6/4/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Michael Benson Alexander Rabb CC OUTSIDE McSORLEY’S Stepping outside for a smoke it whispers into a cheap battery tape recorder: America has no conscience, scream from the upper deck vomit over the railing, tough luck to the suckers below Five glasses of tea drunk from a crusty bathroom glass Policeman paints carefully with minute brush on hotel walls tells him he had no right to touch the night, so fragile ambulance shatters the pane of india ink tinkling shard rain onto the damned puzzle pieces scatter in a nine-tails wind, uptown shooting gallery packed to the rafters with heavily perfumed long island ladies pasted like paper dolls onto a street corner seen from above, seen from trees aged beauty queens in torn Halloween masks, a nightstick sunset polar queen high beams her cross-legged and dilated duplicity, the image absorbs flame, sorts out repulsion they with their martini and we with our number have settled in for a long winter’s bummer, wonder about wonder, the soothing cream, the balm, unbottled elixir, girls smart girls the type of girls who always won the pencil box standing sideways to fit between the school and the warehouse, a village dive, this is a muscle-shirt jock who slaps the pinball machine like it was his wife, don’t look in the broken windows, don’t drink in basement bars don’t talk to anyone else, man—this is our trip sandpapered fingertips through mink, bitter aspirin and sleepless dream transform without animation, lay swollen on wet sheets crib sleep textures threadbare moonlight clawing arm limbs of shadow tree frenchmen in berets beckon the girls, sniff the barstools, dream of boxer friends with shattered noses and a great right hand, women in shades piss in a Roman fountain and it wandered back into mcsorleys for one more salted beer before home UNDERTOW At the surfers’ beach three miles west of Lido I went for a swim when I was 23 I ran naked through the sand plunged into the froth and the undertow swallowed me My life flashed across the sky… Boy stands dirty feet Middle of a brick street Seventeen in her underwear Edge of a summer cot. Stone. Arrowhead. Stone. Arrowhead. Tear tracks through summer dust Through an empty jelly jar. She got warts all over her hands, Pissed on by a toad. Petrified wood, she sings opera Sings of sweet stolen plums Pass a joint inside a copse of weeping willows. Crack open a Genny. Crack of the bat. Crack. Hippie girl twirls in the sunshine In a field of timothy Her nipples rising to the sun like flowers. Stone. Stone. Stone. Arrowhead. Coming together forever bound. Barefoot girl in cutoffs Walks along the railroad tracks Mature elms on either side. Route 66 in a Pinto tangerine dream WSAY plays Humble Pie and Mott. Jack Ruby moves boomerang style, Dancing in and out of Oswald’s belly. A clown smoking a cigarette with carpenter fingers Brylcreem boys rob a bar after closing, Steal the “good luck” dollars taped to the wall. Barefoot boy in the tenement window Looks directly at us through an empty jelly jar. The undertow spit me out three miles down range, so strange Now I’m 63 and I wear a mask, lie in a tent Waiting for the flash… Nurse Amy, can you hear my ventilator? It sounds like bagpipes and a shiny accordion. Undertow spit me out, one more time. KAYFABE UNIVERSE Sounds of the populous are controlled by him, but he’s too Nervous from the overhead footsteps, from the silent piano untuned yet tuneful. The pornographers wore black to the funeral Hands folded, checking out the legs on the mafia daughter The priest said no heaven except in your memories, except in your pocket, Her date had a bulge under his arm and bragged of his cattle prod that really worked And the swamp woman sang her tune, a bad tune, a last lullaby Floating on the calm seas of forever, and minds wandered——-- Perchance to dream of Sizzling resin in a glass pipe, the love-worn works and a half-can of Fosters Sawed in two with a brick and a stick, A Hardy Boy in Case of the Codeine Culvert A quiet spot near the dartboard, sawdust floor, rickety table move to a booth With an inconspicuousness, near invisibility—but it only works in the Early afternoon no matter how rainy it is and there is no blood pumping Through the veins of the floorboards. Hair the color of honey and a midnight blue dress shifting at the hem like canned heat in super slo-mo, bring my baby back to the final love bite on the final cul-de-sac, she’s gulping air, pushing out her long neck, stretch it out, pull it with an upper lip and hillbilly big feet, just inside the notorious ladies room where the fat blonde actress crawled from a Lou Reed song fell and hit her head on the numeraled tile, across the kayfabe universe busted open by a shiny blade, right/left brains going at it, hemispheres polluted. His heavy gait, heart-attack shoulders, his faux fans grooving on his mack the knife after long lunches, singing the poet must stand naked but hides behind the nakedness of its poem Where is the poetry of breath when there is no air? What is the poetry of suffocation? Don’t let go, when it lets go, it learns limitatations, so go baby go He’s sitting in for a few, the price of drinks displayed over the bar Like declarations of V-J Day, and he’s pouring house liquor on a bleeding ulcer Skulls with swords to the neckbone peer through the black holes drinking pultizer juice from the stanley cup with an oscar in his fist, some horrific apparatus code-named gaping for use just before the motor oil and there it was. welcome to the wonderful world of show business The black creek clouds lifted And I could see that he was me and the thick boys by the lake were men And they didn’t poke with forks and those weren’t turtles they threw in the water And I was healed GAUZEHAND Wispy timothy like an old man’s hair, wild strawberries ripening, filling the air large red stain on the hammock, the distinctive smoky smell of the unpainted cinderblock madwoman listening for martians in our washing machine once she was the girl in the home-made dress with the dirty neck now she flounced butterfly hallways carving knife half book of matches, the 44 Club build a barn and jump the black pony bareback later, lovingly apply the saddle soap that was the summer Marilyn Monroe died you could climb the corncrib without it bending in the barn a blue metal tackle box of treasure talismen of summer: a small bird’s nest, a cocoon, a piece of petrified wood a series of Man in Space coins issued by Lipton tea. Living above in the rafters a tumbling pigeon named Lucky Strike after the filterless cigarette Cowboys and Indians searching for arrowheads If lost we could use the plants as a compass Dick was the man next door filthy drunk and mean He had the neighbor’s dog put down and shot Lucky Strike Pigeon-toed footprints in the dust, the balded soles of battered tennis shoes You can’t play The Name Game (Mike-mike-bo-bike, banana fanna fo fike) With the names Chuck, Mitch, and Marty Then a monstrous thunderstorm blew across the land Bending trees and backs under a black and yellow sky He wrote the time of my death with a gauze-covered hand And his face came off with his glasses Put the gin in the freezer and don’t drink till it’s thick Father Hartman sent us home, middle of mass Told us to pray this wasn’t world war three Lee looked like he was saying no, his head tossing side to side The color of yesterday’s Morning News As they loaded him into the magic ambulance And whisked him off to Parkland to die. Urban conflagration: an overzealous K9 unit and a slapped woman The news swelling inside a Joseph Avenue vein So there were signs, lugnuts loosening A $200 pre-fab shack from Sears and drinks at the Castle Inn Where unshaved ghosts of men go face down on the well-polished bar, bragging of the young’ns they’d nailed, while out back The children smoke cigarettes and play simon says in staccato. Michael Benson is one of today's most popular true-crime writers. His books--including Betrayal In Blood, Murder In Connecticut, Killer Twins, The Burn Farm, Mommy Deadliest, A Killer's Touch, Evil Season, and The Devil at Genesee Junction--tell vividly of today's most heinous criminals, and the clever and stalwart lawmen who bring them to justice. He is currently a regular commentator for two true-crime series, Evil Twins and Evil Kin, on the Investigation Discovery (I.D.) channel, and had also made guest appearances on that channel's Evil Stepmoms, Deadly Sins, Southern Fried Homicide, and On the Case with Paula Zahn. Benson's most recent crime book, The Devil at Genesee Junction, tells the story of his return to the scene of a childhood trauma. Two of his friends were murdered and mutilated near his rural home south of Rochester, N.Y. when he was nine. Those murders were never solved. As an adult and veteran true-crime writer, Benson teamed up with the mother of one of the victims and a local private investigator to heat up that cold case and propel it in a startling new direction. Benson has a B.A. with honors in Communication Arts from Hofstra University, and currently lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is the winner of an Academy of American Poets award.
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Alexander Rabb CC The Art of Motherfuckery To you, subtlety is a form of cowardice. My desire to show you the fragile misty grays in everything, you see as my fear. I will have to swallow your blood, or my own. You show me that one of us must die. The Murderer’s Son you were on his list of stops he came looking for you but you weren’t home so he went to your mother’s house she was there your whole life your father was the train your father was the train whistle and you were the wreckage he left on the tracks Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. Her work is found in many diverse places online and in print. Her micro-chapbook entitled GO SLOW, LEONARD COHEN, released through the Origami Poems Project, contains the Pushcart Prize nominated ‘plum poem’. Tricia lives with her husband and family of cats in Illinois, in a town called St. Charles, by a river named Fox, with a Poetry Box (also named Fox) in her front yard. 6/4/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Peggy Turnbull Alexander Rabb CC Western Dad He wakes at midnight, pulls on yesterday’s clothes, tugs on his good boots and sits in the dark, waiting for the microwave’s glowing numerals to fade into morning’s white noise. Sixteen hours later, he hobbles towards me with swollen ankles, legs stiff as stick ponies. “Wear your sneakers,” I scold. He answers, At my funeral, you can put my boots on a table in the back of the church. Searcher at the Christian Retreat A woman kneels at the altar, her spine twisted. Is pain the path to you? In a pew, a man bends his forehead to his clasped hands. Do you speak to him? Soldered into stained glass-- icons of hope and power. Are you the light straining through? A murmur of air. I place my prayer on the tiny breeze. Take it if you wish. Peggy Turnbull began writing poetry after retiring from her work as a university librarian. She lives in Wisconsin in a medium-sized city on the shore of Lake Michigan. She has developed a recent interest in identifying local wildflowers and considers herself lucky to be able to find them on her neighborhood walks. Her first chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her poetry has been recently published in Bramble, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rats Ass Review, and Poetry Superhighway. 6/4/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Steve Passey Alexander Rabb CC Here You Are Once you admit that you are afraid you can then start to be brave, so, be afraid. Be afraid together, if you can. It is the beginning of being strong, and then you can stand run live breathe, and maybe even forget. It’s all you can do. Then a Dog Barks, or the Phone Rings Before the dream ends there is this thing, and it sounds like men drowning, drowning where we all give up at once because there is no more room on the boats. We sink beneath the water like men falling through the air. Then a dog barks, or the phone rings “Are you ok?” “I’m doing alright.” “Are you sure?” Well, it’s still out there, day or night, out on the water where the current carries us out of sight of shore, This thing that sounds like drowning. It does not bear repeating, and There isn’t anything else to say So yes, I am sure. I’m doing alright. Fire of the Pleiades I can see even from this distance where someone has made a fire in an old burning barrel in defiance of the law. Sparks from the fire rise, red and elated, to hail their sisters in the Pleiades and I think that no one (No one) should seek the intervention of the law and that there should be fires like this, fires at night where the sparks rise and rise and the luckiest, the bravest, and the most joyful of them all, become new stars. Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections "Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock" (Tortoise Books, 2017), "Cemetery Blackbirds" (Secret History Books, 2020), the novella "Starseed" (Seventh Terrace), and many other individual things. He is a Pushcart and best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review. 6/4/2020 0 Comments Hope by Susan Darlington Jeff Ruane CC HOPE The daughter that I never bore has got lips the colour of the blood I shed every cycle. She’s got skin that’s been cut from the cold white sheets on which I lie every night and her hair is dark as the loam in which I scatter seeds so I can watch green shoots struggle for life. Her name is on the tip of my tongue in the beat between when you ask if I have children and I answer ‘no’. She remains innocent to the family traditions I found, which are in my blood yet shared with my laughter lines alone. And her hand slips away from mine when my comb is tangled in silver and when there is no next month. Susan Darlington is a poet and arts journalist based in West Yorkshire, UK. Her work regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in the UK and US (Fragmented Voices, Algebra Of Owls, Runcible Spoon, and Gypsy Art Show among others). Her debut collection, ‘Under The Devil’s Moon’, was published by Penniless Press Publications in 2015. 6/4/2020 0 Comments Mercy by Don Thompson Ben Seidelman CC Mercy Again last night, barely audible, those old rumors of mercy drifted down from the north, mentioned by the wind in passing-- under its breath, almost as if embarrassed. Denied by owls—officially. Mocked by coyotes in the winter fields behind our house. A fool’s solace. Maybe. Confirmed only by feral cats that live by faith, showing up on the porch at sunrise, never doubting that I’ll have mercy and feed them. Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. Retired from teaching in a prison, he lives with his wife, Chris, on her family’s fourth generation farm near Buttonwillow. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com. Ben Seidelman CC The Lost Child Your shadow darkens on the flap of the tent, summoned in nylon and mushroom breath. Your pigtail hangs long on your back, mimicking mine. I want to take your hand, say daughter, daughter. Repeat daughter, daughter. Say the words until the air solidifies with you. Daughter, daughter, I tell you, I had a name ready for you. I gave it to the dog. Lynn Valentine lives on the Black Isle with husband and Labradors. Her work has been published in in places such as Northwords Now and The Blue Nib. She is organising her first poetry collection under the mentorship of Cinnamon Press after winning a place on their Pencil mentoring competition. 6/4/2020 1 Comment Poetry by Steve Deutsch Alexander Rabb CC Captain Jack I almost passed him by-- so folded into himself he looked more turtle than seven year old boy. I had wandered over cautiously-- fascinated by the verbal fistfight rattling his second story windows. “Captain Jack is home,” I thought. It’s what we called that tight little man who sported a pencil mustache and a mermaid tattoo on each arm. He was Navy Shore Patrol, and Mom told me I was not to visit when the Captain was home. She did not issue many warnings. It was, after all, Brooklyn and she thought it best I figure things out for myself. My best friend, Joel, did not want to talk just then. He nursed the kind of wound that would never really heal. But, later that day in the school yard he told me his dad the Captain was teaching him to box. And, assuming a Joe Louis stance, he raised his boyish hands-- half-hiding his bludgeoned eye. Urban Legend Eddie told everyone Benny lived in a fourth-floor walk up on Watkins Avenue, in one of those crummy tenements that only had heat in the summer-- but he later admitted he’d never been there. Jenny said her cousin Ray told her Benny lived with his mom and dad and that the mom was old country, spoke only Yiddish, and took in sewing to pay for luxuries—like rent. “Desperately poor,” She said Ray said. But, we all knew Ray made up stories and, when pressed, he’d only say, “How would I know?” Marty was sure that Benny’s dad led a horse-drawn cart around the cobbled streets of Brownsville. selling rags and tin pots and sharpening knives-- “for future suicides,” we’d joke, and then remember Anna, who had. Looks just like him, Marty insisted, but the guy was named Jesus and came from San Juan, and Benny was as Jewish as Solomon. Benny would come by midweek dressed in what must have been his dad’s cast-offs and black high-top sneakers that might have been new twenty years ago. He’d join us for basketball-- taking the court with a winning smile, though he dribbled like he thought the ball was radioactive and he might—god forbid-- have to pick it up. Other days, Ricky assured us with great authority, Benny ran a floating craps game in a school yard somewhere in East New York. But Ricky had no idea why someone needed to run a craps game. And what did “floating” mean anyway-- Hucklebenny on a raft on the East River? Benny could talk you inside out and seemed to know all there was to know about everything. It was a bit of a challenge-- even for those of us who went to class hoping to learn what Thomas Jefferson High School had to teach, and Davy might say, “Let’s see what he knows about the Spanish Civil War,” and just like that Benny would take you to Barcelona to the aroma of saffron and garlic and the sound of the ocean breaking the news of the death of the Republic. But what Benny knew best was baseball. ERAs and Batting Averages and who would play who two weeks from Wednesday-- and yes, he made a little book, and yes, he made a little money-- but no one begrudged him that. I pictured him the next Mel Allen but they drafted him and sent him to Nam with the rest of the kids from Watkins and Thatford, Chester and Bristol. And some came back-- older and odder, and as doomed as that Spanish Republic, but Benny never did. Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in MacQueen’s, 8 Poems, Louisiana Lit, Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Biscuit Root Drive, Evening Street, Better Than Starbucks, Flashes of Brilliance, SanAntonio Review, Softblow, Mojave River Review, The Broadkill Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble, New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory will be published by Kelsay in September 2020. 6/4/2020 0 Comments Sleeping Beaten by Melisscious Jeff Ruane CC Sleeping Beaten A name wasn't what they called me. What they called me identified me by the colour of my skin. The colour of mud. The colour of faded, lead-based paint. The paint on a broken, battered old truck. I felt drawn to it. Out in a mossy, mushy field of broken dreams alone. It sat long enough to sink into the pungent, thick mud. Still, it cut a menacing shape in the dim light. Wind rustling what little grass and sticks managed to claw skywards. Plodding toward it through the muck I thought of hunting in the marshes. I imagined it heading toward someone on an empty country lane. The last set of headlights they'd ever see coming out of the night. A night similar to this? The landscape illuminated by moonlight and memories. An unusual chill to the air for this time of year. As if the warmth of the world had no reason to come into this field near this junked out, forgotten wreck. The smell of soil mixed with the perfume of rot, oxidizing metal and in my imagination, the faintest hint of denim. Peeking inside the window I tasted the dust of time and motor oil. Oil that long ago leaked into the ground. The vintage smells accelerated my imagination. Till I thought the headlights would blaze to life. Round yellow eyes in a dark metal face. Grill twisting into a painful smile. Suddenly lurching to drag me into the rusty earth. Ridiculous. The musty air seemed dead. No living thing could be heard or seen. The crown jewel of a family of ghosts. Slowly driving itself into the ground. The "Melisscious" Moose (Sou-rth America) or Me-saw (Ex), is a member of the 3rd World Brave subfamily and is the nicest viper in the Bahadur pit. Distinguished by the broad landscapes with words and an hourglass figure. Typically inhabits forests, inground pools, and cities. Driving and other human activities cause an expansion in range size. Reintroduced to the coast, salty air & big trees. Found in Canada, H*ll and the Pacific ocean. Diet consists of fruits, vegetables, w**d, sour candy, wild forage, healthy meat and anything that gets close enough to her mouth; 'Opportunivore'. 6/4/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Cameron Morse Jeff Ruane CC
Brain Scans Having a baby is the mousetrap in me, her cries the tremor my ear is sprung to, my leaping heart, I am so tightly wound. Night snow powders the cheeks of the lawn, fresh as a newly sliced limb, this morning of maniacally honking geese, bird prints of feet like jet planes flying backwards. After my five-year cancerversary, I decide to drop my brain scans down one: an annual review. Beyond the front stoop, green porcupines a white scalp of snow. The grass is growing back. Chitter, chirr, chitter, cheep! How grateful I am not to have to overwinter alone in an empty bird bath. Bathe me, instead, with birds. Go, Dog. Go! November twilight, a.k.a. late afternoon, cirrocumulus float at 20,000 feet, salmon bellied pink above the down sun, the diffusion of light a sleight of hand whereby we darken in each other’s eyes. Cirrocumulus at sundown, a wingspan fanning upward its corrugated blade of pink feathers. The air darkens us in each other’s eyes. Faint pink intensifies to conflagration. Could there be another way for the day to end than this bonfire of our lives leaving us daily to darken? Even my two-year-old knows to be sad when the dogs climb into their gigantic bed. If only we were going somewhere with a purpose. If only we were going to a big tree party. Seattle The sky’s blue cupboard is bare. I decide to learn the names of clouds, photograph the page in my son’s Encyclopedia and the sky goes blank, forgetting the names of its own children. When I decide to glean light from the leaves, they close up their shutters. Yesterday an inborn diamond, a rainbow prism, today a tumbling foreskin. There has to be a message for us in this, because yesterday we held workshop in a coffeehouse that closed. We talked line breaks you were always moving, you were always moving to Seattle, verdant city of your grandchildren. My body remembers its hunger, the sad sermon of ache, because no one would feed me, no one wanted me to live, I lay down and buried my face. I lay down and faded into the sky’s blue upholstery. Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He lives with his wife Lili and two children in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website. |
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