Barbie 


“Dear Elaine,” she writes on a new postcard. “I saw Barbie today. I did. A Barbie doll come to life. This woman. I swear. That’s what she looked like. I was out with Holly. You know. Running errands. Took a break and stopped at Starbucks. Got a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino for me. A Puppuccino for Holly. And there she was. Barbie. No kidding. In a pink convertible. Barbie pink. It was. I swear. Driving down the street. Right in front of us. We were sitting on the patio. You know. Enjoying the sun and our drinks. When she zoomed by. Looked just like my old Barbie doll. I swear. She did. Oh, how I loved that doll! Her long, silky, ash blonde hair. Her bendable legs. Saved my allowance for months. I did. Bought her at Zayre. Spent all my money on her. Every month. No kidding. Lots of outfits. I bought for her. A wardrobe case. Accessories. Everything I could. Except that car. That pink convertible. Too expensive. But everything else? Yeah. I bought it. Only the best for my Barbie. And now, and now. Here she is. Today. Driving past us at Starbucks. In that convertible. Barbie pink. Just think. My Barbie doll come to life. Seriously. Forty years later. What are the odds? You know?”  



Who Knew? 



“Dear Elaine,” she writes on another postcard. “It’s like this. In this dog magazine. The current issue. Yes. That’s the one. An article on dental care. You know. For Holly. For dogs. It says dental chews aren’t enough. I mean. They say, they say. They don’t do the job. Not completely. Even though my groomer. She’s the one. Not me. Never me. No way I’m brushing a dog’s teeth. Nope. Not happening. Every month. She does this. Brushes Holly’s teeth. My sweet Yorkie. And then, and then. I give her dental chews. Holly, that is. Every day. I do. But these people! These vets. This magazine. They say daily dental chews aren’t enough. That I need to do more. Oh, yeah? Like what? Like dental powder. Alright. So I found some. At PetSmart. Kelp. That’s what it is. Just sprinkle it on her food. Once a day. That’s it. Nutritious to eat. Plus, plus. It dissolves plaque. It does. And tartar. That too. So I bought some. And she likes it. Holly, that is. Okay then. Mission accomplished. Good to have that behind me. What’s next?”  

Laura Stamps is the author of 50 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books. Forthcoming: “The Good Dog” (Prolific Pulse Press 2023) and “Addicted to Dog Magazines” (Impspired, 2023). Recipient of a Pulitzer Prize nomination and 7 Pushcart Prize nominations. www.LauraStampsFiction.blogspot.com   

Shahnoza Ochidiyeva

Happiness

It’s a great blessing that the heart beats                                
It’s a blessing the souls are alive and well
It’s a blessing to live safe and sound,
Tell, hey, person what else is needed?

It’s a blessing the tree of ignorance has died,
It’s a happiness that the hearts full of freedom
It’s a great blessing to be servant of Allah,
Tell, hey, person, what else is needed?

It’s a blessing to have big bravery
It’s a blessing to earn with difficulty
It’s a blessing fate gives us to feel lucky
Tell, hey, person, what else is needed?

It’s a blessing my mom says loving words
It’s a happiness that my father’s eyes smiling
It’s a happiness that our country peacefully living
Tell, hey person, what else needed you?
Imaginations

They say imagination has sharp wings
Oh, it flies anywhere
Which in human imaginations
Reach the heavens everywhere

They surrounded me too
Flew away towards the dreams
Filling my world with joy
Everything came alive around me

I travelled to Paris, America and Rome
I was on the seventh sky at that moment
That Turkey welcomed me warmly
But I missed my sweet home.

I saw so many places
Almost laughed for a moment
Looking at the purest sea
Missed you, my Motherland.

Turning the road of my thoughts
I returned to my place at once.
Strange joy, strange pleasure
A special feeling spread over my soul.

                                      

Ochildiyeva Shahnoza Abdivohid qizi was born on July 17, 2006 in the republik of Uzbekistan, Surkhandarya region, Denov district. Presently, she studies at school number 49 in 10th grade. She is a Captain of the Denov District Council of the Youth Union of Uzbekistan. She  actively participates different  national  competitions, festivals, gaining honorable places. Also one of the youngest and most active members of several international organizations. Her poems have been published in several newspapers and magazines. In 2021, the first collection of poetry was published under the name “Yurakdagi orzularim”. Samples of creativity were included in the anthologies “Türkçenin dünyadaki özbek sesi” published in the Republic of Turkey and “Talented voices of Uzbekistan” published in America. In 2022, her new book came out of publication under the title “She’riyat o’ziga ayladi asir”. Her new book which was called “Happiness” was published in Amerika. Nowadays her books are selling in 26 countries of the world!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
straight from cuba
 
seek out the lord
in the piano bar
down the street
 
maybe in the
curves of the
beautiful woman
playing the bass
guitar
 
maybe the lord
is lining up on
the table in the
corner
 
or unzipping her
shirt a little as she
tries to make an
impossible combo
shot
 
seek out the lord
in a plume of cigar
smoke straight from
cuba
 
the lord surely must
be in this glass of
whiskey
 
you have to be
a little drunk to
believe in a place
called heaven
-----------------------------------------------------------
proud to say
 
spent the afternoon
listening to dolly
parton songs while
my mother was in
her physical therapy
session
 
proud to say
none of the
poems were
about the
obvious
-----------------------------------------------------------
the conversations get a little wordy these days
 
i never had the need
to keep up with anyone
 
never cared for kings
and queens, presidents,
principals or gods
 
got really comfortable
talking to myself at
an early age
 
the conversations get
a little wordy these days
 
someone wants to show
off all those thirteen letter
words they know
 
i know i am the odd one
 
the one everyone could
think would be the next
mass gunman
 
and i have never even
owned a gun
 
although the local gun
shop and i share the
same first name
-----------------------------------------------------------------
live longer than me
 
walking with my mother
up and down the sidewalk
on a finally sunny day
 
she wants to get more
mobile again
 
either she really feels
alive again or she is
determined to see if
she could live longer
than me
 
my anxiety has put
the money on her
 
it must have forgotten
how stubborn i really
am
 
i could probably live
to 100 just to fucking
spite everyone
-------------------------------------------------------------
who will check my emails when i die
 
the white noise
is meant to calm
 
dull you to sleep
instead, it is slowly
driving me insane
 
who will check
my emails when
i die
 
do ghosts need
dick pills or
have the desire
to contribute to
a political
campaign
 
sleep in the
sunshine
 
go drinking
at midnight
 
the lost souls
like to gather
at the corner
 
humming jane says
like we did thirty
years ago
---------------------------------------------------------------

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at The Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Black Shamrock, The Rye Whiskey Review and Yellow Mama. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

I Don’t Trust Spring

I don’t trust spring so I wore my winter coat
And now I am too warm thanks to duplicitous spring.
Fate moves too quickly for me
Like the important email I am waiting for which will not arrive,
But in reverse.
The world is too fast for me
Or possibly too slow.
The joggers are not over dressed
The trees sprout leaves in just the right amounts.
But I am left out of the season
Like an email which will not arrive.
Like an email which will not arrive 
I should go to sleep in my coat
And dream of the bare arms of winter.
And dream of the bare arms of winter.
And dream of the bare arms of winter.
I don’t know what comes next.

 
Revolutionary Song

There’s a great pale beetle in the brain of James Madison.
It crawls through his buttocks onto the cheese plate of Benjamin Franklin.
Cheese bounces like rubber upon the fiery honor of Alexander Hamilton.
The narrative journey wears the green plaid socks of George Washington.

Do not doubt it; do not doubt it.
History will swallow you if you doubt it.
We have found a fearless squid writing fearful poems in its ink sac
and they all say do not doubt it.

Thomas Jefferson winds up his wooden teeth
and they chew upon the wretched fungus in the eye of compromise.
In Paris they sing to the great wigs
marching on the cloudy rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson.

The ink sac is dry; the doubt drips like chicken soup
into the soul of the brain of the heart.
The origins of cryptids rise from tea like terror
and Patrick Henry holds a frisbee between his gleaming gums.

Every toss is a vote for truth.
Every miss is a vote for death.
The country stands strong as the pudding
that leaks from Daniel Webster’s forehead.

Do not doubt it; do not fear the porcine call
Of gregarious egregious sand worms in the stall.
JFK and LBJ come drifting down like fall.
Praise until you doubt it but don’t doubt it.
 

we thought we weren’t

all that i was
was a compilation of what
i wasn’t:
how we bounced a
deflating rubber ball to and
fro across white faded
lines on the schoolyard blacktop talking and
talking about trivial
things that led us to cover each
other’s cool gray surfaces so when
finally the romantic
disruption we had
waited for came we
realized there was this empty
sphere of dry air below
the other’s surface and
plasmatic energy, unstable, below our
own, a dammed-up deluge like a

sip of carbonated
drink; rising
anticipation for the syrupy
taste then the spiky
needling in the soft
skin of your cheeks as you
attempt to swallow and
swallow as the drink goes
flat in your mouth and still you
carry the lingering taste and the
memory of craving junk
food; now you
wonder what was the
appeal and the firmest
memory you retain is that of the
deflating rubber ball, worn, durable, and
unremarkable.

my health matters too 

 

down in the hard black earth  

before the shadow-gifted body- 

shaming shrieks with future rank  

refused among the fresh night  

blossoms on a cork-popped psyche  

stashed by means you guessed  

were taken back on board you eat  

what’s yours and listen for today  

is just the ticket for a hunt through  

city streets you seem to recollect  

a flock of bats you made some  

conversation with the sith you  

welcomed sharp incursions  

of the mob her mouth’s the  

thing you seemed to say was  

viscous there was flowing under  

glass was then bizarre in vain  

so let his head fall back on  

bones and set aside more  

surface bursts the searching  

worse the land was hot she  

nursed him to his smooth  

and privileged form then  

edged his syncopated back  

a corpulent in ball and  

chains they wrapped him 

up in veneration and in  

pink to table and to then  

compare with all the fuck- 

ups on our screens a teenage  

fantasy for sale a part of that  

a piece of his the warmth and  

then the getting-good it’s  

morning if it’s bright enough   

the house anxieties that led  

to fill the plague graves early  

on are like a growing list of  

foods their scatterings were  

surely doomed and sometimes  

tampered with in sheds    

 

 

 we spoke lovingly of roe 

 

deliverance through a glancing-off of riddles  

in one untidy corner of the mind delusions   

widely disapproved of as yet others are  

reluctant to placate themselves at all and  

almost perish with their pleadings and denial  

and you might even get tugged off when once  

the tired poetry arrives with stomach botch  

the wilder sort and if there is a god or not  

you stumble through your stratagems  

hallucinating forest fires and now she’s  

troubled by her arms again and only so much  

scribbling through the pain can halt this placid  

streak if that’s allowed to gift you motivation  

but it’s not like that at all it’s milk two sugars  

then the mescaline arrives and long-term  

prisoners are forced to stream some aspects  

of that vicious night with pushing motions of  

their blood-stained hands while pools of septic  

effluence gush out from washed-up dreams  

so short on fatherly affection yet again but  

this time on the railway banks or rolling down  

the river tyne with bark from ripped-up holy  

trees while glancing round at comic-book type  

treatments line by line or understanding great  

cathedrals in the season of the wight the un- 

remembered and the meaningless shape up  

the artist in you rides the london eye       

 

 

 partly political 

 

keep them squaddies on their metal by the by 

no longer visible like beasts persuaded through  

your efforts down against the rusted factory  

gates while dipping bending showing all the  

glowing stacks of burnt remains of shamed  

officials on bell-bottom nights without the  

magic mountain camp with boots that shine  

like bathroom taps or crawled neck residue  

that thrashed was where it started then was  

torn the thing that’s feared the most was  

taken from a point on stolen braille maps by  

the river’s scent a three-lane highway out of  

nowhere on a mountain bike or steaming  

thick and creamy cabbage by the light above  

a patch on posh boy’s vast inherited estates  

that’s got to be extruded from a space that’s  

partly labelled by the past and having spent  

the morning playing human chess in tunnels  

or a maze it crawls a london boy by chance  

unorthodox supplies a big old grub to catch the  

only interspecies still at large perhaps the  

bloodied swimming pool has given up its secret  

to those corresponding principles at last and  

with an excess of its like to read a telepathic  

slow-descending self-erasing spine and side-lined  

masks a crudely nauseating  metronomic tick  

within its zone beyond the pale with wish- 

fulfillment at its core while washing out the  

tupperware in fits who knows where  

morning is before the shrivels week by  

week still hating thatcher as they weed their  

beds those nervous tits have been out there in  

charge of landscape-format glass-based art 

events an installation of suspended things that  

much was visible along the curved beak’s 

nesting lost in limbo and was long-suspected  

by his friends of putting tories in the ground 

without permission be widespread he states  

the high mind's ornament deserves the block  

and matter of the hours it is suggested that  

the bold take notes on unscratched holograms 

with common praise in some hard past was  

smoking rocks and shooting up on city streets  

with skipping ropes and spinning plates  

while those of us who did refuse still wonder  

when and why our hormone levels peaked 

Eddie Heaton studied innovative and experimental poetry under the tutelage of post-modern poet and educator Keith Jebb, achieving a first-class honours degree. He also won the 2021 Carcanet Award for Creative Writing. His work has been published in Blackbox Manifold, Otoliths, Lothlorien, Focus and Fold Editions

Twitter: @edwardHeaton9

Why Me?


I have Tourette’s syndrome and bipolar disorder yes blessed with them both
And once I was even arrested under oath
One is neurological no one can explain
The other is caused by the unnecessary pain
Normal basic an average are words of dismay
I’m here to share with you there is another way
No need to judge another for how they make you feel
Take a look in the mirror and see what is real
Love is truly the answer thank you God above
Even Sigmund Freud said hard work and love
As we open up our backpacks and take one thing out
You can always put it back in if you have a doubt
Life is not easy no manual given at birth
Yet 8 billion humans exist together on earth
There is no one like you nor anyone like me
Put one foot in front of the other and soon you shall see
That God above has never let us down
It’s time to hold hands again my friends in each and every town


Trauma

It happened at birth a coma for
me, for others I'm not sure
The fact of the matter is, there is no cure
It comes in many avenues, from physical to the mind
There is no defining it, no particular kind
Some have it for a lifetime, some right away
If we don't deal with, forever it will stay
Exposure to so many has really made me ache
Accepting my own trauma has really made me wake
The pain is deeper than I ever thought it could be 
As I open my heart to others they can clearly see
How much I am hurting over this recent tragic loss
Not only losing my wife but
dealing with a horrible boss
What I am realizing is that I am not alone
Coming together with complete strangers
and seeing how they have grown
Gives me inspiration way beyond belief
Never did I imagine there could be so much relief
I thought I was alone suffering this awful pain
Thinking I was crazy, literally going insane
Listening to their stories as they
share their lives with me
Has surely made me realize that I can plainly see

That trauma is a creature that comes in many ways
I am thankful for this experience
and cherish all my days
As I wake each morning wondering
what the day will bring
And listen to birds outside my window sing
I can't help but think and hope that
each day brings a smile
To everyone's lives that's here on
earth for only a little while
I pray to God each night as I lay my head down to rest
That ALL our trauma lives will turn out for the best
My trauma is forever, but my heart is now stronger
For human bond and love of life will last even longer

 
Tourette's and Bipolar Disorder, Yes, Both

Hey, Darin and Marcy, I finally found
out I have Tourette's, holy shit! 
"You can have them all little sons of
bitches and get away with it!"
In Tau Kappa Epsilon, my fraternal 
name was "Twitch."
A term of endearment, a nickname I will never ditch
Living thirty-five years of my life, 
always wondering why
I would go from complete laughter
to a sudden tearful cry
Teased my entire childhood mainly by those we "trust"
Adults were the worst of all; high
school was a fucking bust
Called a son of a bitch by Dale Thomas
and literally kicked out of class
And Jeff Nynehouse, "I can't handle you
on the bus," what a fucking ass
My label given to me has long been misled
Even those who have this "gift" have been misled
Medication was prescribed; what a fiasco that became
It is not okay for medical professionals
to cause "US" to go insane

The only neurological disorder known
to those prescribing drugs
Sorry, Dr. Narus, LOVE is the answer;
please start prescribing "hugs"
"I want some of what you're on, 
can I have some SHIT?"
"I have Tourette's, you want some of IT?"
My final straw came when I was
arrested and thrown in jail
"DUI other than alcohol," just try and make bail
Before you judge those of us who suffer from this pain
Think to yourself, "What do I have to gain?" 
We all have a disability; just take a look in the mirror
"Can I walk on water?" or do I just have a fear? 
How to accept others, no matter the
twitch, the glasses, or the creed
Thank God for those who can understand
why I choose to smoke weed
It is the only true relief I have
ever had other than LOVE
"Footprints in the Sand," my friends;
thank you, God above
So often people walk away or simply want to ignore
Maybe Tourette's will go away, we won't
have to deal with "THEM" anymore
To all of you that have this "gift,"
the one that makes me, ME
Don't ever let them put you in the 
"box," live and be free

I am proud of my life each and every day
Of course, there are times I think, make IT go away" 
So when you are passing judgment
or "choosing" to discriminate
You are one of "THEM," you are causing the HATE!

This poem is from William Hartwick’s book The Invisible Backpack. which is available for order.

The Invisible Backpack is a labor of love created from a life-long struggle to come to terms with who the author is and accept himself as he was meant to be. We are all born with an invisible backpack on our backs. It is where we put all the hurts of life. When we are young and courageously climbing the stairs of life, it is extremely light, and we really don’t know it’s there. As we get older, it gets heavier with whatever pain, grief, or trauma we experience. Unfortunately, we resist taking these feelings out of our backpacks and let go of them. Some of us hold onto them so tightly, we forget to make room for the things that lighten our load…forgiveness, acceptance, tolerance, and love. For if we can put these items in our backpacks, it will cancel out all of the negative things we’ve been holding onto, and our life journeys will become much lighter.