October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Take a bath, you filthy whore
And wash underneath your teats
Where the sweat tends to collect
And gel with cum lubricant.
Blow me off as we motor
Down Madison Avenue
Honking at every cab
And pedestrian alike.
We will piss on your sidewalk
And stack the trash on our curb;
Snickering at the tourists
We will insult the locals.
Letting cigarettes smolder
Between our fingers, we will
Make certain everyone
Breathes our polluting venom.
Now dress and join me, my love.
by Michael Gunn
Michael Gunn has previously published in Burningwood Literary Journal as well as Shotgun Honey. His country song, “If Her Grandma Didn’t Have a Kitty, I’d Take My Dog Over There”, continues to descend the charts.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Demo Tracks
They all want you to write
something sad about religion
where the train meets the rails
where the shaking knuckles
meet the trigger.
A handshake
(firm gripped) with God
that’s a shock to your system –
yeah, he gotcha good.
You’re still harmonizing with yourself
over some girl who never loved you
more than she loves her body, her womb’s
ability to conceive towheaded heartache.
The ghosts of your paintings
are crawling the walls
and your covers are quicksand.
Sometimes I see smoke but I can’t find
where the fire is. Sometimes
I catch you shredding yourself
but I don’t know how
to turn the machine off.
Even in my sleep, my teeth
are rotting out when we’re kissing
and there’s blood on your guitar strings.
When I wake up
my heart is pounding
like church bells.
Wet Graffiti
In this part of town,
the universe could be a girl
biking through brain waves in a tank top
or gas station soda
sticky on the bottoms of your shoes.
Your coffin is Ramen noodles;
your crown is a carton of cigarettes.
I am the advocate.
Snapping at sensitivity
until my jaw locks, clean.
I am the grocery store bouquet
and the toddler carrying the pink helmet
she’ll never wear in a two-fingered grip.
When you’re watching
the McDonald’s down the street
get demolished and picking yourself apart
at every stoplight,
a smashed skull
is a courtesy prize.
Bloodied Knuckles
Once we trailed after the same sunset
a parade of summer heat
but now we belong to warring tribes
painting our faces with each other’s frailties.
You’re running circles and I’m
dropping pebbles
to somehow keep myself centered.
You’re pitching up tornadoes and I’m
marking the sky
transmitting some sort of warning.
The river roars to life
a tumult of terror in my chest
as the battle reaches a fever pitch
and you stir up shards in your wake.
by Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a poet in St. Louis who struggles with being fully present.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
It’s To Die For
the beauty of
this night,
its strange glow
of light rising
after days
of heavy rain.
At nightfall
the sky is alight
with pink
and yellow fire—
owlet moths
that thought
they were hidden
are in a frenzy over
the last purple spikes
of catnip. You and I
walk without words
as rain returns,
darkness resettles.
I have finally
figured it out,
I say: the only
price we must pay
for all this beauty
is to die for it.
Mid-September
This morning I stoop
to pull wild grass away
from bleeding hearts
and columbine, untangle
iris from spiderwort.
Has it been since June
that I knelt upon this ground?
A summer overgrown
has choked the simple
beginnings of spring—
an elderly mother’s move,
repairs to a rundown home,
common occurrences of life
that like the sheaths
of lady’s thumb
choke, cover, obscure
adjacent bloom.
I weed along toward noon.
Sun lightens the delicate leaves
of coral bells, bare black
earth again revealed,
and I lean heavily on
soil scarcely redeemed.
by Judith Grissmer
Judith Grissmer’s work has been published in the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, the Golden Nib Online Anthology (2010 first place in poetry VA Writers Club), The Blue Ridge Anthology (2008/2010 first place in poetry, Blue Ridge Writers Club), The Alembic, Crack the Spine, Mikrokosmos Journal, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Work is forthcoming in the Edison Literary Review and Penmen Review. She has attended poetry workshops and classes in universities and writing centers, worked independently with instructors at those centers, and has participated in writers’ critique groups for many years.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Social sensibilities
in the Information Age
are communicated in sound bytes,
exchanging mostly trivia
in brief, revealing detail
that neither satisfies,
nor extends relationships,
tersely structured
for minimal response
from diminutive users.
by Gary Beck
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response will be published by Nazar Look. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Of Fucking and Fleeing
I do not need
the residual bullshit of whining
Will you call me’s,
nor do I believe in the transcendent
lies of I’ll call you tomorrow’s.
Mine is a nature that learns
from past catastrophes. Names
are irrelevant. Sex is my church.
I confess
I enjoy sinning, giving
myself to another in shadows,
but I am temporary, a tangible ghost,
naked. I disappear
with an unceremonious slam before dawn.
To Kill Or Not To Kill
hasn’t been the question in years.
Who to kill is the new front runner
in my rapidly growing list of opathies.
Homicidal and suicidal are
as interchangeable as hours on a clock,
days in a week. Bitterness is
the only pill I can stand to swallow.
It covers the taste of regret
staining my tongue. I am stuck
and solidly alone in the war I wage
in my mind. I have though about changing
my name to volcano, but that implies
some elemental hope of survival.
My fissure is wider. When I break, they will
call me Pompeii. Nothing
will be left to breathe beneath my ash.
Another New Heart
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me.
He spread his hands wide, indicating
he was available. I took
out my notebook and put it on the table,
decided to start with the last chapter.
He began to tell me a story, a minimal account
I had heard before. When he finished
telling it, I nodded, made a note—
not because it was important,
but because I was trying to keep myself
breathing. He never said another word,
just dissolved into a dream I had conquered
too many times before.
by AJ Huffman
A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press. She has three more poetry collections forthcoming: A Few Bullets Short of Home from mgv2>publishing, Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink, and A Bizarre Burning of Bees from Transcendent Zero Press. She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2200 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Oh, home of cracked bones,
crypt of condensed composure.
My time has arrived.
One bone, two bones, three bones, rattle my bones,
shake the box until its cobwebbed truth tumbles out
onto hard-packed dust. Shredded into ivory splinters,
you’ll find the derailed train that hurtles toward you,
only a few feet away now. Before you crash, look
closer. Find the starfish patterns that sway on my
prison’s wall and congratulate them for commendable
perseverance. Scratch the surface of the midnight air.
Breathe the chemicals that rise from your skin. Pray
to the earth, press your lips against the summer’s final
remaining blade of grass and beg release from your
bindings. Remember the last time you swallowed
a watermelon seed, and remember the first time
the winter wind clutched your umbrella, allowing
the cold to seep quietly, smoothly into your bones.
Oh, home of new bones,
crypt of condensed composure.
Your time arrives soon.
by Hannah Warren
Hannah is currently an undergraduate English major at Mississippi State University. Upon graduation, she wishes to pursue a Master in Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing; she is published in Nota Bene. She may be found rambling at inksplatteredwords.blogspot.com.
