Issue #13

Photography in this issue by Frogg Corpse

Frogg Corpse is a poet, vocalist, actor, and photographer from Louisville, Kentucky residing in Clarksville, Indiana. Frogg has written a plethora of poems whilst fronting metal bands around the Louisville area. Select highlights of a rich career in the arts include auditioning for American Idol and The Voice, providing a background role in The Hangover III, writing a guest blog for 48 Hour Books, performing spoken word with artist Suli Breaks, and reading with poet Brandon Leake from America’s Got Talent. From 2014-2016 & 2023 Frogg has performed at Gonzofest, a Louisville event celebrating the life and work of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Recently, Frogg’s poem “The Night Two Lovers Leapt” placed second in Louisville’s 2023 Literary edition of LEO Weekly. Frogg’s book “Poetry to Die By” with artwork by Russian artist Vitaly Ilyin is published by Cajun Mutt Press.

This issue is all about hauntings of the past and the mysteries and mundanities of the present. It’s about listening and dreaming and pushing through. My notes don’t typically get as florid and metaphorical as this. It’s not my style, but it feels right for this issue. I think there is something more diaphanous at work than usual in these poems, like a veil chiseled out of marble on a Greek statue. And the eerie photo spread by Frogg copse tying it all together only adds to that ambiance.

Most nights I hear your voice through walls
telling a stranger how many times you’ve died.
The last time I dreamed of you your clothes were too large
and we were so thirsty, food felt like gravel on our tongues.
Often, I call you by someone else’s name
as though the habit of you were something I’d outworn.
What do these things signify? 
nothing as definitive as pine tree, contract, border, stream.
Coordinates to reset, perspectives to widen, analysis—
the answer is I don’t know. I don’t know you. I don’t.

Ann E. Michael lives in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, where for many years she ran the writing center at DeSales University. Her most recent book, The Red Queen Hypothesis, won the 2022 Prairie State Poetry Prize; she’s the author of Water-Rites (2012) and six chapbooks. Her new book, Abundance/Diminishment, just launched; it is available at Kelsay Books and Amazon. She maintains a long-running blog at http://www.annemichael.blog

These hazy memories
are transitory
and smothering.
They arrive,
unannounced,
in the most ordinary
of places:
grocery stores,
bus lines,
dog parks
are all vulnerable
to their attacks.
My defenses are few,
and are easily felled
by their sedulousness.
They are half-formed ghouls 
and demon babies from a previous life—
I scrub myself, 
over and over
to exorcise them,
but my skin only burns
instead.

Sarah Daly is an American writer whose fiction, poetry, and drama have appeared in twenty-two literary journals including Two Hawks Quarterly, Euphemism, Triggerfish Critical Review, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety.

thunder just as i
call the kids inside, and
the youngest starts to cry
wind moves the curtains
pushes rusting cars up and
down the street, and i say
listen but no one’s there,
and so i say listen
say hope is a skeleton
caught in late october trees
and then i pause and, when the
phone rings, it’s my
ex-wife
when the first drops of rain
fall, the letters piled on
the dining room table
start to burn
i will not let the past
be my friend
will tell anyone who asks
that sylvia was
a fucking coward
dead on the floor with her
children in another room,
and i sit there at the foot of
my oldest son’s bed and
i say listen
i say listen and then i
listen to the
soft sound of his sleep
it’s no small thing,
taking comfort in silence

John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in compassionate nihilism which, as luck would have it, has all the best bands. His published collections include NO ONE STARVES IN A NATION OF CORPSES (2020 Analog Submission Press) and THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY THIS IS GOING TO END (Cyberwit, 2023).

I waste time better
than anyone. Atrophy
is my specialty. At
the laptop at work.
The laptop
at home. My 
skeleton is jelly
and my mind has
been forgotten. 
Do you know 
who that was
over there?
The silhouette
in the corner
of my memory
lingers wherever
I won’t look.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent poems are in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Lakeshore Review, and confetti. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

To a certain extent we eat with our ears.
~ Mary Roach

Apples fresh from the tree, bright orange carrots,
pumpkin seeds, crackers, even the low-sodium variety—
it’s not just the salt, the sugar, the fat, not just taste
and smell. It’s biology, the way we are made.
There is something appealing about crunch.
Scientists alter the sound subjects hear
as they chomp potato chips, and suddenly
those chips taste stale. 
No wonder Saturday afternoon quarterbacks
crave popcorn or pretzels as they toss back
a cold one and cheer their favorite teams.
No wonder the baby carrots and crisp strips
of bell pepper are gone long before half
the broccoli heads are crunched 
at the church coffee hour. Ton van Vliet
says, People eat physics. . . physical properties
of food. Even if you don’t know it, you do, too.

Wilda Morris, Workshop Chair of Poets and Patrons of Chicago and a past President of the Illinois State Poetry Society, has published numerous poems in anthologies, webzines, and print publications, including The Ocotillo Review, Rockford Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Modern Haiku, and Journal of Modern Poetry. She has won awards for formal and free verse and haiku, including the 2019 Founders’ Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She has published three books of poetry: Szechwan Shrimp and Fortune Cookies: Poems from a Chinese Restaurant(RWG Press), Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick (Kelsay Books), and At Goat Island and Other Poems (Kelsay).

We played into the smoke, captive to big screen violence,
attention divided, the will to win blunted by blunts. Fool
men, lost in particulars of their comity, hopeless and wan.
Keep it rolling on the baize, forever it takes to shuffle
and everyone looks long and thin and remote from it.
Everyone falls asleep for a minute and dreams the same
dream of wheat fields and silos shimmering in sunlight
because west of the game lies the fire of the prairies
extended to the real, extended high and wide
in the imaginations of the smoking calculators.
Defining the sums preludes the action, and all begin
to see more clearly when they lose their hands
attempting to claw in the purse—make it more real
with a gunshot and dog barking in the bathroom.
No one will know your name when the game breaks.
Walk out, take a victory lap around the devastated block
and jump in your wheels, music loud, windows open
and the road flanked with the usual catatonics
and leopards eating as much as they can in one sitting.
Home awaits, with its siren songs and magic lanterns.

Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in a number of venues, including Heavy Feather Review, Gone Lawn and Third Wednesday.

In the hallway dream

I’m in an endless hallway
no horizon
just forever neon lights
and
that mundane
orange, brown, & black
squares & circles
intertwined 

pattern on the rug,
that would be awesome

on psychedelics…but

just continues to taunt
like a secret.
In the hallway…
in the hallway dream.

doors fly open
the constant interruptions
presenting friends
and enemies
lovers and heroes
dreams
and depression
excitement and wonder…
I fight to close them
to just stay focused.
They fight back,
reaching out
with fingers and thoughts
fantasies and whatnot
with a wink and a grin
to pull me in
to some altered reality
someplace I shouldn’t be
away from the safe
calm endless space
in the hallway
safe
in the hallway dream

In the hallway dream
behind me seems mean
I move away from that scene
and look only forward
towards the hidden horizon
the point of where it ends
and I might wake up.
I move past open doorways
quickly,
not to be noticed..
but I always bring attention
to myself anyways
Am I the only one in the hallway?
Or are we all in the hall
in the hallway dream?

In the hallway dream
the lights never flicker
the air is thicker
and time seems quicker.
When I awake
it was always shorter
than I remember,

and the memory
was even shorter still.
And so it remains that way
even so today
when falling into serene

into the hallway dream.

Lob is a poet, musician, conceptual artist, creative type who was born in Southern California in 1965.   He spent most of his life in his home state exploring different creative paths but is probably best known as the founder of the conceptual music band project called INSTAGON, and its extended family “Thee Instagon Foundation” (TIForg) since 1993.   Lob has had poems published by TIForg, Tebot Bach Press, Orange Ocean Press, Thought Crime, Temporary Vandalism, Poetry Super Highway, Stick Figure Poetry, and the list just continues.  He currently hosts a monthly open mic series on the 2nd Saturday of the month in Miami, Arizona where he has lived since 2021 with his partner Amanda.  They are both artists in residence at the Miami Art Works Collective and also board members of the Miami Arts Commission (501c). 
www.tif.org/lob

our daughter’s placenta 
feeds a juniper
somewhere in the West 
San Fernando Valley,
bought from a nursery 
growing saplings 
under towers of power 
spitting frequency twitch
we had imagined 
this house as permanence 
and that symbolism
even in its lamest form here
could keep liquefaction 
from the precious most point 
of stucco and brick,
so when California breaks
at the saltine perforations 
we would not slide down 
the vast muddy tongue
we are moving 
and our daughter’s house
once a silk bubble 
with veins pulsating 
red liquid lightning 
along translucent 
plasma avenues
becomes the city
and everything we hope toward 
after her memory grabs ahold
we hope she feels nostalgic 
for this distant square suburban lot, 
left behind so we could try and be artists
stupid as that sounds 
mija, one day you may take 2 or 3 busses 
to visit a memory tangled in gauze 
to speak prayers, real or made up,
a haphazard rosary for a wall
keeping what we can and cannot view

Mike Urquidez is a poet, writer, and educator living in Northeast Los Angeles. He graduated many years ago from the creative writing program at San Francisco State University. He currently does not have a long list of publications, fellowships, or awards, but he has read at many raucous open mics throughout California.

He lies on my bed
a statue 
upon a cool
placid lake

sinking 
into the cushion
of the mattress springs

rippling the sheets
and the floral blanket

the lover boy
here in my room 
to drown me

hands and heart
made of stone

Jackie Chou is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee whose poem “Formosa” was a finalist in the 2023 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. She has numerous poems published by Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest inspired by the late great Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, and others. Her two collections of poetry, Finding My Heart in Love and Loss and The Sorceress, published by cyberwit in 2023, can be purchased on Amazon

Erodes, each does, the plate.
All the sin, all the impact to each.
So much sticks.
One by one by one by all.
A number will always be unique.

Good Lord cries oceans.
O, the mercy.
And mountains move.
And morsels fall to the multitude.
Amidst the rubbish. 

There is an inmate’s fate we live.
All of us, somehow, together. 
Vessels.
Used, but needing to be new.
Even if homeless, if only to be fed.

And once again to be clean,
to be spread, and not a dream. 
So it is, loving and being loved,
a need even in the mean estate
where ox and ass are feeding.

An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, Joe Bisicchia has written four published collections of poetry. He also has written over two hundred fifty individual works that have been published in over one hundred publications. To see more of his work, visit www.widewide.world.

I bought you a gift from the souk.
After all, I owe you.
I still have the socks you gave me
When my high heels made me bleed.
And I often look at the text you sent
When you told me you wanted to give me
The world.


So of course I stop at the spice seller
Haggling for cumin and saffron.


You were sweet enough
To lie to me.
And kind enough to lead me on.
Like a true gentleman you disappeared
For five months
Without a single word.


I must buy you a rug.
Something with a vivid, pulsating geometric design
From high in the Atlas Mountains.
I want to say a proper thank you.


I know that you have made mistakes.
That you have regrets, that lies of omission
Are painful for us both.


But I also know that you did it
Because you were afraid to bruise my heart.
Because you decided that imposing a silence,
A cage around yourself,
Was better than upsetting me.


I can’t be upset about that.
But it was unnecessary,
If you want to go, you should go.
All I ask is that you remember,
Truth honors both the speaker
And the listener.You do that and
I will get you
Some almonds. 

Holly Payne-Strange (she/her) is a novelist, poet and podcast creator. Her writing has been lauded by USA Today, LA weekly and The New York Times. Her  next novel, All Of Us Alone, will be a recommended read for Women Writers, Women’s Books in December 2023.  She’s had her poetry published by various groups  including  Door Is A Jar magazine, In Parenthesis, Quail Bell Magazine, and will soon be featured in Academy Heart, among others.

On trees, the above-ground
roots covered in moss
are green knee-high socks
slouched against a girl’s legs
propped up in a nap
in the forest where wind
tickles aspen leaves;
woodpeckers beat their beaks
into echoes reverberating;
columbine flowers
nod to each other
as they slow dance
to the rhythm.
Tree roots stretch
their sock-covered legs
across the forest floor,
and sleep again
beneath the moss coverlet.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Verdad and other literary magazines. She had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. One of Diane’s poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry.