BIG BOY : SMALL PAY. By Bryn Fortey

“Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup

bang his box the way I do now, and I said: If I ever got to the place

I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody saw.”

(Elvis Presley)

“I was born poor, I live poor, and I’ll die poor.”

(Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup)

Presley’s legendary first Sun single

Was an Arthur Crudup song

And when RCA bought his contract

Elvis picked two more to record

And other Chart Acts followed suit

Old Arthur should have been

Piling up the royalties, but...

He’d been living in a packing case

And barely surviving in Chicago

When a&r man Lester Melrose

Heard him street singing

And got him a record deal

Melrose paid Arthur a small fee

For each recording session

But published his compositions

Himself, never paying royalties

With others getting rich

While he remained poor

Crudup turned to manual labour

And bootlegging booze for finance 

Being rediscovered in his sixties

And playing the college circuit

Then cracking major league shows

As opening act for Bonnie Raitt

Over the years, many people tried

To help him get the royalties

He had never received

But most ended in failure

One small payment was secured

Not many years before his death

But he died still owed a fortune

Bryn Fortey is a veteran writer from Wales. He has had two

collections published by The Alchemy Press: MERRY-GO-
ROUND (2014) and COMPROMISING THE TRUTH (2018),
both featuring short stories and poems. He has been well
published over the years, both in print and on the internet. 

AFTERMATH / UNIVERSE OF BABEL. By Andrew Darlington

give me this chair
where the sunset light falls,
give me loud guitars
in my earbuds,
give me new poems,
give me the soft warmth
of this woman’s skin

to live extremes
crushes the world,
we burn and maim,
leave victims in
bitterness and pain,
I’m beyond that,
don’t need that any more
don’t want to hurt,
or be hurt

give me this ouzo,
this music,
give me this chair
in the corner
where sunset light falls,
give me this
moment of peace

Andrew Darlington  has had masses of material published in all manner of strange and obscure places, magazines, websites, anthologies and books. I’ve also worked as a Stand-Up Poet on the ‘Alternative Cabaret Circuit’, and I’ve interviewed very many people from the worlds of Literature, SF-Fantasy, Art and Rock-Music for a variety of publications (a selection of my favourite interviews collected into the ‘Headpress’ book ‘I Was Elvis Presley’s Bastard Love-Child’). My latest poetry collection is ‘Tweak Vision’ (Alien Buddha Press), while my new fiction collection ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’ is now available from Parallel Universe Publ. My Scientifiction novel ‘In The Time Of The Breaking’ (Alien Buddha Press) was published in January 2019


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR NATURAL STUPIDITY!!!Check out my website ‘EIGHT MILES HIGHER’ – ‘The Blogspot for People Who Don’t Like Blogspots’ – latest postings include… ‘Tales Of Wonder’ the full detailed story of Britain’s First-Ever SF magazine, ‘The Walking Dead: The First Nine Seasons’, ‘Mick Farren: Sex And Drugs, SF And Rock ‘n’ Roll (‘Mona’ and Phaid The Gambler)’, Sly Stone Meets Doris Day, plus music interviews The Secret Life Of Fiat Lux, Floy Joy… From Sheffield, Hula: Old World, New Machines, More Electric Shadows... and more… All with archive photos, and more… monthly updates at andrewdarlington.blogspot.com

STEVE MCQUEEN’S BEER MAT. By Bruce Hodder

The old man had a lot of vices.

Compulsive bragging and compulsive lying,

in him, were like twin vines across a trellis:

hard to disentangle.

He was always coming home from work,

on the rare nights when he bothered coming,

with his latest magazine, his latest book;

his picture in the Daily Telegraph.

But one night, he produced for mum,

in the kitchen with us kids in bed,

a beermat signed by Steve McQueen

allegedly, and quite illegibly.

He had met his hero in a Kettering pub,

he said, at Steve McQueen's request,

to talk about their mutual love of bikes.

This was when the old man edited

a famous motorcycle magazine.

But the King of Cool had set a precondition

on their meeting: Dad mustn’t breathe a word.

He had come down not as a superstar

but as a normal guy, as a fan; in fact,

Steve asked him for his squiggle first.

The old man then requested Steve’s,

but only because it embarrassed him

that Bullitt had even wanted his.

Such protestations of humility

make the story sound like a pack of lies

to me. And now the beermat’s gone

so the squiggle can’t be verified.

My mother lost it the day she heard

that the old man had another woman.

A convenient case of carelessness

in somebody whose mind was sharp

as razor wire when it had to be.

Bruce Hodder lives in Northampton, England. His work has appeared in many magazines. This year his poetry collection ‘The Journey Home’ was published by Whiskey City Press.

WHAT MY MOTHER GOT UP TO. By Bryn Fortey

when I took my mother to see Louis Armstrong

at London’s Empress Hall in 1956

it was sufficiently a sell-out

that i couldn’t book two seats together

so we sat on opposite sides 

and she had the best of the deal

while i sat and enjoyed the gig of a lifetime

my mother shook hands with Louis

and sat next to Velma Middleton

while the vocalist waited for her cue

to mount the revolving stage

the whole concert was performed on

Velma first signed up with Louis in 1942

when she was 25

initially with his big band

staying with the reduced All Stars format

totting up 18 years with him

until she suffered a stroke

during their 1961 African tour

and died in Sierra Leone

at the Empress Hall she told my mother

what a joy all her years with the band had been

that Louis was just the same off stage as on

that the All Stars were like family

and we remembered her words

when we heard about her death

Bryn Fortey is a veteran writer from Wales. He has had two

collections published by The Alchemy Press: MERRY-GO-

ROUND (2014) and COMPROMISING THE TRUTH (2018),

both featuring short stories and poems. He has been well

published over the years, both in print and on the internet. 

Morning drive, October 2019 By Alex Z. Salinas

I’m calling in this poem

Inventing on the fly

Hoodie-clad Asian woman

Speed-walks down Fredericksburg 

Black-eyed Pea doors boarded up

Black man in white Navigator cuts me off

Daycare’s “Dream Fence” breeds future vandalists  

Red rock leaning on oak tree looks like a

GIANT FROG

I’ve been cut off again,

This time by a “Family of 6” rear-window sticker

Motorcycle cop catches blue Mustang 

Husky girl chases yellow school bus 

One of these events happened yesterday 

Another I invented on the fly

I’ll let you decide

Images, baby, images

Creation in stop-motion

God’s green Earth

Beautiful, treacherous people—

Good is when you don’t realize

You’re reading 

An otherwise 

Blank page 

Alex Z. Salinas lives in San Antonio, Texas. His full-length poetry collection, WARBLES, will be released by Hekate Publishing in fall 2019.

An American Love Letter. By Daniel W. Wright

Across Route 66 and down Highway 61
On the 405 and up the 101
Down from Canada to Miami on I-95
Take the California Zephyr
or fly into JFK
I want to say
I love this country
like I once did
I see much to love
and much to be grateful for
I want to believe in our greatness
I want us to be that ideal
that every American has
deep in their heart
The ones that our heroes
show we can be

I still long
to love this country
like a madness
Instead of fighting a madness
every day
One on one
there's still so much good
Person to person
I still see that ideal America
in every lifestyle
in every laugh
We are not as far apart
as the headlines wish you to believe
At this point it'd be best
if the revolution weren't televised
only live-streamed

I cry to you America
I yearn for the good ideas on paper
that seem to be forgotten
with the passing
of every postmodern moment
Maybe I long for an mirage
Something I thought I saw
but I can swear
it was real
for a brief moment in my youth
I thought we had it
I cry to you America
to stand for
what you used to stand up for
the laws and rights
that now are just faded ink

I beg of you America
to regain your long-term memory
To call out that
which we all know
is wrong
For a handshake across the aisle
to no longer be
a treasonous act
so both sides can work together
without the prerequisite need
to sharpen one's knife
just in case
To educate your children
and for information to no longer
be a dirty word
so that science and math
are no longer looked upon
by anyone
as a long con

I'm sorry if I ask for too much America
the human spirit just knows
how great this country
and this world
could be
And we don't have the time
we once did
My fault for constantly believing
Wanderlust comes with price
There's no pity to be had
only Buddhist truth
I won't apologize for believing
I'm sorry if it's inconvenient America
but so many know what you can really be
I see your faults
and know we can do better
I see your strengths
and love you for it
I want to be here
for the long haul

A poet of the no collar work force, Daniel W. Wright is a mid-western son who loves and loathes the red brick town that surrounds him. A longtime writer of wild nights and whiskey tributes, Wright speaks for the lover in every loner. He is currently the author of five chapbooks of poetry, the most recent being The Death of the Ladies Man with Bad Jacket Press. His work has appeared in the Gasconade Review as well as underground zines Bad Jacket and Crappy Hour

Your Car Crashed and We Are Just Waiting on the Stock Market Now by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

I scratch my head 

with unwashed cactus itch,

in long scratchy supermarket lines

that throw up morning hair.

Your car crashed 

and we are just waiting 

on the stock market 

now.

Your lawyer was smart to put you 

in that neck brace.

Appearance is half the battle.

Did you know that Spanish Flu started

in two different places on the same day?

Like bringing multiple women to orgasm 

at the same time half a world apart

with extra-long fingers

and not having either want 

to marry you.

No one complains about the work

when they are out of it.

A bed by the window so you can 

sleep in traffic.

Rub the genie of your eyes.

Waiting on wishes.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly,The Rye Whiskey Review, Outlaw Poetry Network, Under The Bleachers, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.