I’m in Trouble By Jay Passer

 

Like being torn apart and eaten alive by a frenzy of sharks

I remember being squirted out of my mother

but not too well

Delivered with deluxe chopsticks

weaned on soy milk

stored in a shoebox.

I’m in love with a pubescent fantasy construct

born from a SuicideGirls babysitter

it’s terrifyingly

overwhelmingly

obvious and passé.

I’m buried in a heap of bird feathers

I’m a moron dressed as a matador

a surgeon operating on double-A batteries

a pterodactyl in a tutu.

She’s not the usual kind

she’s not somebody’s wife sister cousin grand-niece 

baby-mama auntie stepdaughter

she’s not even a she or a he or a he-she or she-he

or anaconda or spider-monkey or zebra

or fire hydrant or exhaust pipe or keyhole.

I’m in love with my own damn self

my predilections

my insecurities

my obsessions staring morosely back at me

from the mirror hanging on the wall

the wall supporting the ceiling

the ceiling keeping me from shitstorms and sunburn and 

the world in chaos and dubious heavens and the Man Himself

and by the way

That son-of-a-bitch owes me 4 decades worth of rent.

I’m in trouble

because I’m in love with the Mona Lisa the Queen of Sheba Venus de Milo Joan of Arc Esther Hadassah Madame Curie Camille Claudel Isadora Duncan Tawakkol Karman and that one Thai cutie from Blackpink.

I’m in love with a cross-country-bound Greyhound busload 

of traumatized Nobel laureates

with a goldfish posing as a mermaid

the natural spawn of an apocalypse cult

squid ink and bird droppings.

It’s a testament to acceptance of the boomerang’s return

Meat on the grill and a pain in the neck.

I’m in love with 

trouble

a child’s scrawl on the face of a flower

horns spurting from halos

black seas of chlorine

cool rain for blood.

The poetry and prose of Jay Passer has appeared in print and online periodicals, magazines and anthologies, in subterranean basements and men's room stalls, cave walls and space shuttles, since 1988. He is the author of 15 collections of words, symbols, diatribes, missives, isms, schisms, rain drizzles and blood fizzles. A cook by trade, he's also dabbled in daubs, photo-montage, reverse Feng shui; while failing at mortician's apprentice, news butcher, and criminal savant. Passer's most recent chap, Son of Alcatraz, was released in February of 2024 from Alien Buddha Press, and is available on Amazon.

Snaggletooth Muppet By Manny Grimaldi

My printers outlast my shredders,

I believe in scissors more than a pen.

I rip up my notes, rarely keep records,

and burn my manuscripts in salty fens.

I find certain words are static charges

alive with present shock and rumble:

annoyance, dryness, blockage, sludge,

black-swan and crumple, 

the color cyan: piercing, glancing,

inhospitable—the nut straight at poker,

the sound of all-in, then raking the chips 

by a dribbling drink,

and your drunken sister doesn’t care

if she’s wearing mascara at your mother’s

second wedding, and the faces 

of the clowns doing balloon tricks

for your upstart kids start to frown.

There’s always a brat that knows

where the rabbit went and tells

the crowd. That was me in nutshell.

My story to tell. It is rare I formed

a partnership with a human

lasting more than a couple of years.

My teeth have never blunted.

Manny Grimaldi is a Louisville, Kentucky poet, a spit and a cough just west of the "bourbon trail".  He is the managing editor for the poetry journal Yearling out of Lexington, Kentucky.  Years ago, his drinking got arrested and thrown in jail, and occasionally Manny has marched on its behalf.  Manny is also a clown.  Personally, and by training.

Dennis Took A Dive By John Patrick Robbins

He was looking for treasure, so he said.

In the cold waters below in Marina Del Rey.

His friends tried to stop him, but he was full of life and a liter of vodka. 

His marriage was on the skids; his band wanted him out unless he checked into rehab.

He was the only one that could actually surf.

A wildman and past heartthrob.

He kept diving, to his friend's dismay.

Producing various scraps of junk.

A rope and an old picture frame he had tossed from that very same slip from a previous marriage.

There was such glee in his insanity and life within his soul.

And on Christmas day, Dennis Wilson dove one last time to never return to this world alive.

Maybe he found that treasure he so desired; my hope is he found peace instead.

We are but a cork on the ocean rest well within her depths.

Sail on sailor.

John Patrick Robbins, is a southern gothic writer his work has been published in. Horror Sleaze Trash, Punk Noir Magazine, Impspired Magazine, Piker Press, Medusa’s Kitchen, Disturb The Universe, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fixator Press and The Dope Fiend Daily.

His work is always unfiltered.

Fascist Sandwiches By John Doyle

Traffic lights bled his least favourite colour -

crossing over -

protecting fascist sandwiches for fascist parents

expressing concern at a once proud nation's decline;

I revved up just for fun; spotting my Vladimir Lenin goatee

he eyeballed me, 

considering if he'd offer me fascist sandwiches

made from knuckle and bone - perhaps a little too much hair

I thought to myself, for me to digest,

fascist sandwiches awaiting their port of call

as boats of strange-fleshed unknowns trashed up and down

on oceans bloodied from butchers' aprons - their final port

not down this road -

but somewhere a little deeper and more vast 

than that pure-bred utopia

in his wasteland across the road; fascist sandwiches

trashing up and down in a plastic bag,

awaiting the colons of socio-cultural empathy

Half man, half creature of very odd habit, John Doyle dabbles in poetry when other forms of alchemy and whatnot just don't meet his creative needs. From County Kildare in Ireland, he is (let's just politely say) closer to 50 than 21.

A Clay of Dust and Blood By Alex S. Johnson

After a phrase in Marcus Aurelius

The vessel broke.

So

What

Of 

It?

Time’s river slips by.

Tears fill the teeming witch’s cauldron.

Years are swallowed

By the obsidian

Jaws of death.

To cling to this body

Is the

tenet of

Heretics.

We flow and pass

Sacred travelers of the

Luminous Shore.

One door opens

We go through as we must

It’s nature

Don’t make such a fuss. 

Alex S. Johnson is a retired English instructor, disability rights activist, author, editor and publisher (Nocturnicorn Books). He is known for his highly unusual poetry style which combines influences from Dada and Surrealism to hip hop, black metal, industrial noise, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman and Rimbaud. His books include the acclaimed collection The Death Jazz, Bureau of Dreams, The Doom Hippies and Bizarrely Departed. His work has appeared in such venues as Horror Sleaze Trash, Black Noise, Bizarro Central and Cease, Cows. His upcoming books include The Junk Merchants 2: A Literary Tribute to William S. Burroughs, featuring a roster of luminaries including Poppy Z. Brite, Caitlin Kiernan, John Shirley and the co-founder of the iconic Goth rock band Bauhaus, David J. Haskins. Johnson ilves in Sacramento, California with his family. 

In the Witching Hours of My Youth By April Ridge

Every year that goes by

I find I have a harder time

not nearly peeing my pants.

The muscles used to grip dicks

just aren’t being used 

as much as

when I was a kid and 

Liz Phair’s ‘Fuck and Run’ 

ran through my head

as I played out a scripted role of

full time barely-getting-by barfly, 

tramp, and part time mixologist.

Falling off of stools,

drinks crashing to the ground;

alcoholism making a grand tool of me.

My bank account 

slowly suffering

until it dried out,

withering,

a dead husk of a thing.

Just like me 

from the ages of 23 to 30,

slowly meandering through the motions

of wanting more,

yet taking less 

than I could afford to share 

with men whom simply didn’t care

for companionship with ties that bind.

But they always 

seemed to find the time

for me at midnight 

when the drinks were 

flowing freely 

in the witching hours 

of my youth.

I can find no proof,

no patterned words 

that lead toward truth,

that these hard-learned lessons

have earned me anything

other than a scarred liver and some

stained memories 

of the tragedies that

came before that 

I can’t even remember.

Blackout drunk 

on someone’s floor and

always wishing there was more.

April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendor of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom.

bender By Manny Grimaldi

and even as ease enters her eyes and her black hair drops,

i judge her no less, and count myself no more friend,

because she will be drunk again. parked near her, sobered

in her car, she shows a temporary side

by the moonlit rise of the hills, waves crashing

and giving themselves to her new baptism.

suppose the sounds and sights, the hinges on gates 

slow in smooth clicks and scrapes of rust as raven’s croak 

in autumn. the next day, the hostess sees off her guests,

wine glass raised. where is she, my wife?  she is buried 

alive in oaken barrels white as the dress she wears to bed

she’d not removed, on sojourn to fruited Olympus where she 

hoofs to it, carrying grapes to the mad lover for his shindig

in a forest with fauns and faeries, goblets, and all the rural gods.

Manny Grimaldi is a Louisville, Kentucky poet, a spit and a cough just west of the "bourbon trail".  He is the managing editor for the poetry journal Yearling out of Lexington, Kentucky.  Years ago, his drinking got arrested and thrown in jail, and occasionally Manny has marched on its behalf.  Manny is also a clown.  Personally, and by training.