Issue #23

I rwe’rea tendency to say that every single time… so maybe YOU should be the judge.

Dead deer 
on roadside with silver & rainbow 
mylar balloon attached to its hoof.
Get well soon reads the card.
This is me. This is me all the way.
Which part is you? she asks.
The part that is the dead dear, 
or the intended humor
or lack of humor 
or the implied sickness 
of some
prankster? 
All of the above I tell her.
I mean, it’s a deer, an innocent animal 
that because it’s delicate and meaty,
& being evicted from its home is targeted
by a bully audience, armed and bulked-up
on ‘Merika & sassy like they know God
personally.
I mean, because it can’t defend itself,
& it can’t do anything but run,
& then there are all the speeding vehicles
in quiet neighborhoods like mine.
I am the deer & the running & the standing up
to bullies all my life – the corporations with their demands
& they ate my skin & they ate my mother, my father,
& are slowly chewing my sister’s soul,
so subtly, insidiously, delicately bagging unlimited
numbers for mass consumption. Crowds without thick skin
& cerebrums with not enough convolutions to matter.
So little time for the feeble-minded, the frail, the deer
who doesn’t realize the outcome,
simply surviving
only to end up 
on some cold country road,
the butt of some fucker’s joke,
the victim of at least two murders. 
“The Tender Side of the New America”

John Dorroh’s poems are all over the board. He writes about anything and everything. Six of them were nominated for Best of the Net (none of them won) and hundreds of others have graced the covers of fine journals such as Feral, Kissing Dynamite, River Heron, Stick Figure, and Ospressan. When he comes back, he will be a honey bear. Maybe a badger.

The bone snapped
clean
like a salted cracker
or finger and thumb
rubbed together like
crickets’
legs.
A crack
that pierced the air
when what was once one
now is two.
The severing
into a pair
that which should
have stayed whole,
of a piece,
a thing in and of
itself
entirely 
transpired.

Drew Pisarra is the author of two radio plays (The Strange Case of Nick M. and Price in Purgatory); two stage comedies (Click and Tea Towels); and two sonnet collections (Infinity Standing Up and Periodic Boyfriends); plus a recent poetry collection that hasn’t a single sonnet in it (Fassbinder: His Movies, My Poems). He is a recent member of Embers and Ashes, the playwrighting lab at Yale Cabaret at Yale University.

One thing I’m understanding better,
is what has sidled up to me as Wait.
It’s a new friendship, but seems ancient,
comes with coupons, take a number,
and the water here never boils.

Read, some days a lot, 
walk a little, some days not.
My mind used to race, now not so much,
Wait doesn’t bide by much movement,
says it’s all about the patience.

Slowly sip your coffee, stick to the towel 
and body wash plans. Put all the pillows just so, 
don’t watch the news, you can’t handle it, 
sit your ass down,
when we’re ready I’ll let you know.

It’s been about two weeks,
he hasn’t let me know. 
The thought is, end this relationship,
move on, I’m doing all the work of doing nothing.
Wait always seem to know what I’m thinking,

I wear my antipathy on my sleeve 
with a dozen other sayings and cliches.
He gets me a chair, my legal pad 
and a favorite pen, I thought was lost, 
pours a Jameson neat,

guarantees something is going to happen today,
the tinnitus will go away, 
you’ll feel a need, a compulsion, 
but only if you apologize
and promise not to bitch about the wait.

Craig Kirchner loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart. He has been published in Chiron Review, Abraxas, Main Street Rag and more than 100 others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop; these words help keep him straight. Craig has an interview at Spillword and can be found on Bluesky.

Please accept my apologies.
You know how I crave completion,
But these days I’m too tired.
And when sleep finally arrives,
I need address it,
Embrace the noble gift,
Accept it where I may.
Years ago I would have risen,
No matter what hour of night,
Caught the thought, mid-flight,
Spent my time building a frame
Around the space inside,
So it stood tall and stately,
Before the morning found me.
Then I beamed with admiration,
Approached it from a distance,
Paced through its rooms,
As if I were in a trance,
And the hand of the divine
Softly touched my shoulder.
Now the work must wait,
At least, until daybreak—
A more sensible plan.
Yet should I ever lose
The last house on the street,
Remind me I once lived there.

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023.  He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.  His work has been anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others.  He lives in Pasadena.

I despise Sundays,
The day of shoulds, musts
And have toos.
No respite from
The carousel of life.
The machine keeps running.
The gears keep turning.
Dizzily, I fumble
Through yet another day
Without rest.
And as I turn around,
Another day is approaching;
A Monday, ready to greet.
Tis off to the races,
Out of breath.
We race towards the 
Ever lengthening
Mirage of the finish line
With no rest for us
In sight.

Heidi Larsen, M.Ed., is a 4th-grade teacher at a small Christian school in Central Massachusetts. She is a poet and a natural-born storyteller. Her poems have been featured in three Quabbin Quills Anthologies, and showcased in Creative Connections Art Gallery and in The New Dawn Arts Center. She is the author of My Bible- A Daily Prayer Journal. Her words come because they must. They have eeked out, late at night, when no one else was looking. They are her search for meaning, her grief in loss, her faith in a God who will never leave, and the intimate breath that she shares with this world of fragmented people.

When democracy committed crimes
it had been at the instigation,
under the guidance
and for the profit
of the upper classes.
                    Thucydides – 411B.C.
Strange to think
so long ago
someone knew
who always benefited
from the policy
of democracy,
the lords of profit
devouring the wealth
of the people,
always vulnerable
to the machinations
of the scheming few.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction, essays and plays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. His traditionally published books include 45 poetry collections, 18 novels, 4 short story collections, 2 collections of essays and 8 books of plays and 16 poetry chapbooks. Gary lives in New York City.

Some people walk
the barrios, the bad areas,
these crowded wicked streets,
these dark and menacing streets,
with a certain step;
no matter what
ken the way, have the means,
have defenses, have no fear, unease
or surmise no abiding danger,
fatal consequence,
vicious attack 
of some jack-in-the-box,
a beating by
moon-maddened thugs,
malignant meeting 
with some vengeful maniac.
Walking these streets,
others surrender cold turkey,
vox clamantis, to abject fear,
a fear that goes beyond the pale 
of ignorance, of frailty 
in the face of mayhem.
Look and see
this multifarious sprawl
of latticed streets, the surround of
stoop-ridden slatterns and drunks
punching holes through the fourth wall,
through the musings 
of the home-bound banker,
suburbed in bitty splendor;
what does he know
of disorderly and crazy?
Of bumming, begging, stealing,
sniping, brawling;
from quirky aggression
stinking of sweat  
or higher than a kite
on parboiled gak?
This damned sorrowful city,
cut up in pieces not alike 
for rich and poor.
Where are the steeples
that inspired the Dutch
to dour pride?
The rose-red brick
of blocky orderly buildings?
The clean-swept streets
of old New York?
Hustled away by time
and the march of multitudes. 
In truth, 
this fabled lush land
of our rapacious forefathers
never was as real
as we make it.
New York! New York!
Gateway to the New World,
metropolis of wealth
side by side
with extravagant poverty;
the light is not for all.
No island gone to hell
but a paradise of vanity,
venality, slum of iniquity,
jagged skyline
of skyscrapers, waiting
to swallow even biblical
Leviathan whole.
Trope of mankind,
overflowing, overflowing,
so many, too many;
jump back;
you’re rabbits by the abyss.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, Stick Figure Poetry, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. 
The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York.

Whoever he may
    have been, once, way back in the
long ago, the wind
    must have just come along, one
day, and absconded
    with his identity and his
social standing all
    together, leaving him far
from home and his friends,
    and only getting farther
with each passing day,
    like a drunk man chasing his
    hat off the edge of a cliff.

Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Blasts of steam
Hiss
As they jet
From gloom-enshrouded warships.
Against black velvet firmament.
Vapor puffs gleam white.
Pure white.
They appear clearly.
They appear briefly.
They appear only
To disappear.
Instantaneously!
To become nothing.
No vestige,
No residue.

Clark Zlotchew is the author of 19 books, among them two thriller novels, a poetry collection, and three collections of short stories, one of which was an award winner. His fiction, poetry, CNF, and author interviews (Borges and others) have appeared in Crossways Literary Magazine, The American Poetry Review, Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly, and many other literary journals in the U.S. and abroad.