Issue #20

Artwork in this issue by Starixide

Starixide, is a queer freelance artist who specializes in digital art- showcasing character design, original character artworks and fandom pieces. They are an online presence that doesn’t update their socials months at a time but still makes it a goal every year to post at least once a week. (They have never succeeded in this endeavor.)
They are available for commission work- offering personalized portraits of clients, character concepts for books or personal projects, hand drawn graphic design and so much more. If you would be interested in contacting them, their business email and social medias will be listed below.

The idea for this issue generated a great deal of interest wherever I mentioned it. Turns out a lot of poets also consider themselves geeks in some way (or in many ways!) But this issue is not just about those things commonly thought of as part of geek culture: anime , D&D, sci-fi, comics, video games, etc. This is the “Geeking Out” issue not the geek issue. and people geek out about all sorts of things. Whether it’s history or food, or grammar, or craft supplies, color rocks or weird-shaped jars, if you geek out about it and have a poem you might have a home in this or future “Geeking Out” issues.

Yes, there will probably be others!

A distance from Tokyo’s downtown, 
the cab heads into a residential area 
where Japan’s bike culture and clean streets gleam. 
Though I’m a manga amateur, a local friend 
suggested a visit to the Tokiwaso Manga Museum,
a recreated communal home in Toshima City
where pioneers of anime set stakes in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Shoes removed to protect tatami mats and wood stairs, 
we peer into shared and single workspaces, a spare toilet, 
nothing like the country’s high-tech bowls of today, 
a common kitchen, and drawers filled with artists’ tools. 
Hideko Mizuno moved in with a sole wicker suitcase.
Shotaro Ishinomori’s assistant worked in Room 18.
The ghosts of Shin’ichi Suzuki, Tokuo Yokota,
and Naoya Moriyasu live on in Room 20.

Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books published her book, We Became Summer. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone lives in New York City and Haverford, PA. X: @AmyBBarone

If you were to guess which Muppet I would be,
I would assume you would guess me to be Miss Piggy
             Fat and fabulous femme that I am
But it’s actually Rolf on my vision board.

As far as Muppets go,
I always thought of myself like
              Gonzo
              Grover
              Cookie Monster

Yet the Muppets that taught me
what I wanted were Bert and Ernie.
              A nice one bedroom apartment
              fixed with twin beds
              overlooking our loving community.

              A partner to watch birds with
             and sing in the park.
             Someone to make me oatmeal.

             A best pal with quaint special interests
             that doesn’t grumble for very long
            when I laugh after playing a joke on them.

Such compassion and longevity to their connection.
Complimentary striped sweaters
and an investment in one another.
Those fuzzy monsters taught me what love looked like.

Being with your friend through and through
and loving the differences between you.
Kermit and Miss Piggy were never it for me.
Not even Gonzo and his chicken.

But Bert and Ernie,
they showed this queer
how to love and resolve conflicts.
That a partner should be a buddy and a friend.

I don’t want the chaos of Electric Mayhem
or to live with bats and numbers like The Count,
I want what Bert and Ernie have.
Maybe Bunsen and Beaker, too.

Regan Manion (they/them) is a non-binary poet from the Lehigh Valley. You can catch them singing in their church choir or at the occasional open mic. You can also find them watching Sesame Street content on social media after work. This bio was brought to you by the letter P for poetry!

My tribe: 
The Tribe of Dork 

Who else obsesses over  
the nth degree of minutae 
but the Tribe of Dork? 

I remember one of the brujas  
writing a poem after a show at the Stork’s Nest 
called “Dorks at the Stork.” 

But I digest: 
The list of appetizers and entrees 
is loooooonnnnng: 

the relevance of rhyme 
the Oxford comma 
one space or two after a sentence 
the proper usage of a semi-colon 
the proper usage of a colon 
dashes for punctuation 
ellipses for punctuation 
the overuse of slashes 
the overuse of line breaks 
(what you actually like those?) 
the relevance of the Chicago Manual of Style to style 
the relevance of footnotes to relevance 
the relevance of DFW’s footnotes to anything 

This but a small sample size 
from the smorgasboard/buffet/all you can eat 
of the campaign issues  
of the Tribe of Dork. 

Is it any wonder  
AWP has become  
a writhing rat king’s nest  
of  
repressed  
sublime  
sexual tension  
that can be split wide open  
with an overheated  
biodegradable  
spork? 
which not coincidentally 
rhymes with  
“dork” 

(see “tribe of” in footnotes.) 

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the Firecracker nominated poetry collection Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence 2021.) He is co-founder of Collapse Press and co-producer of The Friday Collapse Zoomcast with Lynn Alexander. He currently teaches workshops for the Caravan Writer’s Collective and the Oakland Unified School District and occasionally fills in as drummer for the US Ghostal Service and his own project, The There Their They’re.

For everyone who has ever closed their eyes
against the stress of everyday life
and seen those cascading Tetris tiles 
falling behind their eyelids…

For everyone who ever has ever passed
by a stone wall
or brick stairs
on their way through town
and been tempted to press
on that small patch 
where the colors
or the patterns
don’t quite match,
to find the hidden door
they KNOW is there…

For everyone who has seen 
that particular color of flower
and bent down to pick it,
thinking they could make cloth armor from it…

For anyone who has worked a dead end job
with no hope of moving beyond it
and thought that If they could only beat the boss
find the prize
complete the goal
they could somehow move on 
to the next level in life…

You know who you are
and I see you.
We are brothers in the same guild
or clan or alliance
or whatever you prefer to call it.

When you have escaped so hard
and for so long
that escapism bleeds into reality
you understand life in a different way
and it alters who you are.

When that happens
you will always have comrades-in-arms
out there in the world
and beyond it.

But if you are not one of those people
don’t worry,
it’s easy to pull out a keyboard
or pick up a controller
and log on.

The guild is always accepting applications.

Darrell Parry’s book Twists: Gathered Ephemera (Parisian Phoenix 2022) may not be the only record of his existence on this world. If aliens come searching eons from now, they might also discover ancient program books from the Easton Book Festival, which is currently held each October in Easton, PA. Inside, they might find the letter from the president, which may or may not have been written by him, depending on what year the booklet is from. They could also unearth video evidence from any number of recorded Zoom poetry events, including a few from the Lehigh Vally Poetry Virtual Salon which he hosts in the present day with E. Lynn Alexander on the first Monday of every January, April, July and October. If they uncover such things they might add them to some strange and fantastical alien database… or just trash them. Either way is fine.

wasn’t sure
if i wanted to be
xena: warrior princess
or be with her,
but i loved her
and how fierce and 
powerful she was;
when i played with my
friend she always made me be
gabrielle,
but i didn’t want to be
the sidekick
even if i looked more like
gabrielle than xena
i wanted the limelight;
wanted to be the hero
for once—

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has fifteen published chapbooks, the latest being: not your piñata (Alien Buddha Publishing, June 2025).

Quibble sits at a park bench, trying to place the words he heard in the last hollow bucket he passed, into an overly ornate notebook – the kind of durable, sassy notebook a teenage girl selects as the vault for her diary.  He likes its front cover and double spiral rings, feels the paper will withstand being carelessly penned on both sides.  Readers do not appreciate the physicality of writing:  the materials, the setting, the circumstance.  All the elements must be marshaled in making the latent writer comfortable.  Or uncomfortable.  All as the subject demands, or what the readers are worth.

Ken Poyner’s current nine collections of poetry and flash fiction can be found at most online booksellers.  He spent 33 years in information systems management, is married to a world-record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish.  Individual works have appeared in “Café Irreal”, “Analog”,  “The Cincinnati Review”, and several hundred other places. Find out more at: www.kpoyner.com

I wander through Meijer at 2 a.m. in the shadow of Christmas, having fled another woman who flinched at my approaching kiss. I am the commodore of misread cues, the mailman of junk catalogs that offer sales on abandoned scrapbooks and speedboats no one boards. Beside the CLR remover shelves, I scrounge enough fortitude from my haggard life to forgive myself again. For the ways I’ve been disencumbered from love. For never knowing the rules and exceptions. Whether this year is the cardboard celebration or the bugle’s anniversary. In the parking lot, after I’ve paid for dental floss and a pack of Cinnamints, I pause before starting my Cavalier, the Chevy that will carry me 313, 000 miles into the twilight of my career, and I imagine pitching horseshoes like my grandfather. His long shadow covered mine whenever we gathered walnuts or mushrooms. He smoked a pipe filled with cherry tobacco. Kept his horseshoe trophies in the attic with an ancient first baseman’s mitt. Like all the men I knew, he never talked about the intricacies of love. I pause before turning the key in the ignition. If I return home, I’ll sleepwalk through the hurly-burly years yet to come. If I check the rearview mirror, I’ll become a male crone, a Krampus with a sack of switches, chains, and sins. A midnight Father Christmas without a crudely carved nutcracker to hide beneath an unforgiven man’s grim bed.

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His prose poems have appeared in Alien Buddha, Unlikely Stories Mark VI, and Keeping the Flame Alive. In addition, Brockley’s work is forthcoming in The Dolomite Review, Eunoia Review, and Crazy Heart Press.

Nintendo introduced you, Kirby-san,
way back in 1992. You puffed,
swallowed your enemies, sprinted, and danced–
iconic, harmony with every move.
Running through plains, the oxen and the elves
grace the greens. Aplenty is the fruit.
Birds flying through the air, willow in bloom,
dropping the apples as branches extend.
As mollusks scatter within castle walls,
ghosts haunt the towers, lasers made of leaves.
Eight doors surrounding chambers, boxes pushed
by minions tossing them across the floor.
Palm trees, they line the island paradise.
Beluga whale, blowhole, geyser erupts.
Cannons hang from zeppelins flipping ‘round,
this aerial maneuver, a feat of champs.
From nebulae, knights throw their boomerangs.
Precipitation strikes this labyrinth.
Cumulonimbus, lightning in the form
of soaring spikes within one glaring eye.
Remember all your arsenal items:
Mint leaves, microphones, bottles, lollipops,
1UP, spicy and energizing food.
Stars warped and sparkled as your dreams progressed
You must remember every boss you fought.
You will fight them again when you proceed.
You shall prepare to fight your final brawl.
You have the wherewithal, a climax reached.
Inhale, exhale, practice before you run.
The bully holds a hammer, muscular,
lunging, leaping, seeing stars with every stomp.
And use his force against him: spit them out.
Run back and forth, fake, cut, pick, dodge, and weave.
You will eventually overpower.
Blow him away, launched from the mountaintop,
all five worlds, united by each quasar.
Bring forth the kingdom, inflate, and glide on,
observing your surroundings as you float.
Touch down within the clouds and greet your crowd:
fanfare of dreams fulfilled, replenished food.
You mastered inhalation, effortless.
Expectoration, flying through these rooms.
You took a bow and held a final sign.
An enemy defeated, he can’t deal.
Pink puffball – eventually, you got some help
to navigate through water, land, and sky:
a hamster, fish, and owl – compatriots.
More worlds left to explore, walls ricocheted.
Kirby – you are courageous at your core.
Another Japanese import revered
like Mario, Sonic, and Pikachu,
your magic – testament, an honor earned.

Jacob R. Moses is a poet and spoken word artist from NYC. Publications featuring his work span five continents. He is the author of Grimoire (iiPublishing, 2021), WTF: Writing Through Fascism (Bainbridge Island Press, 2024), and the co-author of Tuesday Night Beats with Douglas G. Cala (Like a blot from the blue, 2025). Jacob (AKA Jack M. Freedman) is a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University with an MA in English and Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry. In 2024, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by New Generation Beat Publications for his poem, “Lottery.”

In the nominative form it ends in an ‘-a’,
unlike most other modern nouns,
that add on the end the suffix ‘-i’,
as the small number of roots that end in some other vowel 
subsume this ending of ‘-i’. 

But when the plural ending of ‘-eb-’ is added,
this ending subsumes the ‘a’ itself, 
and to it is appended the normal ‘-i’.  

My favorite thing though about this Georgian word ‘da’ 
is the fact that thus their word for ‘sisters’
is pronounced as ‘debi’ – 
my own sister’s name. 

Martin L Parker (Parquillian) is a graphic artist and poet based in DC who has been fascinated by many facets of language since childhood, including linguistics, calligraphy and poetry. These passions have coalesced into a calling to share his multilingual word art and poetry with the world. You can see his artwork at www.parquillian.com

Coffee on, dog out, 
She thought of the things she should 
Do before the bogeyman came.
When she was a girl
Hiding under furniture
Was her remedy when trouble fell.
Now rats gnaw through her 
Past as she remembers her
Delta wedding and Kansas split.
Her dog’s bark teased 
The break of day as she whispered,
‘Not one man has tried to cure me;
Many have taken what
They wanted and in no way 
Nourished the loose bits that remain of me.’

Jeff H. Martin is a poet/novelist currently residing on the Northshore of Lake Ponchitrain, outside New Orleans. He has enjoyed a varied career as a newspaper, magazine, and television executive. After moving to the New Orleans area, he has worked on over two dozen films as a day player. Martin’s poetry has been published in the Berkeley Monthly, Rolling Stone, and the Dark Poets Club.

Leaving their home beneath the tidal waves
is quite the rarity to be seen.
Only to launch territorial raids,
the sahuagin plays the ocean’s most feared fiend.

Ruthless in their tactics, they stake their claim
in neighboring communities
that struggled to survive, timid and tame,
conquering with relative ease.

The merfolk, however, refuse to fall
victim to their cruel attacking.
They’re holding their ground, preparing to brawl,
though they’ll fall prey without backing.

A reputation for independence,
but the merfolk swallow their pride
to plead with the lizardfolk seeking vengeance
against the sahuagin, who in the past lied.

Advanced warning of the impending siege,
the lizardfolk take their offer
of weapons brand new and never been breached
and agree to be their buffer.

Bringing to light this newfound alliance
by their naval adversary,
the sahuagin persuades their compliance
if they leave the lizardfolk be.

Again, the merfolk must fight outnumbered–
almost surefire decimation.
But we can turn the tide, just you wonder–
how delicious, the satisfaction!

The name to know is Calliope,
a mere half-elf bard with an itch
to seek out adventures of history
in the making without a hitch

May I ask you all to join this journey?
Though dangerous on the surface,
please partake in this part of history.
I desperately need your service!

Magnus Mateo (they/he/she) is a poet, performer, event host and organizer in the Lehigh Valley. In addition to their debut chapbook, ‘She’s Jealous of my Purple Sky (AlienBuddha Press),’ they have been published in several literary magazines and poetry anthologies. You can find Magnus as the main host and event organizer of the IceHouse Literary Arts Committee in Bethlehem and of Noble Quills in Easton.

The corners of my eyes
fold inside out, twisting
into knots while encrusted.
Tear ducts pump warm air
inside corridors lined with
paper mâché gargoyles, 
spewing licorice and sourdough
onto icy floors, which tilt, 
and fall with each movement.
I grasp a doorknob, and climb 
thru that breach just before pieces fall 
into a newly opened chasm.
The room is empty except for you 
standing in the center, smiling,
wishing to reconfigure geometry:
walls, floors, and ceiling all reconstruct
a new castle from tidy blueprints.
I breathe heavy as you teleport closer.
Still smiling, you push me into a wall.
Eyes burning, lips open, as you hold me: 
How long do you think you can resist?
Then the walls, floor; everything disappears,
while we levitate in a steel-gripped embrace.

When Nick Romeo is not at his occupation which is situated in the STEM fields, he passes the time with his art creations. His main forms of expression are electronic music, writing, sewing, and photography. His work has been seen in various journals such as Alien Buddah Press, Highland Park Poetry, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Marrow Magazine, Rune, Door=Jar, and many others.

The year 2024:
a coincidental occurrence of
Total Solar Eclipse,
Leap Year, and the coming of
The Dual Emergence of
Brood XIX, the Great Southern Brood, and
Brood XIII, the Northern Illinois Brood.

The first time in 221 years 
that the two broods have emerged simultaneously.

Is it a coincidence that all these screaming beings
will emerge from the ground in this,
a year and tundra charged 
by the complete meeting of the sun and moon?

These beings bred and hatched straight into the soil:
they have lived their whole lives with their families underground,
existing in separate domiciles.

The truest of introverted creatures,
perpetually molting out of their old places,
succession after succession of moves,
always alone but moving into
newer, more complicated homes that they have spent
so many years building with their articulated bodies.
Some parts of their legs and torsos
only necessary for the building of these earthen tubes that
they build up merely for the purpose of gaining closer proximity to the sun.

These mud-lined condos keeping them busy,
never time to think of the future beyond
digging through dense roots, pushing pebbles to the surface.

Dropping to the bottom when a threat pursues them.

Is it mere coincidence that
they continually build their way up to the light
in this, the year of their lord and savior, Ra,
Helios, Tsohanoai, Liza, Apollo, Sol’s full realization?

Millions of us vacating our normal days
to worship in totality the eclipse that
will not visit these parts in full again for another 129 years.

Perhaps the vibrations of
all the travels of our kind
will awaken
their kind in full force in a fearful way?

Quite possibly to cause them to emerge
to cause dual damage to our crops,
our trees, our many farmers’ livelihoods?

The decimation of many a field, and potentially our economy.

The prices of common foods
driven up to the point of
produce rotting on the shelves
out of the simple inability to purchase them
at such a surge in cost.

The malnutrition of so many
stricken back into the college days of
licking peanut butter jars clean, of
ramen noodles for lunch and dinner, and
the hope of breakfast.

Title sourced from: pp. 131, The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature, Henry, Thomas, Public Affairs Press, 1958

April Ridge lurks in the rural hilltops of Monroe County, Indiana, akin to Mothman’s tomboy cousin, listening for hints of poetry on the wind. She enjoys horror films, the sordid affairs of 1920s circus performers, long walks in pitch black tunnels, and the occasional waffle cone from Jiffy Treet. April prides herself on finding the perfect outfit in which to adorn the skeleton of the soul. She hopes to highlight the needs of poems in danger, on the run, escaping from the need to fit into one form or another, on their way to the freedom of epiphany. Her work has appeared sporadically in deep space, circling black holes until the dinner bell of eternal fame rings in its echoing chambers.