Loom by Susan Isla Tepper

When it’s time
you will die of
gunshot wounds
to your back.
You’ll bleed out
slowly 
blending into colors
on the big Turkish rug
people spent whole lives
kneeling before.
Pulling wool through
a loom. 

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty years published writer in all genres.  Her current project is an Off-Broadway Play on the subject of art and life.

Beach Boys, Dance by Michael Lee Johnson

They dance and drum to their songs.
Boogaloo Boys, Beach Boys, still band members die.
Revolts and rebellion always end in peace, left for the living.
Even the smoking voice of Carl Wilson dies
with a canary inside his cancerous throat called "Darlin."
Dennis Wilson, hitchhiking, panhandling with the devil Charles Manson,
toying with heroin, he's just too much trouble to live.
Check their history of the living and the dead; 
you will find them there, minor parts and pieces
musical notes stuck in stone wall cracks,
imbibe alcohol, cocaine.
Name’s fade, urns toss to sea
dump all lives brief memories,
bingo, no jackpot.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois. Mr. Johnson is published in more than 2033 new publications. His poems have appeared in 42 countries; he edits and publishes ten poetry sites. He is the administrator of six Facebook poetry groups; he has several new poetry chapbooks coming out soon. He has over 533 published poems to date. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet 42 countries, nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards and 5 Best of the Net nominations.  233 poetry videos are now on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos. Editor-in-chief poetry anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762; editor-in-chief poetry anthology, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses available here https://www.amazon.com/dp/1545352089. Editor-in-chief Warriors with Wings: The Best in Contemporary Poetry, http://www.amazon.com/dp/1722130717. 

Why I Never Write About This Damn Island by John Patrick Robbins

I didn't want to be here but contrary to popular opinion, Poetry wasn't paying.

And the Learjet needed new shoes and I of course, had a bad habit to maintain.

The guy behind the counter looked at me like a space alien, or at least a mild curiosity.

And being I was asking for an application to a shit job that paid the bare minimum because slavery was supposedly abolished.

I was being looked down on from the moment I walked through the door.

to the second I asked for the application.

The Dollar General was the first commercial franchise store to be introduced on this God forsaken island.

So maybe if we crossed our fingers, in this century,

They might introduce a fucking fast food franchise and a liquor store.

Least then it would make life in this inbred piss hole bearable.

"I thought you were a writer? Guess it ain't going so well, now that you're finally looking to get yourself a real job.”

The slightly rotund dipshit behind the counter said.

I bit my tongue as always.

For I have learned from my many years in dealing with primates and rednecks, common sense or good manners are wasted upon them.

That and considering the guy was the manager of the place,

I figured telling him,” to go fuck himself!” wasn't exactly going to get me in his good graces.

So I just remained silent as I continued to fill out the application.

Which although no college graduate, I seemed qualified for.

I mean handing out change I could do.

The mock concern that I  actually gave a flying fuck if some lard ass choked to death on their spray-on cheese, pork rinds, and Moon Pies washed down with a diet coke, was going to be a challenge but, for minimum wage and the thought of no future advancement.

Of course I was eager to start this party to my dead end career.

And as I handed in the application, the act of pretending I wanted anything more than a shitty paycheck began.

It was the usual bullshit.

"So tell me something, if I ask around this community what would they tell me about you?"

"Well being I never socialize with anyone and my only friend that lived here is now in the ground,

there's nothing to tell, but I'm sure the local gossip hounds will make something up."

The manager did not seem amused with my lovely sarcasm.

"I don't mean anything but can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"Well I am just curious. I mean we see you in here a lot and you’re always alone. So I mean can I ask, are you gay?"

I heard a lot of strange questions in my life but that one truly took the cake.

"Not that I know of. I mean I  haven't had a craving for some cock today but thanks for asking. Now are there any other highly inappropriate questions that don't pertain to this job you would like to ask?"

The manager flushed a bit looking down at the application.

"I'm sorry, I was just curious is all. I mean you being a writer. 

 I mean I never see you with anyone."

"Well you know, no disrespect intended but when on a date I usually avoid hanging out in a convenience store.  Also, I only date humans not farm animals, so that’s why you never see me dating here."

"I'm sorry I really didn't mean to offend you.”

The clerk quickly responded.

My patience, now fully gone, I walked off and grabbed a six pack of semi cold beer

and told the dude to get me a pack of Lucky Strikes.

And as the dipshit rang me up in this ever awkward climate, he had created, I decided to throw in a dash of sarcastic asshole to lighten the mood.

"You know bud, if I was homosexual, you really aren't supposed to be asking that to begin with. I mean it could really cause you some big issues. Imagine how the local news would eat that shit up."

Suddenly the guy behind the counter came to life.

"Hey, I didn't mean anything bad seriously,  I mean-."

"Yeah imagine a bunch of protesters outside your store,  I mean it really wouldn't look good on you pal.

 Then imagine when corporate got wind of this little socially incorrect incident."

"Hey, that's not funny. You know what, you're right, it was my bad sir. Hey let me buy your beer, I will make sure you get hired. When can you start?"

I laughed and simply took my beer and smokes and carried my ass off without a reply.

Besides, how could I work for a bunch of backwards homophobes?

It's strange how people judge you without even taking a second of this existence to actually get to know you before forming an opinion.

Almost how another small community judges me as a womanizing, drunken asshole piece of shit.

It's funny how people want labels on everything to justify their ignorance.

Labels only belong on bottles and beer cans.

I never pen stories about Knotts Island, North Carolina and now you truly can understand why.

See you in the showers.

Toodles.

John Patrick Robbins, ran into a burning building and saved multiple whiskey bottles and the Scandinavian bikini team today.

Because he only saves beautiful people and whiskey.

He is currently the curator of the John Patrick Robbins museum located on Skull Island.

Please don't forget to visit our gift shop for a wide variety of signed books by writers he no longer speaks to.

His work has been published in Esquire,Screw Magazine, Modern Folk Dancers Quarterly, Family Circle, Tiger Beat Magazine and that shithole the Dope Fiend Daily.

He is also the editor and chief of ten million magazines and is a fine art collector who resides in your nightmares and will kill you fuckers on poetry street with his nonstop readings.

He also runs his writers retreat located at shady pines mental facility.

Where he is writing his thesis on the Transformers.

burning his matchstick fingers his hair went up like a wick by john compton

part one

i have found terribler things
in words - they’ve forced me to realize
blood pools in my heart
& stagnates
 
     |
measure me to the dead
the similarities are uncanny
you won’t recognize
the life from the embalming fluid
     |
   give me more than rejections
   thank you but no thanks

     |

i am neither an accomplishment
nor a recognition -
in the order of beginning
i wait

but in determination

     |
lost in the atmosphere
wanting the flames
to undress my body & ashes
cover my mother’s face.
i want her to remember
a beautiful son
 
     |
 
imagine being sacrificed
but instead of red,
smoke pours out
smelling of incense
& how gorgeous
the cloud would form
     |
we comprehend the smallness.
the ivory cut from the horn
fitting in the palm
yet how long did it take the carcass
 
to convert to the same size?

     |
when i killed my only deer,
i cried. it wasn’t that she was dead
but alive, observing her blood.
she pled from her eyes.
my father told me to shoot her again,
not evil, but love. the second bullet
would be peace -
where the first forgot its duty.
     |
 
i curve lines to the east
hoping
they become less human
& build a church from poems
so god will understand
how religion can congregate
into a manuscript & be written
by men who have no factions
to worship him
     |
i regain consciousness
from this delusion
to confess an atonement
reality is suspicion.
 
& yes, if you believe
god formed man from dirt
& eve from our rib
then eat the apple i give
 
let’s bind ourselves
in such sin as two men
two lovers destined together
in this unholy regime
come unwrapped
& exposed
praying in a religious tongue
that you will take me
into the peril of the unknown.
your hands bound
the misinterpretations -
let me be as i was born.
     |
                    part two

the homophobic transform me subpar,
a lowering class. the indecent -
my overexposed begins to corrupt
the innocent eyes of our youth.
my sexuality has developed, somehow,
these foul-mouth-tongues licking sperm
off the belly of men consecrated
to develop them into beings
 
that make their ideology
into a wholesome form.
you give blame since they walk
in the footsteps of a devil
created by imagination.
     |

i am enclosed with barbwire.
they want to love me with prods:
jesus & god.
they have named me homosexual -
enunciating ways to cleanse me.
i fancy how many more women
they’ve tasted than i have men.
i marvel at their hands & how many stones
they’ll be able to throw before the first one
hits me with ease.
let’s mix mud & blood & meat.
it will be gorgeous with those smiles they’ll add.
 
     |
 
my anger should not be planted as flowers.
they would kill your garden. they would learn
how their roots worked. they would follow
you & stay just close enough. they would represent
every statement i found false. they would know
how to reach your ears & wallpaper petals
onto your lobes. they would try to teach you love.
     |
your fear becomes holy. your marriage frail,
so you decide mine will ruin yours.
 
your sentences begin to infuse scripture.
 
you begin to plagiarize things you believe
because you cannot conjure words that are real.
 
you want god to love you because no one else can.
 
your sin turns into a plague
& the only way you feel repentance
is to condemn.
     |
amen. let me turn your heads:
jesus never married, had disciples: men.
judas turned against him. jealousy
comes from the bed. if i can’t have you
no one can. love & war have no rules
& neither are to be played.
     |
your mouth is my grandmother’s.
now she speaks with her dead voice
from your vocal cords.
the sharp vowels try to pin my conscious—
strong consonants devalue my power
the words themselves leak resin.
wife & children escape her teeth
trying to catch me. she cannot understand
i don’t want either,
that i am not gay because i choose to be
but simply: i am.
her pyramid scheme of love is ancient.
   she drives to me with prayer.
   i turn her away with heat.
     |
i taste the cock like a branded whiskey.
 
i close my lips around the neck
until it’s lax
& exhausted & can’t raise its head.

the liquid is a poison that vacates oxygen
& that is when i release it
back into captivity.
it hits the air like a drowning animal
barely escaping its predator. 
     |
 
                  part three
 
i felt her ribs, loose & tarnished,
like jewelry that never fit
 
they moved under her muscles,
rivetting across broken seams
 
each bone diagonal with a finger:
i want to play her music
her seventeen-year-old violin
 
but the strings are corroded
& i’m afraid i’ll be mis-carried
 
     |
if my father had not sewn his palms
to my mother’s womb
i would have never known his existence
his voice like vinyl, thick & scratched,
barely audible through the skin -
if he had known my ears worked
maybe his voice would have been louder
& he wouldn’t have been afraid to say
i love you.
     |
 
my birth caused hemorrhaging.
i broke my mother open, excavating
through placenta & breath.
my first scream became default.
i knew the hospital walls -
for three days i studied them
waiting to find my mother’s face.
that day i killed parts of her
she would never replace
but her smile didn’t condemn me;
her voice lulled awakening.  
     |
 
i want to eat her voice.
the way the words sound soft,
easy to swallow -
thick in my throat & fulfilling.
 
to feel it drum on my stomach -

each vibration different
from each vowel & each consonant.
the rolling r’s & the s’s hiss.
     |
i became the identity of my father.
 
the nude body stands damp.
the shower is nemesis
revealing in full disclosure
what the human form hides
under rags.
 
he wipes the mirror with his calloused hand,
cleans the relief steam gives
with the eyes of a wolf.
the false prophet becomes inescapable
from his time.
 
his round face, thinning hair, lagging smile
mimicking the reflection
i held - this man,
an intrusive stranger with my eyes
i wish i’d never have to acknowledge.
an infant, turned boy,
then man.

     |
 
i am damaged, less like my father
& more like mother. no,
i have collected brokenness
from both.
 
father’s is hard to find.
he hides it inside his chest
but if you’re patient you’ll see
the indifference, the indignity.
mother’s sits on her whole self.
it is vulnerable & loud:
thunder & bombs & the crying child
left until touch becomes a stranger & hurts.
i am the hybrid of many generations.
     |
 
          part four
 
middle school was a zoo of monkeys
& hyenas. i was bred from a class
of herbivores: i had a taste
for books & learning.
 
i hadn't been discovered yet
to be added to the endangered species list.
 
dark corners
& small back tables
were my nesting ground.
 
i found devotion
in the margins of my notebooks.
 
     |
 
i grew from malnutrition
& devoid -
 
learned like a spider
to spin my web of poetry
 
weak & somber:
in the beginning i captured nothing
 
though i thought every pen stroke
a masterpiece.
 
i learned each poem
like it was family:
a new sibling.
i acquired so many
 
studied their hands & faces
because i knew eventually
they would all die.
 
& sadly, everyone did.
consumed in fire their bodies
bursting into stars.
 
i only wished
that the next
wouldn't wander
that far from my heart.
 
     |
 
high school became a hunting ground.
poachers with their high-powered rifles.
they never killed but maimed:
the enjoyment was tracking their prey.

     |
three students threatened
to tie me to the bumper
with rope, tight enough
to cut into my skin,
& drag me
until i was roadkill.
i could only imagine
how long it would have taken;
my blood slick like oil.
the pavement would have held an honor.
it was dark in the classroom.
their threat was covered
by the sound of a man talking
on a tv screen.
no one tried to intervene
to save the gay kid.
i quit school as a junior.
 
     |
 
                    epilogue
 
you can never write a poem once.
each word constantly evaluated
at a hundred different angles:

transformed, transplanted, reduced,
remolded, reshaped, rearranged,
reorganized, replaced.
an auditorium of dead poets
always writing, always modifying,
concealed inside your head.
 
twenty, thirty, forty versions
of every line, simultaneously,
& then i’m writing
to edit, to rewrite.

john compton (b. 1987) is gay poet who lives in kentucky. his poetry resides in his chest like many hearts & they bloom like vigorously infectious wild flowers. he lives in a tiny town, with his husband josh and their 14 dogs and 3 cats. he feels his head is an auditorium filled with the dead poets from the past. poems are written and edited constantly. his poetry is a personal journey. he reaches for things close and far, trying to give them life: growing up gay; having mental health issues; a journey into his childhood; the world that surrounds us. he writes to be alive, to learn and to grow. he loves imagery, metaphor, simile, abstract language, sounds, when one word can drift you into another direction. he loves playing with vocabulary, creating texture and emotions. he has published 1 book and 6 chapbooks published and forthcoming: trainride elsewhere (august 2016) from Pressed Wafer; that moan like a saxophone (december 2016) from kindle; ampersand (march 2019) from Plan B Press; a child growing wild inside the mothering womb (june 2020) from ghost city press; i saw god cooking children / paint their bones (oct 2020) from blood pudding press; to wash all the pretty things off my skin (september 2021) from ethel zine & micro-press. he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

SIFTED by Susan Tepper

It’s the yellow river 
reflecting off
a yellow sky 
or is it
the other way—
uncompromising
pool of piss
lowered into 
a stagnant time
Only so far as 
your shoulders
quaking fear—
Sudden abandonment
bloodied your eyes
this Spring
while you sifted
sifted through 
hopeful as any prospector
panning for gold

Susan Tepper is a twenty year writer in all genres, and the author of nine published books.  Her most recent are CONFESS (a poetry chapbook by Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a quirky road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019).  Currently Tepper is in pre-production of an Off-Brdwy play titled THE CROOKED HEART which she based on artist Jackson Pollock’s later years.

www.susantepper.com

I Made It Past Stage One Interviews : Now Comes Stage Two - Team Building by John Doyle

Pin stripe suit/clean shirt and tie/stops off at the corner shop/to buy The Times…
Bruce Foxton 1979
 
To see if we can make it 
in retail and customer service
they take us for the day to some mid-grade hotel. It's nice here, 
says a guy who clearly watches Star Trek - 
 
I can tell already he's made it.
They sit us down in a conference room, set out some tasks -
5 seconds in, I'm looking for connections
between stacking shelves 
 
and locating firewood on a desert island 
should our metaphorical jumbo-jet ever come down;
it seems a little out of synch to me, 
but this William Riker type, well done kid, 
 
he's already solved it - beam him on up to level three -
regional sales and accounts - 50k per annum allegedly, 
and that’s after tax.
Nathan, from County Down, sits in,
 
he's been recruitment manager nearly 3 years,
and you can tell he's down with the common man -
his Thomas Shelby haircut's really en point -
and the girls seem to like his Viking beard.
 
After three minutes I'm saying goodbye
to my ass at a till in their Kildare branch,
it was firewood, food, shelter, in that order,
as I watch fanboy ascend to executive director.
 
Nathan is really nice though,
wishes me well with my book -
I'll call it Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Stacking Shelves on a Desert Island,
then I head for my bus. 
 
Outside I meet the ghost of Mickey Goldmill;
dems are de breaks Kid,
sharpen up that right -
he snarls, and I take my ticket, watching Celbridge flee this corporate lava

John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch.

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.

Intersecting by Susan Tepper

In the blackness 
of the warm night
while I sleep
a witch-tree 
is screwed in the grass 
out back.
I don’t notice ‘til morning.
Bending to wiggle it
and feeling the hard ground 
pushing back 
saying No, thank you.
The thing is
small and ugly
just fallen branch sticks 
intersecting;
scarcely tall as my knees.
I’m afraid suddenly.
Though I’ve been afraid
all this year
and the one before.

Susan Tepper is a twenty year writer in all genres, and the author of nine published books.  Her most recent are CONFESS (a poetry chapbook by Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a quirky road novel WHAT DRIVES MEN (Wilderness House Press, 2019).  Currently Tepper is in pre-production of an Off-Bdwy play titled THE CROOKED HEART which she based on artist Jackson Pollock’s later years.

www.susantepper.com