Broken Legs

it's Ramadan,
& we would wear the lips
of a night,
& speak of the dark memories
standing on
the borders of our country.

we would watch the back
of our hands,
to see the pictures
of schoolgirls, whose mothers
are through waiting
for them to come home.

we would try
to echo the screams
of people,
who lost their hopes
inside a moving train.


we would remember
the burning bodies of women,
& children whose ashes
now paint our sky grey.

& we wouldn't
want to taste the blood,
that quench the thirst of hungry zombies
walking through
the borders of our country.

our legs are broken,
we don't have the strength
to stand and fight again.

we are left with only our hands,
& we would raise them
tonight.

& ask our lord
for a piece of cloth,
that would wipe our tears.

            Gasoline

The price of gas – just think of

What it has cost us, miles and

Miles, gallons and gallons. It

Once made sense. I recall as

A teenager buying a dollar’s

Worth for a night out – same

Station had a cigarette machine

A quarter a pack. Imagine how

It was heading out for the night

Four gallons of gas and a deck of

Cigarettes. Who could ask for

More than that, but it happened.

Prices in the driver’s seat and we

Became poor ride-alongs. Last

Time the prices went way up, we

Began talking about smaller cars

And less driving, even talked about

Public transportation, but when

Prices went down a bit, we became

A country of SUVs and pickup trucks.

Driveways filled up with our sense

What is essential – gallons and gallons

Miles and miles. We have learned to

Consume and complain without doing

Anything but consume and complain

As miles and miles go by and gallons

And gallons we buy – the price of gas

Just think of what it has cost us.




              Out Shopping

Grocery shopping, we wait our turn

picture the gunman setting up

getting ready to shoot, to live-stream

the action we make, he makes.

How long before we begin to run

scream, try to hide, our whole lives

flashing before our eyes, how long will

it be, how many of us will get away

become survivors, witnesses they will

ask about him and how he appeared

before and what did he say, shout as he

began becoming the lead story?

This is Friday grocery shopping. Here we

are trying to get a jump on the weekend

a task accomplished – and there he is trying

to get a jump on what he wanted

wanted to accomplish – the first few are

carefully picked out of Produce, the rest are

random, much like our grocery shopping

might have been.




           Cut to the Car Chase


Shoot-outs, we grew up on them,

war pictures, cowboys and rustlers,

gangster films. We’ve seen it all, so

when they happen around us, they

seem almost scripted. The guy, whose

sad face we saw on TV last evening,

tells the expected story about the masked

intruder who he chased off, then on

a car chase, three towns long, shooting

out his window, like some action star,

a budding Clint Eastwood, shooting as

they tried to get away. The passenger got

hit, didn’t make it to the hospital, and

now our shooter gets his TV moment. His

story holds together as well as any other,

a few shots to explain, charges filed, and

of course the pictures, the car with a blown

out back window, the roadside, and our

hero’s sad face, his bloodshot eyes. They

say it’s drug related, like most of these tales.

They are always seem to be scripted that way.





J.K. Durick jdurick2001@yahoo.com

Motif II: Crash/Landing
(A Semi-Tragedy in Two Acts)

I. On the south side of Liberal, Kansas

For some reason, we all know to gather along the old highway
just north of where it meets the bypass; between them, a wedge
	of dry prairie grass anticipates dawn and something else.

The plane comes in from the south: long, thin, white, unliveried.
(Picture the offspring of a Concorde and a 707, its father’s nose
	and its mother’s wings, and you have it close enough.)

Gear still retracted, it slides in and turns top, three perfect spins
down the field without bending so much as one thin dun blade;
	there is no sound but breaths all drawn in at once.

No flame, no laceration of aluminum skin, not so much as a cloud
of honest Kansas dust; nose pointed back where it came from,
	the plane rests unperturbed, maiden-flight pristine.

From somewhere in the crowd, a Panhandle-tinged twang:
	Well, that ol’ boy done ‘er again, didn’t he? Might
	as well go see what all he brung us this time.

II. Manhattan, Kansas, on the street where Jim Roper lived

Stuffed with burgers (eaten, as ever, standing in the kitchen),
we walk north toward the football stadium, discussing the 
quarterback situation and whether threatened rain will hold off.

Someone – probably Gary – brings up a years-ago summer
solstice party, the honey-haired girl nobody knew who showed
up in a toga and antler-danced with Jim in the living room.

This is routine, ritual, sacrament, not to be disturbed by 
anything like that belly-flopping 747 two blocks ahead, 
plunging into low brick blocks where married students live.

Impact now, an infrabass thump and rumble. A fireball races
to consume families, tricycles, maples, all of us. It is red
and orange and beautiful; I breathe in and am not afraid.


 
Shawnee, Kansas, Which is Not Really Shawnee, Kansas: Dream II

This is another in a long line
of whole-cloth hotel lobbies
on streets which both exist and do not:

a tile-and-Formica spot 
on an off-map stretch of Johnson Drive

(pick dumpy or retro
and either will suit, depending more 
	on you than on the place),

and I’m trying to explain to Larry 
that I did (eventually) recognize

the young Clint Eastwood and the 
older one when I ran into both of 
them at the coffeehouse in Union Station

sitting at a table with either Anthony Hopkins 
or John Wayne – or occasionally but not 
always both, though why the Duke should 
resurrect for three-dollar drip is beyond me –

and for some other unfathomable reason 
James Urbaniak, thin and vaguely dangerous,
who smirked at all of us and left halfway 
	through the conversation.

Larry all the while fiddles with his phone,
poking it with a little screwdriver, 
only making appropriate noises so as 
	to seem engaged,

so I walk out into a half-dawn of
backlit plastic, oddly angled streets
	and lumen-polluted overcast.

I suppose I might eventually find my way
	back to the map and home –

that, or just go upstairs and fall into dream 
within dream, still in my clothes on
forty dollars' worth of rented sheets.

Don't press me for a clear answer; I am and
will be asleep the whole sometime.
 
Bonner Springs, Kansas, Which is Not Really Bonner Springs, Kansas: Dream II

The stakeout is just beginning. I have time to go for coffee.
The town’s heart is only a few blocks south; its buildings 
are taller than I remember, but this bodes well; somewhere
in this tangle of five-story limestone, there must be a place.

The sidewalk spans a ravine, brush-lined, hundreds of feet
deep. There is no handrail, and the walkway is less than a
yard wide. I take no shame in dropping to my knees to cross,
but a man on the other side rolls his eyes and tosses a few
	dead dogwood branches to impede my way. 

No need; I am being called back. We have been made. Our
	target has seen telltale peanuts floating in his gutter.

(He looks like a television character actor of some minor 
note, one who always seems to play a well-meaning but 
largely incompetent foil to the protagonist. I will remember 
his name someday, likely on my deathbed, and my loved ones
	will always wonder why those were my last words.)

We will have to take another tack, so we roll back into the
city along Kaw Drive. I see a coffeehouse, set back among
trees on the north side of the road. We do not stop.

the rules of any society
 
scribbling poems
in the rain
 
like this poor soul
that doesn't play
by the rules of
any society
 
flicked cigarette butts,
empty bags of fast
food trash, and a cruel
car of teenagers and
the asshole dare of
tossing piss
 
he has seen it all
 
nothing dares to ever
come close to surprising
him anymore
 
school shooting
 
celebrity death
 
war in a foreign land
 
he knows what it
really is
 
thursday
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
not made of sugar
 
old bones
screaming
in the rain
 
caught out
in the elements
without a jacket
or umbrella
 
you remember
your father
telling you
you're not
made of
sugar
 
you won't
fucking melt
 
as you got older,
you realized he
was full of shit
 
thankfully, that
fucker is in the
ground
 
it won't be long
now, you will
be as well
 
at least parts
of you
 
i figure most
of the body
will be burned
to destroy
the evidence
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
like failure is not the only option
 
laughing at my perv switch
as i watch a black woman
walk back into the offices
to go clean them
 
should i strike up a
conversation and see
what happens or should
i see if she just wants
cash instead
 
somewhere my mother
is reading this and knows
she has failed
 
like failure is not the only
option available to us all
 
she just caught me staring
at her
 
that wasn't the finger
i was hoping for
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
my answer to john fogerty
 
yes, i have seen
the fucking rain
 
it hasn't stopped
around here for
nearly five days
 
before too long,
i'm expecting cats
and dogs to start
falling from the
sky
 
and between the
drops i'm expected
to shop among
the masses
 
like hell
 
the less i am
around people
the better i feel
 
and i know,
i sound like
the bitter old
fuck that secretly
wants it both ways
 
so be it
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
for days on end
 
dark brown skin
and enough curves
to keep your imagination
buzzing for days on end
 
there's a certain way
the hips shake that you
know that a challenge
is ahead of you
 
but a certain body part
is more than willing to
not only accept that
challenge
 
but conquer that
mountain and plant
a damn flag on it

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is currently serving time in suburbia, taking care of his disabled mother. He has been widely published over the years, most recently at The Beatnik Cowboy, Horror Sleaze Trash, Misfit Magazine, Mad Swirl and Terror House Magazine. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

“SCREAMING MIME” 

I should speak out when they abuse 
This pasty-faced artist who decided to choose 
Being trapped in silence with make-up queer 
I may not speak, but I can hear 

The taunts, the insults, and the hate 
Towards street performers who refuse the bait 
Of ridiculed anger through vulgar gestures 
Believing performance is a continuing semester 

Of learning to grow within painted smile 
Ignore the assholes, concentrate on the child. 
Who laughs with joy or open-mouthed wonder 
Yet tosses no coins as my stomach thunders 

Breaking the silence, begging for bread 
My intestinal rumblings plead to be fed
A steady diet of human compassion 
Through the clinking of coins in an appreciative reaction 

To my ancient art and enduring hunger 
Selling myself like a common whoremonger 
Hoping to satisfy an insatiable crowd 
In tight fitting Spandex, a seductive shroud 

Ignoring lewd sneers at my exposed anatomy 
That I've twisted and stretched in hopes it would flatter me 
As my muscles contort and my body sings 
A silent song that once entertained kings

Miss Unity is a writer and drag queen from upstate New York. Her essay collection ‘Who Killed Mabel Frost?’ will be published by SF/LD Books in 2023. 
Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, Hunger Pains (Buttonhook Press).

Protective 

Oh my fucking God

I hope you know 

I truly love you 

Had your...

Physical and mental attributes 

Listed and ready 

To make a mockery out of 

As I roasted you alive 

Despite you hurting me 

In ways no one ever had before 

I still can't bring myself 

To say these things to you 

Invisible girl 

No one ever noticed 

 It killed you 

And when they did notice 

They drove by and barked at you 

Well baby if you think that was traumatizing 

Then the things I could say about you 

Would make you want 

To take your own life 

Of course you're not reading this 

You ghosted me and 

Don't give a fuck how much it hurts

Yet here I am 

Trying to save your feelings 

One more time 

Just in case you ever look back

From the beginning till the ending 

All I ever wanted was to make you happy 

So I don't want to say anything 

To make you sad and upset now

Just in case you ever remember 

That I exist