Search Results

I wake up tired and sore and often soaked in sweat I don’t remember being awake or any dreams I may have had but I’m usually more tired then when I went to sleep They say it takes ten years and four rheumatologists to get a proper diagnosis it’s been twenty and five but who’s counting when I open my eyes I realize I can’t open my mouth without pain in my jaw What else could cause this other than a punch? The doctors take my blood and shrug their shoulders I’d shrug my shoulders too but it hurts when I try My legs are so sore I feel as if I was chasing or being chased My knuckles are swollen and it hurts to bend my fingers they offer pills that don’t work that make me more tired when I’m barely functioning There is one logical conclusion that really holds no logic at all but it gets me through the day After I close my eyes to sleep I fight crime or aliens or masterminded villains Slip into another dimension where I must be a goddamn superhero More Batman than Superman I doubt the man of steel wakes up sore plus, I hope I can’t fly If I can fly but don’t remember it that’s some royal bullshit It’s nice to know when I close my eyes I’m destined to hand out some vigilant justice makes the struggle a little bit more rewarding *sidenote* Considering, I wake every morning feeling as if I got my ass kicked, a friend points out there is a good possibility I’m the villain. Sadly There’s logic here By candlelight The wind stole out the light we pull the curtains to invite in the last of gray daylight we three wife, daughter and me play Rummy by candlelight Christmas Wish Christmas at the Beach Aromatic Evergreen infused with Orange You Had Me at Merlot candles placed throughout the living room my daughter says it smells like puke in here the game ends quickly they go to bed notebook on the table pen in hand I watch the candle wicks flicker You Had Me at Merlot cavorts spasmodically the flame moves swishes as if outside caught in the damaging winds I was caught once in a wind that stood still on a train bridge with a friend a train traveling south displaced us to the northbound tracks until a northbound train captured that space Twelve to fifteen feet between both trains traveling at a good clip The swirled wind made visible by t-shirts and hair dancing we felt nothing heard no sounds all sensation caught in a vacuum senses trapped twisted to feel the sound but not hear it see the wind but not feel it I bounced a fist-sized stone off the side of a boxcar Its silent voice echoed through us our faces twisted in surprise and laughter The wind outside is loud frightening and stole the light The candle flame dances and moves to a soundless music Rabbit the Rose of Sharon blooms closed shop for the night pink rolled-up tootsie rolls tonight every night You emerge from beneath its branches as my feet leave the pavement as they lick the damp grass You emerge repudiating instinct to scurry the sensible choice of your brethren your species In life you were a lion but a lion couldn’t live beneath the branches of an overgrown Rose of Sharon A lion would frighten a boy slightly fearful of the dark fearful of the life without his father I know it’s you I know it’s you

I must have that kind of face: everywhere I go people always stop me for directions I tell tourists how to get to Kensington Market for wild blueberry pie, vintage bags and ganja, workman’s clothes and secondhand guitars and the reggae, the djembe, the flaming gay parade and ugli fruit in the Marcus Garvey sweltering summer. I tell them it’s Spa-DYNA not Spa-DEENA and if anyone asks me 你能給我指路嗎? I can point the way I must look like someone who knows south from east and where the streetcars stop and where there’s a good place for cheap vegan lunch though I am detached, a hovering illusion watching over Augusta Ave like a billboard with floodlit smiles for a Vietnamese dental clinic because there’s nowhere else I come from and nowhere else to go When you’re lost inside there is no screaming red arrow on a map >>> YOU ARE HERE! When you’re a broken flower that’s lost its scent, nectar drained and pollen strewn, you no longer attract the honey bee, you pick through the fallen petals, crumpled, torn and purple bruised and maybe the remnants of trail will lead you back home

nobody ever got slapped over my alopecia punked on april fools day caught up in the monkeyshines of my aspirational barber joelinton’s barber i booked my appointment for the most anticipated haircut since my hair grew back from stress-induced alopecia still in recovery, me from the rudeness of strangers from inappropriate staring comments like ‘you need a better barber’ and ‘what kind of cancer is that, bro’ yes, it bothered me not enough to slap a man, tho truth be told maybe i’m the foolish one ‘cos this tidbit proper boils my piss at ten a.m. sharp, standing outside the barbershop ten thousand monkeys in my fist looking for a bitch to slap but the joke was me next time i will just let it fly I pulled my intercostal muscle pre-drinking for the football match over too-small margaritas with not enough tequila waiting on pork enchiladas from a too-slow kitchen. I considered my physical need to sneeze in a post-pandemic restaurant versus the social fallout of such a spectacle. I don’t even know these people, but they are human beings and deserve not to be sprayed at close range with someone else’s aerosols. the sneeze came on hard but I shut it down, sparing some nuns and their triple-cheese nachos a blast of sputum through no small feat of physical exertion. I am not a young man anymore. unable now to absorb the brute force of unrequited energy with my porous ribcage. the pain remains, sharp but tolerable. I feel it in the night when I’m sleeping or when I cough, or blow my nose that persistent throbbing deep in my core. when it’s healed I will still feel the ache like an echo in a warehouse, taking up the empty space. the less you know the better you sleep Vladimir Putin in judo bathrobe all smirk and tinkle riding on his high horse sidesaddle to Dresden because all roads lead to Dresden when all you read is Vonnegut you should be here now in this karaoke bar where the bright-eyed dictator sings blueberry hill to captive air-hostesses with veneered smiles hair in shellacked buns standby as we plunge headfirst into a new world order of Flipper songs in TV commercials Salvador Dali in a car chase on the San Marino freeway singing LIFE is the only thing worth living for and when nothing is left we find ourselves begging for an ounce of common decency J. Archer Avary once broke a hand in a hot tub accident. That’s all you need to know to understand the process behind his Pushcart nominated poetry. Twitter: @j_archer_avary

Broken Toys I blamed myself for every broken toy Back when I was a kid And now I find out how fucked up that was How a brain skewers a person As I attempt not to cry into the webcam. Way We’ve Always Been There is an ungraspable sting to seeing unloved personality traits in your children Knowing you’ve never figured out ways to dampen your impatience The beauty of their faces shines like beacons even through crowds of kids I wonder how their features will change figuring I’ll still see them this way For how many generations is this how we’ve behaved? Who were the wordsmiths among my ancestry? Immigrants two generations removed Earned the rights of restless natives now Facsimiles of people gone before with different last names and places to call home I call you two home Try as I might I can’t help but get frustrated that the attention lavished cannot meet the amount craved Know too well the time will come when I’m banished as nothing more than an embarassment. The Things Easily Forgotten Feel a hand Ripping at the base of your heart and the pit of your stomach The dozen of us asking The same unanswerable question What more we could’ve done for someone who didn’t want the help We drink to the best of us The sweetest and kindest Who yearned for the things we have Even when he possessed So much more than we could imagine Tonight, we are each other’s Emotional support peacocks Clinging with laughter and tears to the side of the cargo hold Remembering things easily forgotten Conjuring useless memories That we never wanted to keep No use for the internet Except endless trivial queries Carefully worded To navigate algorithms Steering us through a perceived life The beginning of a life Truly is the easy part Reconciling an end So bitter, so early Unwarranted the hardest part Forgiving yourself In the face of death Takes a lifetime to do. Scott Cumming unsuspectingly went to see Garden State wearing his Shins tee. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Versification, Mystery Tribune and Shotgun Honey. His poem, “Blood on Snow”, was voted the best of Outcast Press Poetry Things We Carry issue and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection, A Chapbook About Nothing, was released in December as part of Close to the Bone's First Cut series. Twitter: @tummidge Website: https://scottcummingwriter.wordpress.com/

The beauty of your peace, makes the boarders of the horizon recede into nothingness, and the mind crippled by its own weight is released into a deepening reverence with the stars made holy by a grief all too human. The evening with its melody sweet and tortuous swallows the burgeoning self and with fitful transcendence illuminates the worm besieged heart, voiceless and numb. Despair is alleviated by the steady current of your voice that carries birds and translucent clouds into the growing web of night, that heeds not boarder nor recognises name. Let senses be dumb, let eternity subdue with drops of quietness upon our brows. Let death be accepted; nurtured from the beginning and all our finite moments free from history’s engravings be glorified. David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.

I learned to draw from my neighbour Harp we called him, although his name was Greg, but by the time he moved in across the street, the name Greg was taken by my baby brother who I wanted to call Max because of Get Smart but it didn’t work out. Harp stayed on his driveway and drew with chalk which he also ate and I howled to my mother he’s eating the chalk again and all she howled back was I know when I was expecting a solution. Among other things, I wondered about the colour of his poo and its buoyancy but when I got to know him, one step at a time, I saw that he was only licking the chalk so as to achieve a thicker, bolder, more meaningful stroke. I knew right away Harp was drawing at me and I watched through my bedroom window but this was the60s and suburban neighbourhoods were new and important so my mother hauled me out of the house and pushed me without being obvious about it across the street. I shook myself loose on the road just before Harp’s driveway and she kept on going, on the grass because Harp’s expression went like The Scream when her foot hovered over his canvas. Harp’s mother opened the door and my mother twirled inside and Harp put himself in a chalk box and I rode my bike up and down the street, all the houses except ours still under construction. All he drew were stripes everybody thought but I knew they were trees because, like I said, they were aimed at me and I saw the trees become forests so dense and secret like gnarled fairy tales until it rained and they were gone forever in a beautiful pale path of residue that lined our street always. We’d recently made plaster of paris hands at school for Mother’s Day gifts, gruesome things chopped at the wrist, and my mother put mine on her dresser so it looked like I was crouched inside, my exposed hand offering rubber bands, change, thumbtacks, bobby pins. There had been leftover chunks of the plaster – forearms and elbows, broken thumbs, knuckles and other appendages – and we pocketed the bits and after school a bunch of us drew all over the pavement. I made the letter m that looked like a bird one way and a bum the other, while braver kids spelled s-h-i-t and f-u-c-k. I went to the store sometimes with a note, for cigarettes or bread mostly, and one time I asked Mr. Wilkes if he had plaster of paris and he hauled out a big bag and I hauled it home in the carrier of my bike, my front wheel very wobbly. My mother yelled at me but I told her I wanted to make chalk for Harp and she stirred while I searched the house for shapes and we poured the lovely smooth goo into greased tin cans, cracker boxes lined with stretch and seal, paper towel tubes, toys. The food colouring was her idea and when I gave the big box to Harp, all the shapes and colours like pieces of broken castles, his blue chalky lips smiled. After the next rain when he drew his box he made the line at the base of his driveway dotted and I was allowed in. He let me populate the forest with birds and lizards. He pointed out swirls of chalk with pavement eyes and I gathered them into monsters. When his mother made us matching red capes, I introduced miniature Supermen into the forest, their horizontal capes like gashes. He watched like I was on TV while I rode my bike up and down the street my cape bubbling behind me. Eventually I got him through the dots and turned out he wasn’t so afraid as long as we went one step at a time. He started to talk about the same time my little brother Greg did and his ideas were far bigger than mine, maybe because they’d been hidden for so long I don’t know, but sometimes they were too big for words and he’d draw them instead, on paper with blue cartridge pen which blobbed sometimes and he’d hand the page to me so I could turn the blobs into monsters. Everybody got greedy when our trees got huge and there was a housing boom in established neighbourhoods. We sold our house and Harp’s family sold theirs. We kept in touch for a long time me and Harp. Last I heard he was a pilot up north, the crop duster kind, with a side hustle as sky writer and that’s what I think of when the sky is pink in the morning, like maybe it’s Harp’s beautiful residue again. Sherry is from the wilds of northern Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. thestoryparade.ca

Thunder Sound I grew up with thunder, lightning, with klaxon warnings to take shelter. Reaping whirlwinds for sowing heat, humidity, electric layers of air. Thunder that awakened at deep dark midnight. Thunder with sunrise veiled by wicked clouds. Thunder in choleric March snows. I heard thunder boom like dropped artillery, crack like a savage whip, rumble like an ancient rite. 🙒🙒🙒 I never heard thunder roll until we moved to California. It ricocheted off low mountains to playful ocean, from stout redwoods to flaring seaside bonfires. They said we brought thunder with us; before we came no storm split the sky. Disapproving powers made protest. Angry titans warred against our plans to stay. Far from compelling our retreat, their strivings put us at ease— thunder made familiar an unknown place. Thunder welcomed us home. Crab Shell I’ll dig up a cork-screw hermit crab shell. I’ll carry delights, discoveries— my burden of joy in the spindly-sure spiral. On my back, ever ready to shelter— always able to bear. Outside forces hold no dread for me. Internal distractions succumb to helix-hard constraint. The twist-tight innards of my moveable home— packed with every bright ornament I collect; nothing beautiful escapes my notice— nothing attendant is ignored. I scoop up particularities no one seems to see. They feed my love for this world— small, weighty things. Sarah M. Lillard is a writer living in northern Virginia. Her poetry has appeared in Black Bough Poetry, The Hellebore, and Nightingale & Sparrow.

Taking, Care I was in the squares of Savannah, moon eyed and just-wed, honey-sunned, while relatives plucked my grandmother’s best things and flowers. After the funeral, before the big auction, familial teeth and their twice removed seething emerged in Ohio, gnawing the valuables faster than her cancer; beautiful objects and meaning sinking into the stomachs of their hungriest pockets. I returned on Thursday from the squares of Savannah, still shaded by October’s magnolia and southern live oak memories. I was a new wife missing the closest still-married family member. There was ease in our many midwestern days. I had to pick from an upheaval of leftovers, her once-loved possessions. I took the angel, the quilt. I grabbed LIFE magazines, writing paper, and slim books I’d never see her read. I missed the chance to rescue her heavy, most grandfatherly clock that clicked our time together while the pendulum hypnotized like rhythm of rain or rocking chair on our quiet after-church afternoons. I hear it even decades later in my umpteenth wave of second-hand grief. When I was in Savannah I absorbed each museum, riverwalk, and ghost. I was voracious: sneaking sand into my back pocket from Tybee Island; handfuls of Spanish moss slipped into my purse at the green and gray Bonaventure Cemetery. Sip-soaked Too much headwine and now our glarey stares: every clever rereverie sweat-glassed and fog-wet. Whose move now? Memory has strayed like a loose hen. Let’s go to bedlam. I love hate you in the way that you are in the way. Wake up to rooster-sad crowcrying. K Weber is an Ohio poet who has self-published 6 online poetry book projects. These are free in PDF and audio formats. Her projects, writing and photo credits, and more can be found at http://kweberandherwords.wordpress.com

Reminiscence is a necessary evil And the melody of love lingers Alas, we're now only strangers Oh, but that beautiful flower Bloomed only for that hour Alas, we're now only strangers Yet, those promises were prayers Bloomed only for that hour Drenched in a soulful shower Yet, those promises were prayers And the melody of love lingers Drenched in a soulful shower Oh, but that beautiful flower For the love basking folks They spoke of love as if it's true But, truth is a fluctuation too Yet, folks bask in that sappy Sun And the next moment, it's gone But, truth is a fluctuation too And tintless ocean turns blue And the next moment, it's gone All that was earnestly sworn And tintless ocean turns blue Heedless of all lovers, old or new All that was earnestly sworn Abides in the blossom, now worn Heedless of all lovers, old or new They spoke of love as if it's true Abides in the blossom, now worn Yet, folks bask in that sappy Sun

The answer in an envelope It lies on the table, lips pursed like a religious aunt in possession of the truth and the certainty that only a believer can deal with it. A believer like her. I am not a believer, not equipped for the awareness that, in another space, a disjointed elbow distant, such frail material can set my cells chattering. It can be under your fingers and a thousand kilometres away — an answer that was an itch before it became a question. My daughter is in her room, half-hiding secrets she carves out of plasma, sparks of dopamine reflected on the screen of her retina. She looks up as I pass, acknowledges my parental checking with a quick smile before returning to her episode. At least she still yawns like a child, rubs her nose with the back of her hand. Nobody has convinced her you don’t do that, yet. The answer is a tendon of love binding a muscle to its bone, the suspicion, that anything that can be torn, will be. And that tearing is deliberate — the rupture of particular fibres. He hides the answer with some other business: pensions untranslated, previous official things he wouldn’t know where to find, hopes maybe this will seem less important after time, that it might somehow lose itself in paper. Painted by numbers Your raincoat is a shade of wing-tips, the underlip of swell, contour of clouds compressed, certain stones; your face, the patient, arthritic, absent expectation of storm peeling off the Atlantic, familiar ache of island weather, the colour of resigned hostility — a shatter of mews rendered against a shatter of brine against a shatter of cut glass sky — grey raw waves of rain and gull; what you came back for, painted in a strain of white, after what you came back for had gone. Craven Man You come from the west, where a good part of the world ends, and the rest just drowns itself in winter. Surveying us with your voice of heath and shale Oh great clods of humanity, stroking your thatched moustache, wiping wisdom off your chin, deducing absence with great hands, you palpitate first your granite pockets, then a paper autopsy of poetry notes to find, what? A chatter of chairs, dulled spines contorted by wrought learning, some still busy with their Tippex poxing generations of boredom. Where you come from, soil sprouts heather and calls it surviving … … all these south Dublin boys have to worry about is which bank will put them out to golf. Have you seen it? Grey knit shrugs over darker grey shirts. Have you seen my watch? Watch? Other terms for stupidity include . . . The chronic incredulity on our faces, our resting, adolescent mistrust. Your watch? The watch you don’t have, because time is a word that takes care of itself. You learned that picking stones out of a field, counting them to make a day. You learned that as you brackened into age, the moss of your jacket binding life to itself, sandstone of your hair resisting retirement. And the day you aren’t here, there will be another drizzle of attention on the playing fields, more words put out to grass. Somebody, with a bit of luck, or a compass might carve a memory into his desk. Meanwhile, diminishing a ruler, you unseam one boy from nave to chops, fix his bemusement on your battlements. An English teacher most of the time, Simon Leonard writes short and micro-fiction in both English and Spanish, as well as poetry. When the desire for recognition overcomes the anxiety of not being good enough, he offers work for publication. Examples can be found in Orbis, Envoi, Ink, Sweat and Tears, What Rough Beast, Overheard and Sunthia, among others. Several of his pieces of short fiction have been shortlisted in competitions, although he has never won anything.

A man once told me that I would be single forever if I used ‘big words’ while talking to people When I unhinged my jaw to swallow him whole, He also told me that I would be prettier if I smiled more. Megan Cassiday is a wannabe poet and education student from Michigan. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Where is the River, Phantom Kangaroo, Versification, and CLOVE. You can find her on Twitter @MeganLyn_

With everyone so busy Eaten up by nothings I wish we’d take more time For one another With everyone so busy Wearing masks I wished we could remove the pretense And just be our naked selves With everyone so busy Confusing masks for people Bamboozled by nonsense Is it any wonder We feel so alone and alienated? With everyone so busy Can’t we just laugh at our own cosmic absurdity? And realize We’re all on a collective road To nowhere Sebastian Vice is the Founder of Outcast Press devoted to transgressive fiction and dirty realism. He has short fiction and poetry published in Punk Noir Magazine, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Outcast Press, Terror House Magazine, Bristol Noir, and Misery Tourism. He contributed a chapter to Red Sun Magazine's forthcoming book The Hell Bound Kids (May 1st, 2022) and writes a regular column called "Notes of A Degenerate Dreamer" over at A Thin Slice of Anxiety. His flash piece "One Last Good Day" was nominated for Best of The Net 2021. His forthcoming poetry book Homo Mortalis: Meditations on Memento Mori will drop April 4th, 2022 through Anxiety Press.