Winning By Brenton Booth

 

The referee stopped the

fight in the final clicks

of the second round after

he was barely touched by

half a dozen or so exhausted,

desperate jabs. If the fight

had continued to the third

round, his battered opponent,

whose nose he'd already

broken in three different

places at the beginning of

the round, with several

stiff intent flurries; wouldn't

have risen for the bell.

Sliding on skates, barely

coherent, when the TKO was

tentatively announced to

the small roaring crowd. He

took the loss with a gracious

smile, fully coherent,

gesturing the rowdy incensed

crowd to please calm

down. Knowing for every

great winner, there needs to

be an even greater loser.

The winner whining for hours

after to an exhausted

indifferent middle-aged male

doctor, at a hellishly

congested hospital. While

he pleasurably gulped

from a never-ending bottle

of heavenly Tennessee

whiskey. Wolfing thick perfect

lines off the pert, golden

breasts, of a young, beautiful hooker.

Certain he would live forever.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Poetry of his has appeared in Gargoyle, New York Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, Heavy Feather Review, and Nerve Cowboy. He has two full length collections available from Epic Rites Press.  

UP AHEAD By Susan Isla Tepper

You spent sorrow on your days

Added up that’s

A big tab.

Because the earth never stops

Spinning you lose track

Of time and

The properties of time.

Now you see that wall

Up ahead is closing

In on you

And yet you still lament .

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer in all genres. Her most recent book, a Novel titled Hair Of A Fallen Angel, came out in the fall from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC. Tepper has also written 7 stage plays. Her third play titled EVA & ADAMO will present at The Tank, NYC, early fall. www.susantepper.com

Wooded Windows By Strider Marcus Jones

as this long life slowly goes

i find myself returning

to look through wooded windows.

forward or back, empires and regimes remain

in pyramids of power

butchering the blameless for glorious gain.

feudal soldiers firing guns

and wingless birds dropping smart bombs

on mothers, fathers, daughters, sons,

follow higher orders

to modernise older civilisations

repeating what history has taught us.

in turn, their towers of class and cash

will crumble and crash

on top of Ozymandias.

hey now, woods of winter leafless grip

and fractures split

drawing us into it.

love slide in days

through summer heat waves

and old woodland ways

with us licking

then dripping

and sticking

chanting wiccan songs

embraced in pagan bonds

living light, loving long,

fingers painting runes on skin

back to the beginning

when freedom wasn't sin.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford,

England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of

Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of

The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

  

His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington

Post USA; The Crossroads Magazine, The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine;The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.

all these beautiful women in the world By J.J. Campbell

i hate being around 

people when i start 

thinking

this notion always 

finds a way into 

my soul

all these beautiful 

women in the 

world and all of 

them would rather 

die than be with 

me

i wonder why i 

even bother to 

shave or put on 

cologne

loneliness is the 

only scar that 

women don’t 

find cool

i laugh when i 

look in the mirror

it’s the joy of 

torture

the pure fucking 

joy that pain brings 

me

it’s all i have left

there’s only one 

way to go once 

that ship sinks

in the ocean

J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is stuck in suburbia, plotting his escape. He's been widely published over the last 30 years, most recently at Synchronized Chaos, Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review and Misfit Magazine. You can find him most days betting on soccer in foreign countries and taking care of his disabled mother. He tries his best to still write on his blog, although time often never allows it. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

At 3 By Susan Isla Tepper

Each season walked through

Darkness got crazy

A spoon appeared to be

The moon

Guarded by treachery

Any invisible army

 

As long as

You could be

Counted on to appear

Each day

At 3

Through the back entrance

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty year writer in all genres. Her most recent book, a Novel titled Hair Of A Fallen Angel, came out in the fall from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC. Tepper has also written 7 stage plays. Her third play titled EVA & ADAMO will present at The Tank, NYC, early fall. www.susantepper.com

Freestyle Isn’t Free By Chad Parenteau

Automatic

goes off

in hand.

Singers 

don’t clean

up scat.

Poop’s 

now the

pudding. 

Infection

spread on

word salad.

Spontaneity

combusts

uninsured.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All's Well Isn't You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

Tom And Huck Revisited By Kevin M. Hibshman

Do you recall those earlier days when lost in a haze, I would follow you anywhere?

Jumping off the bridge on our bikes onto the small island in the middle of a stream.

Riding headlong into a cornfield, the plants smashing against us.

The 4th of July when we snuck into the park,.no one knew we got in for free.

It was all a storybook adventure.

You were something like a hero to me.

We got high for the first time before band practice and spent the day laughing as only fourteen year-olds can.

I loved that first year of High School.

We sat close together in a private world until the teachers separated us.

When the class had to read aloud from some obscure text, I never could because you would make me laugh.

You were rebellious, full of pranks.

We put discarded Christmas trees on top of people's cars.

You got nabbed shoplifting candy, not content with the free samples the outlet provided.

It was all in good fun.

We slept over at each other's houses always trying to sneak out after curfew.

Your parents would catch us and order us back to bed.

One night we made it to the school building.

How different it seemed in the dark.

You were Tom and I was Huck.

I never suspected those days would end with no more Summer vacations to fill.

We were in the same Cub Scout pack.

You insisted we join marching band and I was stuck trying to learn how to play the trumpet.

Those bus rides were fun with Renata's head in my lap.

You and I and Brenda formed the terrible trio.

Everything changed during our Sophomore year.

You went off each morning to Vo-Tech.

You got a car and your family moved to another part of town.

That was the beginning of the end.

After graduation, you signed up to the Navy and were placed on a ship in San Francisco.

We did write back and forth.

You called me when you went AWOL and were unsure of what to do.

Things got heavier and sadder for awhile.

When you returned home, I was somebody new, myself for the first time.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide.In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).

Cease To Destroy from Whiskey City Press.

His current book is Lost Within The Garden Of Heathens also from Whiskey City Press and currently available through Amazon.

https://a.co/d/aIBcNvy