Contents
Rob Plath...........................Double Feature
Ron Riekki.........................I Wanted to Become Famous
Jeffrey Zable......................53 Years Ago
A.J. Huffman......................Transgender Ken
Jeffrey Zable.......................The Purpose
Nathaniel Sverlow...............What’s Underneath
Jeremiah Walton..................Pornography
Nathaniel Sverlow...............A New Day Dying
Matthew J. Hall...................Opiate Revelation
A.M. Clarke.........................“Jessica”
__________________________________________________
Double Feature
Rob Plath
they abuse you
for years
& then they
slowly die
one fucking
horror show
after another
__________________________________________________
I Wanted to Become Famous and Instead I Became An Asshole
Ron Riekki
& so now I try to elbow Buddhism into my life,
popping that dharma stuff into my mouth
when I have a free moment for gladness,
letting my past get blown away by a MAC-10
and Mark 10 keeps echoing in my head,
something about rich people smoking Camels;
I forget, but I know that some people
from my youth got herded in with all
the alcoholics and some hit insane jackpots,
now millionaires I see on the spilled channels
of TV, but I guess if you’re writing a poem
you should have something to say
and for me it’s just a begging to exist
on the page, the bondage of breathing being
destroyed when I hit the landscape
of words and, really, if you get into that God
stuff, audience is just an effigy.
__________________________________________________
53 YEARS AGO
Jeffrey Zable
Me and my monkey were dancing
Something like a gig only we were
Holding hands and the crowd got
Louder and louder until for the fun
Of it we began to improvise and what
Came out of me and what came out
Of that monkey is still one for the ages
We left shit everywhere and I mean
Everywhere on top of the heads of state
And even in the mouths of babes it’s
Lucky it was all recorded cause events
Like that don’t happen every day
For when a crowd goes from love
To murder you know that’s news
And the only reason I’m around to
Remember is cause my bite was even
Greater than the monkey’s who put up
A hell of a fight as best I can remember
On that Saturday night 53 years ago.
__________________________________________________
Transgender Ken
A.J. Huffman
was the perfect brainchild for current
political and economic climates.
All they needed to do was change
his box.
__________________________________________________
THE PURPOSE
Jeffrey Zable
Poor with purpose/
Is that how an artist
might say it/
I painted yesterday myself/
Saw this woman
walking down the street
and captured her smile
in my hands/
Painted her eyes
with my fingertips
and used their color
to express my feeling
for the bathroom walls/
Little if anything
means something to me now/
I strum this guitar
that hasn't any strings
and people keep humming/
Tapping to the beat.
__________________________________________________
what’s underneath
Nathaniel Sverlow
The Princess walks in
scarf around the neck
short skirt and tights
and thick high heels
and I wonder how long
it took her to dress,
whether, in between
outfits, she stared
at her legs,
her breasts,
her ass,
wondering why
anybody would ever
fuck her
But now,
in the open,
she’s bouncing around,
talking over everyone
about the night
she turned thirty
and drank and danced
with this guy
and that guy
who couldn’t keep
hands to themselves
I put on my headphones
turn the volume up
look away
I’ve seen it all before
on the empty balconies
of second floor apartments
in the passenger seats
of broken down jeeps
in the faces of the
last-call crowds
that lost track
of time
Some people hide it
Some people should
Some people wear it
like a scarf
or a skirt
or tights
or heels
desperately dressing
and undressing
what’s underneath
__________________________________________________
PORNOGRAPHY
Jeremiah Walton
This room is an empty photograph
This room is vast
The chandeliers are stars
Supported by cigarette smoke and factory breath
Feet are supported by Mother Earth
Mother Earth supported by constant witch burnings,
abolition of attachment.
We surrendered our rights upon evolving to the point where magazine covers photoshop our bodies and bullets whisper “I love you”
Now we seek utopia like filth is problematic
I’m an anarchist that hates anarchy
I am a federal government that sells souls to broken bottles
I am a bottle opener and cheap adhesive
The application is of wet lips and gunpowder
The “ands” are getting to be dirty and old
The imagery has become stained
The nickels are hated
Quarters are most desirable
Dimes are easy to carry
Pennies are precise
But nickels,
those pesky
fucking
nickels.
This poem wreaks of marijuana smoke
but I swear it’s sober.
The knife laws protect it from protecting itself
The shanks are hidden in the metaphors
Don’t get stabbed reading too deeply.
The maidens of our Mother are mindless
We are cutting the umbilical chord connecting our belly buttons to the soil
It is beautiful the way we handle our knives
It is beautiful how we smile
It is beautiful how we weep
I keep finding saw dust in my poems
and saw blades behind All teeth.
There’s a little less in this one
but it’s because the cut was a little more shaped than usual.
I forgot to brush my teeth today
Tomorrow I’ll remember.
Fill me up with coke and I’ll plant conversations in trash cans
Fill me up with gasoline and I’ll chain smoke just for fun.
Does this make me stupid or adventurous?
The knife cut my thumb off
I’ll hitchhike with this stub
till my poem finds a meaning
strips and masturbates like a rabid dog
let loose in a strip club
barking at the women
and drinking all the wine.
Mother Nature, God, Allah, Zeus, and all personified nothings are having an orgy upstairs
We’ll never get to heaven
unless we become angels
on a kite string,
but I’d rather fall to bed
and be beautiful broke free
than worrying about
the floors’ dust
and upholstery.
Silly silly poem
Use your left hand when jerking off
So it feels like someone else is doing it for you
Lonely lonely poem
you’ll find meaning one day
and be drunk enough
to get naked in public
and make porn with the world.
__________________________________________________
a new day dying
Nathaniel Sverlow
brittle bones
spilling onto pavement
trousers and dresses
hiding the essentials
essentially nothing
and the bulges and valleys
scrape
into each other
striking sparks
flames
to a wicker life
that was
almost right
wrinkled hands
in the sack-lunch past
digging
hungry
for that time
when time
was just time
and not time
that was
ending
hungry
digging
reaching
still
holding
an empty bag
as pollen falls
from the death tree
and the moon
dumps
like an ashtray
while the sun
lights up
anxious
breathing in
a secondhand life
spitting out
a secondhand soul
flies
wait patiently
for the garbage lid
to open
they can smell
it
a new day
dying
once again
__________________________________________________
opiate revelation
Matthew J. Hall
I shifted uncomfortably on the shards of broken, noisy glass
you told me that I would never amount to anything
other than what I was on that green, Sunday, methadone, morning
you called me a worthless cunt
said I had ruined everything
the wind whistled through the window I had smashed
it was cold against my face
and while there was an element of truth in the accusation
it was then that I realized you had given everything of yourself over
to hope burglars and spirit thieves
and that there was nothing left
neither for you, nor me
save a small bottle of watered down methadone
that I had wasted our last five quid on
__________________________________________________
"Jessica"
A.M. Clarke
from where she slept
one hand dangling, sleep numb
curved like a fish
shadows pooled in her palm
like a bruise
__________________________________________________
A.M. Clarke currently lives in Utah. She's too lazy to publish on a regular bases. She hates the snow and drinks too much tea.
Matthew J. Hall is a writer who lives in Bristol, England. For more about him and links to his published work please visit: www.screamingwithbrevity.com .
A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her eighth solo chapbook, Drippings from a Painted Mind, won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.
Rob Plath is a 45 year-old poet from New York. Rob has been widely published both nationally and internationally. He has 7 poetry chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry. Rob also put out a play We're No Butchers (epic rites press 2011) and a children's book Hearts For Brains (epic rites press 2014) He's most noted for his 300-page poetry collection called A Bellyful of Anarchy published by epic rites press in 2009. His most current book is a collection of creative writing exercises called An Ax For The Frozen Sea (epic rites press 2015). His novel Swallowtude is due out sometime next year. And there is more stuff in the works...
Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU.
Nathaniel Sverlow is a freelance writer of poetry and prose. He was born in 1983 in San Diego, California and moved to Northern California at the age of three. Since then, he has graduated from Sacramento State University and spends most of his time hunched over his computer hunting the Word. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beyond Reality Zine, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Literary Orphans, Map Literary, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Dali’s Lovechild, and The Vein. He currently resides in the Sacramento area with four roommates, three cats, and one incredibly supportive girlfriend.
Jeremiah Walton is 18, born in N.H., and currently traveling cross country. He manages Nostrovia! Poetry, W.I.S.H. Publishing, The Traveling Poet, and works as an editor for UndergroundBooks. You can follow him at his personal blog, Gatsby's Abandoned Children.
Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and percussionist who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s published five chapbooks from four different small press publishers. Recent poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in Coe Review, Kentucky Review, Indigo Rising, Serving House Journal, Chaos Poetry Review, After The Pause, Snapping Twig, Lullwater Review, Snow Monkey, 2015 Rhysling Anthology, Brazenhead Review, Flint Hills Review, Mas Tequila, and many others.
