Lee Johnson was nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015, and Best of the Net, 2016.

Childless by G. Louis Heath

I stand on the brink of the
Great void of infinity. My

Withering, ancient body
Expires soon, no mulligans

Allowed, though there may
Be an exception for special

Me. You see, I never begat a
Genetic bequest to do my part

For the United States Census.
So, God, please hear me. Grant

Me just one request: Give me
One more chance to be a stud.

G. Louis Heath, Ph.D., Berkeley, 1969, is Emeritus Professor, Ashford University. Clinton, Iowa. He enjoys reading his poems at open mics. He often hikes along the Mississippi River, stopping to work on a poem he pulls from his back pocket, weather permitting. His books include Leaves Of Maple, Long Dark River Casino, and Redbird Prof: Poems Of A Normal U, 1969-1981. He has published poems in a wide array of journals, including Eunoia, Episteme, Black Poppy Review, Lunaris Review, Indiana Voice Review, Whispers, Dead Snakes, Raw Dog Press, Weird Reader, Literary Yard, and Houseboat Literary Magazine.

Hell by Grant Guy

The last thing
The frog sees
When the Northern Pike
Is eating it
Is the Northern Pike.
Now that is Hell.

When you catch a Northern Pike
The last thing it sees
Before it dies
Is you.
Now that is Hell.

The last thing I see
Deep sea diving off the coast of Australia
When the white shark
Is eating me
Is the white shark.
Now that is hell.

Grant Guy is a Winnipeg, Canada, poet, writer and playwright. Former artistic director of Adhere + Deny. His writings have been published in Canada, the United States and England. He has three books published; Open Fragments, On the Bright Side of Down and Bus Stop Bus Stop. He was the 2004 recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s 2004 Award of Distinction and the 2017 recipient of the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Difference Award.