Issue #8

The same but
different this time
like the last.
A 19 yr old babysitter
Accidentally shot a ten year old
While taking selfies.
At first critical
the child is expected
to recover. Not so sure
about the 19 year old.
Arrested for a
Second degree felony
Instead of terminal stupidity.
But I would imagine
the prospect of any more
babysitting jobs are grim.

Rp Verlaine lives in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from City College.
He taught in New York Public schools for many years. His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames & Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-books titled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from 2018 to 2020.  His newest book, Imagined Indecencies,  was published in February of 2022.

I was out beside the trash compactor 
Literally shoveling old fetid garbage into bags
Against the wind and under the sun,
Unable to wipe away the sweat from my face
With my hands protected by thin latex gloves
Already torn at the left thumb
With the ants and beetles and spiders scurrying,
Not to mention the American cockroaches that grew
Bigger than my left thumb (fat with the provided sustenance)
That was pressed against the shovel,
Exposed at the base through the torn latex glove

When it occurred to me
In the heat and my heavy breath and advancing age
That at any moment I could die of a heart attack
And the thought of falling into those bugs and infiltrated garbage
Didn’t bother me as much as the guilty feeling
That someone would have to rescue my corpse
And feel worse than I was feeling at that moment
Watching a cockroach well fed and nearly busting
As it crawled sideways away from my shovel
That repeatedly hit the concrete with that shhhht shhhht sound
And the sweat overcoming my eyebrows, making me blind
For a terrifying moment
While the tiny ants climbed the shovel handle
With the determination 
Of something clinging to life itself.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

walking the apartment, and room
into room, like wolves in a zoo
through an over-cold
winter. nothing
is tuneful – the walls
make no music
but shuffle like pigeons
in a cluster from short
bursts of rain. in corners
dead spiders hang,
thread-caught rotating
in the manner of sea-
buoys and old
conversations. and windows –
no pictures –
no visions of better –
just grey panes with nothing
outside.

DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, “Noble Rot” is scheduled for release in May 2022.

Visiting memorials,
Joseph Campbell,
H.D. Thoreau,
Hi Jolly,
Chief Joseph,
their big stories
in cemeteries
now short stories
written by granite authors,
crumbling ruins to silica.

She had no story
and has no stone
but ocean’s sand,
each grain a memorial,
her ashes shifting daily.

Vali Hawkins-Mitchell writes from her office across the street from the Honolulu Zoo, where she also works as a trauma and disaster responder. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including) Sky Island Journal, Star82Review, Blink-ink, The Disaster Recovery Journal, and Starship Sloan. For more see: http://www.valihawkinsmitchell.com

twice a month 
i sometimes  
clean the house 

it’s not that i mind doing it, 
quite the opposite actually, 
i’m just not good at it 

sure, i can clean the dishes 
and put them all away 
in the right spots    

and i can vacuum the floors 
and stairs with my bissell #2288, 
sucking everything up  

but often i don’t want to  

because all that filth reminds me  
of some memory i have of you 
like last week, for instance,  
you laughed at a joke i told, 
and the sunlight shined 
so pretty off your teeth 
and out of the corner of my eye 
i saw a mountain of dead ants 
just laying there in dust  
beneath the radiator  

now in good conscience 
how could i clean something 
like that up?

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He is the author of 18 chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “No Destination” (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2021) and “The Ants Crawl In Circles” (Whiskey City Press, 2022). He runs Between Shadows Press.

Ah, there is bold shimmer here,
no walking, just dances,
though dressed to number nine,
it’s like we’re barefoot & naked.

But for stars the night sky would be nothing.
The conductor leaves the podium,
nudges aside the percussionist,
clangs a triangle the shape of my face.

Long streams & whirls,
from the window, sea let loose,
its long face, a yellow wound,
that can’t find the heart.

In common with the floor, the monkey suits etc,
we interrupt darkness to mutate
into long glass stems: our nutrition
is the body & the beat.

Look, movement’s blossoming, she cries.
Mulching, 3/4 time. Man & woman make fire
in queer circles – a body, in proportion,
is willed to keep going.

Roundness & horns has she –
I’m full of redness, damn it.
This is the riotous dance of hell.
The moon, right outside the window, coaxing.

The woman stretches higher,
up on her toes, sparkles.
The power. The ascendency.
She calls it – a death in denial. 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

The first wives in your family
leave you on holidays. They have other
fish to fry. Let’s say one waited
till November when the pies hit
the table to say, Yeah, turkey turkey,
now

get out. Let’s say one at Easter
cashed all the wedding checks
then ascended, or at least
appeared elsewhere. Let’s say
Christmas left you cold presence
while your wife walked across town
with her tidy suitcase. Let’s say
it was hard on both the walkers
and the waiters, let’s pretend they
progressed and were replaced
then

since love is such a slippery trout
let’s say the next ones walked, too,
watched the calendar to say,
Today’s the day. Let’s guess one
let all the fascinating fish swim by because
they belong to themselves, and so does she.
Let’s say she stayed, and she made
a self-conscious love
poem for you.

Originally appeared in Bond Street Review

Laurinda Lind lives in New York’s North Country, close to Canada. Some of her writing is in Atlanta Review, New American Writing, Paterson Literary Review, and Spillway. She is a Keats-Shelley Prize winner and a finalist in several other competitions, most recently the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize.

God has smiled on some men,
rain to sweeten the grain, seed to nourish the roots.
To others He has turned away his face.
Forgetting their names, leaving them alone in a strange place,
life heavy on their back, sorrow their only friend.
Why choose between brothers?
Why some babies crowned with joy,
others left to suckle on a stone?
Music plays in all our hearts,
we dance to the same tune,
we eat from the same bowl.
Perhaps there is no God,
We pray to an empty room.
If we are not all worth a second glance
then no one should rest easy in heaven.

Beverly Magid has published three novels, Flying Out of Brooklyn, Sown in Tears and Where Do I Go. Her poems have appeared in On the Bus, Freshwater Poetry Journal, Muddy River Poetry Journal and Super Highway Poetry Revies. She’s a long-time Los Angeles resident, but confesses that her heart still commutes to NYC.

Gossake, light, give ‘em some slack,
Let rocks spring, and water see for herself-
While you are at it, my light, go get
Some nice answers, and throw ‘em ‘round-
Know what? A wannabe Amazon was her mother,
She a dead ashes’ daughter, that girl, yes,
Stranded all over God’s blue land,
Where she madly wishes for blades of light,
Are they God’s fingers? –
But blind stares she gets,
Fallen stars the sky’s eager to bin-
Hey man, hold on! You still falling for those fibs?
Gosh Blimey, it’s just fake news,
See, only the nights are real, those tools
Great for the henchmen
Snared in sweet saintly limbs-
Shame they sting worse than crabs,
Shame we get ‘em blessings ‘n’ food-
And where are words in this whole shebang?
Oh, yes, words, Adam and Eve in the garden,
A nice thingie, sure, the magical touches at the end-
Point is, God, I’m afraid you went bit rogue
When giving them limbs and edges-
And see you what’s happening?
Some lost side shambles losing out,
While Medea gets nothing but her bastard heart,
My name, of course, or a dying woman
Hyped on benny, the nutty lady
The nutty lady who’s gonna get her shot:
Fire or jinx?
Nope, only a demure girl who hides
Behind too many clouds-
Sometimes your mother, sometimes the moon.

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Casa di erba”; “Blue Branches”; “ A Blue Soul”.

Ancient people used to look at the stars
speculate on the activities of gods, invent
elaborate stories to explain reoccurring weather patterns
flu epidemics, parasitic infections. They mentioned their deities
by name in their books, carved them into stone
added them to family crests and personal genealogies.
Modern people look at ancient structures
speculate how each particular building
glorified a region’s assigned god. Children’s toys and household artifacts
are also connected to this god in this way of thinking
or some neighboring, invading god
imparting special significance to important kitchen utensils
pressed clay ashtrays and experimental musical instruments.
Before I die, I must remember
to leave nothing behind that can be linked
to the collective belief systems of my neighbors, of this town.
When they finally excavate this house
from the compressed piles of pillowy, volcanic ash
or the silty build-up of disintegrating trash brought by years
of spring tides and glacial migrations,
or half-wedged between boulders shaken loose by earthquakes
ideally, I would like those future archaeologists to believe
I worshiped my cat.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review, and Appalachian Journal, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.