& A COUPLE OF WEAKNESSES

​there’s something satisfying about wild turkeys
pillow talk & Doris Day
the pancreas
 
parsnips
purses from WalMart
platonic friends (though I am seeing this other girl)
 
divination in your teacup—honey and clouds
gluten free peanut butter cereal
shooting musicians
 
toddlers teetering down runways & baby cappuccinos
broken down dolls
the doll hospital filling with cigarette smoke
 
sea salt caramels
I have become accustomed to rejection





AGAINST DECORUM
 
I am not on the market &
of course I am simply not
 
dating Satan nor any of Them
though
 
their inner demons
are rather quite rakish
 
a paradox of peroxides, bald pates
pesticides, sociopaths, math majors
 
who have no real skills but still
jab jab jab my tender scars
 
what is appropriate AD
(after divorce)
 
there is so much more (to/in/about) me
than just the facts





AGNOSTICS

protection | compliance
non-persistent work space
& secure by design
 
as-a-service why
are men so difficult
 
non-disruptive
benchmarkable performance
data is available
 
minimizing the risk
the rush off a cliff
 
scrying for the other wing
Rapunzel let down her hair
during a boot storm
 
& before she put her lipstick on
you are defeated





GHOST RANCH
 
walk the labyrinth
between flagstone / river rock
prickly pear / fluxweed’s pale petals
mediations / compass points
heartfelt truths with stones
blue lace agate settles
in the cup of coffee
gusty winds may exist



​

 Bio: Laura LeHew’s collections include: Becoming (Another New Calligraphy), Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press), It’s Always Night, It Always Rains,(Winterhawk Press) and Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press). Lana Hechtman Ayers says “As dark as the reality of Becoming is, the journey is redeemed by unflinching examination, moments of unwavering generosity, and the faithful testimony of survival.” In her other life Laura owns a computer forensics and network security consulting company. Laura received her MFA from the California College of Arts. She edits her small press Uttered Chaos www.utteredchaos.org. Laura always thought she’d be an astronaut lauralehew.com.

Rite Of Passage

New to the city,
broke but too shame-faced
to wire home for money,
I strummed a few tunes
for coins at a local coffee house.
I crashed with my audience.
They figured you can trust
a guy with a six string
and a heart to match.
The kindness of strangers
came down to two male English majors,
a female lawyer wannabe
with a taste for my accent
and another male art student
with a penchant for splashing
bright colors on walls.
I hung out there till I found a job
cleaning dishes and a tiny room
on the top floor of a tenement
that looked out over alleys and dumpsters.
And with squalor came fitful sleep
thanks to a lumpy mattress,
sirens and screams half the night.
I was surviving,
thriving as my more romantic notions
would have it,
I was Dylan in the Village,
Hart Crane in London,
Hemingway in Paris...
now if only the heat worked.
Two kinds of deprivation I reckon;
the one you choose,
the one that chooses you.
Art has to hurt
and sometimes self-immolation must do
for real threats.
At night, more coffee houses, more strumming,
wearing my crummy digs like a badge.
In the daytime,
scribbling new songs in a notebook,
protesting wrongly arrested black kids,
listening to the bongo beaters in the park.
It sure beats working in the hardware store.
Pity about the health benefits.

Six months of this
and I'd lost twenty pounds,
broken two guitar strings
I couldn't afford to replace,
got high on second hand marijuana smoke,
was still washing dishes for a living,
and my apartment may as well have had
bars on the window,
to clarify my position as the prisoner within.
Now I was Edmond Dantes in the Chateau d'If,
Prometheus bound to a rock,
Napoleon on Elba.
My choice then was either
dream dead in New York City wasteland
or dream deferred under parent’s watchful eye.
I scrimped together bus fare and left,
arrived home twenty pounds lighter
and scratching my beard.
Mother hugged me.
Old man snarled, "I told you so."
Younger brother asked a thousand questions,
started making his own plans
So my younger brother's me a year ago.
And the old man could well be me,
twenty, thirty years past.
And I'm me at this very moment
wondering what the hell do I do with my life.
But my mother hugged me.
And she must have someone in her arms.





In Context

With our pry bars and hacksaws
and holsters loaded up with tools,
we patrol the hills, the valleys of wrecks,
to the sound of scurrying rats and mice,
and gulls scouring this ocean of rust.

We're gear heads, widget collectors,
who have come to reclaim
the likes of handles, cylinder heads,
air springs, speakers, hubcaps and hood ornaments.

These cars are bodiless graves.
The corpses smell of grease not rotting flesh.
And busted windshields, crushed driver side doors,
tell gory tales that we don't wish to hear
as we break off or unscrew our little treasures.

There are no mourners here to stop us.
No angels made of springs and airbags
begging us to respect the dead.

This could be the steering wheel
that crushed a chest, busted a heart.
But one more turn of the Phillips head,
one more jerk of the pliers...
how easily it comes out of the frame.

 Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Silkworm work upcoming in Big Muddy Review, Main Street Rag and Spoon River Poetry Review.   ​

wednesday morning anywhere
 
edward hopper scenes
from across the periwinkle street
 
sad, slouching sacks of flesh
illuminated in amber windows
 
small mechanized moments
between sips on coffee and the morning news
 
d.j.’s with no wit selling air
 
the hours that are never ours
even when we have them at our fingertips
 
barking dogs and booming bass
car horns and boat horns
 
scalding showers and unsatisfactory breakfasts
 
conversations that pass
into blandness or accusations
 
a dead cockroach that needs to be flushed
while searching for the hangover cure
 
another mass this, another mass that
 
politicians hanging freedoms like nooses
around that old poplar tree
 
blood on the leaves
 
that latest infotainment rag
glorious hollywood tits, glorious new york ass
 
all sewn up and bought and sold
 
rollicking commerce sailing down the river
echoing merrily, merrily, merrily
 
life is but the american dream.




03/06/2016
 
the people
have perfected themselves
into a wondrous
monotony
thin scarves
and coffee cups
smoothie sucking
in the sun
mechanical jubilations
coming from out
of sports bars
dog walker methane blues
a weekend repetition
playing out
on every block
swinging the wine bottle
i serpentine
a row of american flags
pass diners in an english pantry
writing cell phone novels
over their cold food
look into the grocery store
at the conveyors
of junk food
for conspicuous consumption
watch the cashiers
bag flavored
potato chips
tubs of ice cream
soda by the case
stealing debit card numbers
from frowning fat customers
so that they too
can have a small slice
of this
plastic
suffocating
sunny
american
daydream




we can’t go back
            --for kristofer collins
 
but it’s tuesday morning
sitting here over this coffee
another ceaseless brooklyn morning
shoulder pain and nose hairs
thinking but if i could go back
just once or a few times
maybe a weekday afternoon
with kris at the beehive
over those cappuccinos that
burned our hands each time
we took them up the steps
to that large room i remember
being bathed in gray light
from a sun that never quite
got caught in the pittsburgh sky
we’d sit somewhere where
we could both watch coeds and see that
oil painting of a southern preacher
the one who looked like george jefferson
and of course there’d be kerouac talk
conversation about girls and family and plans
to get out of pittsburgh for the summer
the ones that never materialized once
we received our first spring paychecks
and i’m not saying things were better back then
you see i’m done with that illusion
and i’ve somewhat accepted
the encroachment of time
maybe they were just different or
a touch less burdened or burdened
in a way that was suitable for the age
and i don’t go anywhere now where
i can kill hours like that
daydreaming away an afternoon
without thinking about the time i’ve lost
and most nights i can’t stay up
any later than ten on the dot
kris, we’ve talked kerouac to death
but, man, it’s been a long time
since i’ve had a cappuccino
bathed in that gray home city light
or really felt the sensation on

my chapped hands as i let them burn.      




the scam artist
 
looking out my kitchen window
into the vodka night
 
she passes dressed in a hoodie
clutching a cell phone
clutching herself
 
sees stupid me in the window
 
stops and spins
turns doe-eyed and comes closer
 
she says, since you’re looking
out the window anyway
i was wondering if i could ask you something
 
shoot, i say
because i still know how to talk to the young
and doe-eyed female
 
she says, you know 74th street
and shore drive, right
 
i nod
intimately, i say
 
well, she says, you see, my car….
 
i hold up my hand
and stop her right there
let me guess, i say
your car broke down and you need some money
 
she shakes her head
huddles into herself on a sixty degree night
for good measure
 
tilts her head and lifts those eyes
 
look, i tell her
i’ve heard this scam at least five times
in this neighborhood
 
it’s always some poor girl
clutching her dead phone at night
 
huddled into herself in any kind of weather
with a dead car just down the block.
 
sometimes they cry, i tell her
 
but have you heard it from me? she asks
 
silent
we stare at each other as the vodka night
starts to turn sober
 
i can’t help you, i finally say
 
she shrugs, gives me the finger
turns doe eyes and spins down the street
like it ain’t no thing
 
looking for the next idiot
around the next block
 
some money man who has yet to hear
her pitiful tale of woe
 
as i step away from the window
close the blinds on this side of humanity
 
and pour myself
another stiff one.


​

 Bio: John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), the novel, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and the forthcoming novel, The Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the section that doesn’t have the bike sharing program.

Veteran's Day Is Every Day for Him

“Screw the Vernal Equinox”
is all Cootie Kelly ever says
sitting triumphant with his
foaming glass of Guinness 
on the last stool at Maggie's
Stag & Doe Inn.

A stranger might walk in
or a friend of many years
and ask Cootie for the time
or if he has a match or
where a restaurant is
and his answer never varies.
“Screw the Vernal Equinox”

is all Cootie Kelly ever says
even before he went to Korea
and came home with medals
and a lovely bride, a nice lady 
who makes her own kimchee,
a piquant dish of pickled cabbage.
Cootie likes it so much he

brings a jar with him every day
to eat with Maggie’s grilled  
sausages and hard-boiled eggs,
soaking yolks in hot sauce first.
A lunch like this washed down
with plenty of foaming Guinness
has set Cootie Kelly up for life.
No wonder all he ever says is
“Screw the Vernal Equinox.”




A Mountain on the Lawn

You have the back rent 
and come home from work 
and find everything in a mountain 
out on the lawn with the kids
sitting on the curb crying
unable to get in after school.

You spend the night in the car
with your wife and the kids.
They’re all scared
and you wonder what 
to do in the morning.
You can’t go to work with 
everything on the lawn.
Neither can your wife.
What about the kids
and school?

Storage costs money
but that’s your back rent
or maybe rent for a new place.
How would you move
all that stuff anyway?
Who would help?
You tell your wife
everything will all work out,
both of you knowing
it’s all just begun.




A Predictable Life

He was predictable
all those years
going home after work
doing odd jobs
around the house
getting ready for 
work the next day.

He remained predictable
after the divorce
going home after work
doing odd jobs
getting ready for
work the next day.

He was still predictable
after he lost his job
applying for benefits
and looking for work
doing odd jobs
around the house
looking for work 
the next day.

He wasn’t predictable
after his benefits ran out
and the bank foreclosed
and he had to sell the car
and move to the streets.

He sleeps in hallways now
washes dishes in a diner
for breakfast and lunch 
and a few dollars to spend
at McDonald’s for dinner.

He’s predictable again
but he has no home
works harder for less
and can't vote this year.
He has no address.

​

 Bio: Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=​ 

​

 Bio: Christopher Lucka is a 26 year old photographer based in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Born in Los Angeles in 1989, he moved to New York in 2007. He began shooting in 2009, and immediately fell in love with photography. With roots as a street photographer with a passion for the surreal, he branched off into portraiture as well as focusing on architecture, dance, and social movements. Along with photography, he has an interest in writing, utilizing both mediums to evoke visceral emotions and ideas. His work is located at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sainthuck/