Poetry from J.J. Campbell

Middle aged white man with a beard standing in a bedroom with posters on the walls
J.J. Campbell

—————————————————————————————-

a revolution

sit on the back

porch in the

drizzle, end

of summer

listen to the

crickets plot

a revolution

your father once

told you dreams

were useless

hard work was

the only way

to get ahead

kind of ironic,

since that fucker

didn’t believe in

hard work either

he just wanted to

beat it into your

soul so he could

think of himself

as a good father

yet another thing

he failed at

still think about

cigarettes and a

glass of scotch

watching the cat

kill a mouse and

bring it to you

for a reward

————————————————————–

the mystery meat

never trust a skinny

chef

a nail shop that has

no koreans working

or the mystery meat in

any sandwich for lunch

and you wonder why so

many people fail gambling

on baseball

testing the limits on sanity

watching my mother’s health

fail a little more each day

i tell her it is probably better

she dies before democracy

does

and the young still want

to get married

and the rest of us only see

the cliff and an endless

fall ahead

just fucking jump

——————————————————————-

slipping into the abyss

i thought i would

let out a loud

collective fuck

before we are

never allowed

to do it again

slipping into the

abyss of scrambling

underground like

the cockroaches

they all think

we are

say goodbye to the

freedom of speech

and hello to the

consequences of

speech they don’t

approve of

fuck fuck fuck

i never was any

good at conformity

and was always

fucking proud

of that

the twilight is here

i ain’t fucking

changing now

——————————————————————————

volunteer

the only job

i seem to be

qualified for

is volunteer

hell,

i remember

back in 1988,

i was 12

years old

and told

my mom

and dad

i was going

to mow lawns

over the summer

to make some

money

there was a

drought that

year

i mowed one

lawn

never got

paid for it

so yes,

volunteer

i guess it is

———————————————————————

if she only knew

breathless beauty

but always just

out of reach

always her choice

by the way

if she only knew

what could have

been

two worlds that

are completely

different

colliding into

a beautiful

kaleidoscope

of wonder

sexual tension

for years to spare

but the comfort

of endless miles

between means

there is never

the need to take

a chance

and just like that

a moment in time

lost in whatever

like so many damn

times before

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been nominated three times for Best of the Net and once for the Pushcart Prize. He’s been published for over 30 years now, most recently at Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, Misfit Magazine and Mad Swirl. His latest chapbook, to live your dreams, will hopefully be out before 2025 ends. He has a blog but rarely has the time to write on it anymore. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Poetry from Srijani Dutta

Watercolor of a woman with shoulder length curly dark hair. Colors are purple, blue, and yellow.

The beginning is the end

Like a hummingbird I utter the words

That you once said to me

Once upon a time in an evening

Gradually becoming dark

Cold as night

Lack of warmth and certainty

Whispers of the unsaid, uncared

Words and actions

Clustered around the buds

Some were yet to bloom

Or

Some were blooming like a passion

A determined choice

Between duty and dilemma

The storm of mistrust arose

Serving them all the premature death-

An obvious nip in the bud.

23.09.2025

Blue Curls

03.04.2020

Post Memory

Part I

Ashes emerge out from the glass of

Memories,

Dangling between past and present,

Beings become non-beings.

All flames fade and evaporate,

All go for impressionistic images,

Pictures signify the other pictures,

Images another images;

Memory is mixed with tears

And the soothing aches

Come out of the

Translucent prism

As post memories.

Drizzling memory

Is draining itself out of rotten bones,

Flesh, blood as

Veiled with the scars

And transforms itself

 Into a new soul.

Post memory freezes me

Like a chilled out cabbage,

Cold, calm,

With no vexation

Like a patient

Without sense

Lying on a hospital bed.

Silhouette walks down

Through the urban spaces  

That was once countryside;

Time shakes hand with

The ruins and figments of

The dead waste land.

Like slithering out from the bruised

Skins of snakes,

Like fragrance emitting out

And spreading all over the room,

Memory comes

Memory mingles

With thin air

And gives birth to post memory.

Serene, sober, smooth,

Like patches of cool powder

Around the neck applied in hot summer.

2020

Part II

People escape from the ugly

Reality,

Bypassing the truths of mortality,

Night owl records the details

Of livelihood,

Burnt cigar seeks solace in burnt memories.

Tripping down the past lane,

She finds a strand of word

That she hid from

The loitering passerby.

Holding an old bottle

She stares at the starry night,

Pictorial paintings of photographs

Flash upon her imaginative eyes

And whispers-

“Where am I now?

Where will I go?”

Time blows like wind

To tell the tale

That was once half-told.

2020

Poetry from Ellie Hill

Like a China Teacup

like a china teacup

soft curves, with veiny blue flowers 

slithering across every corner of my milky white body, 

rimmed with smooth gold across my crown, 

reflecting the sunlight

like a china teacup

fitting in my palm, 

easily crushed into eggshells, 

sunny yolk spilling on the tiles below.

like a china teacup

i am filled with rich personality,

sweet like honey, coating the back of your throat

my energy, staining your teeth a brownish red

burning your tongue when i come on too strong

like a china teacup

i am beautiful inside and out,

my delicate flowers coating my porcelain skin, 

golden rim that gleams in the sun

i am,

like a china teacup

Essay from Kandy Fontaine

I didn’t expect to feel unsafe. That’s the hardest part to admit.

The person I was speaking with—a renowned sexologist, celebrated for their kink-aware, trauma-informed approach—had built a public reputation on consent, care, and empowerment. I had admired their work from afar. So when they asked about my medical condition in passing, I answered honestly. I was vulnerable, but I trusted the space.

What followed was not care. It was emotional domination disguised as engagement. The conversation veered into territory that felt coercive, destabilizing, and eerily reminiscent of a D/s dynamic—without negotiation, without safety, and without consent. I was misgendered after clearly stating my pronouns. My health condition was weaponized against me. They insisted on being the one to send the Zoom link, failed to ask if I wanted the session recorded, and never offered me control over the space.

And then—to top it all off, so to speak—it felt like they were playing cat and mouse with me. Like I was the tied-up sub and they were a literal psychopath hiding in plain sight. The dynamic was not therapeutic. It was predatory.

I left feeling retraumatized.

And I’m not alone.

We live in a time when boundaries are under siege—from political rhetoric that dehumanizes queer and trans bodies, to therapeutic and spiritual spaces that promise safety but sometimes deliver harm. The rise of authoritarianism isn’t just happening in governments—it’s happening in micro-interactions, in the misuse of power by those who should know better.

This is why instinct matters.

Instinct is not paranoia. It’s not drama. It’s the body’s wisdom speaking before the mind can rationalize. When something feels off—when a conversation leaves you feeling smaller, silenced, or emotionally cornered—that’s your signal. And it doesn’t matter how many degrees someone has, how many books they’ve published, or how many panels they’ve spoken on. Anyone can violate a boundary.

And anyone can choose not to listen when you say “no.”

As queer folx, as neurodivergent beings, as survivors, we are often taught to override our instincts in favor of politeness, professionalism, or perceived authority. But politeness won’t protect us. Only truth will.

So here’s mine: I was harmed. And I’m speaking up not to shame, but to protect.

If you’ve felt something similar—if your instincts whispered “this isn’t safe” and you doubted yourself—you’re not alone. You’re not overreacting. You’re remembering what safety feels like.

And that memory is sacred.

Let’s build spaces where instinct is honored, boundaries are respected, and care is more than a performance. Let’s haunt the canon with our truth.

About the Author Kandy Fontaine (aka Alex S. Johnson) is a queer writer, editor, and literary agitator whose work spans poetry, fiction, memoir, and radical cultural critique. As the founder and editor of Riot Pink, Kandy curates voices that haunt the canon—centering queer, neurodivergent, and trauma-informed perspectives in defiance of literary gatekeeping. Their work appears in Neurospicy!Nocturnicorn Books, and across underground zines and performance spaces. Kandy is also co-host of The Smol Bear N Pickles Show, where they explore the intersections of art, identity, and resistance with fellow visionary Alea Celeste Williams.

Kandy believes in the power of radical empathy, messy truth, and literature as a tool for survival and transformation.

📧 Submissions & inquiries: georgebailey679@gmail.com 📚 Riot Pink: Queer literature that bites back.

Poetry from Chloe Schoenfeld

Self Portrait with a Piano

The bench doesn’t know me anymore.

Not like it knows my sibling,

Or my mother,

Or my grandmother,

Or my grandfather.

Not like it used to know 

Me.

A poet sits down at a keyboard and tries to remember what it felt like when letters were in order 

from A to G.

Tries to remember a language of symbols she spent so long studying

And too long forgetting. 

Grandfather stares down at her and she wants to share anything with him other than a name. 

Music has been proven to help the forgetful remember

And she is forgetting how to look at something written

And make it her own instead of picking it apart. 

She is trying to forget how hard dedication was

So she can have just this one thing. 

She is trying to hold on to everything she ever was without fighting for it

And it is slipping away.

I sit down at the piano again and pretend I never left.

I will let it all return to me slowly.

Poetry from Noah Berlatsky

Job’s Children

It collapsed on them, and they are dead.
—Job 1:19

God let Satan kill Job’s children.
Seven sons and three daughters.

But it’s all okay because God later gave Job back
seven sons and three daughters.

Different ones. 
But the same number.

Sometimes Job would take his new ten children
to the graves of the old ten children.

The boys would stand on the graves of the boys.
The girls on the graves of the girls. 

Job would make them stand in age order.
Each had their place by a particular grave.

Sometimes when Job wasn’t looking 
the children would switch places

because they were bored
because they were disobedient

because they wanted to remind each other 
because they wanted to remind themselves

that they were not the same children
as the dead children.

These in the graves were dead.
Those on the graves were alive.

When Job caught them at it, he murdered them all.
Then he went out and bought new children.

Praise
God.

Collaborative short story from Bill Tope and Doug Hawley

Full Circle

When I was eight years old and newly installed in the house my parents bought for our family, I received the ultimate answer to my dreams–for that week: nothing less than a Wham-O Wrist Rocket, the final word in slingshots. While today this product is composed of tellurium, whatever that is, and comes equipped with laser sighting mechanisms, the Wrist Rocket of my youth was a relatively simple slingshot, but with a difference. With the old-fashioned Y-shaped devices, you would simply grip it by the handle, aim and fire. But with the Wham-O weapon, it had a special brace, made of “Aircraft Aluminum,” which fitted over your wrist, giving you better leverage and increased firing accuracy. But at eight, I was only dimly aware of all this. All I knew was that they were fun! And now I had one. 

Standing in my new back yard, I was on a safari, alert for all the ferocious creatures that stalked the neighborhood. I tried a few shots, one at our new metal garbage can. It struck with terrific impact and made a clattering sound that could have wakened the dead. Too easy. Next I tried a few trees, but they were still too easy, even the skinny ones. What I craved was live prey and there it was, up in the huge sycamore in our front yard. It was late summer and the trees were still clustered with leaves, but I spied a rich target: a gray-black bird with an orange belly, about fifty feet above the ground. 

Inserting a rock from our newly graveled driveway, I stretched the rubber back nearly a yard, packing tremendous force into the shot. Then I let it fly, not really aiming but working on instinct. To my surprise–and resultant horror–the stone struck the little bird, shattering his wing. The robin dropped precipitously, thrashing his wings as he fell. He struck the ground on his back. He died instantly. 

Eyes wide, I tentatively approached the beautiful creature, beheld his bright orange breast and searched for any sign of life. There was none; the robin was dead. I hurried away, too cowardly even to bury the bird. Other kids regularly preyed on small animals with slingshots, BB guns and the like, but I never had. Until now. I had unwittingly joined the ranks of the “mean kids,” who were marked by their abject cruelty to defenseless animals. And I didn’t like it. The next day it got much worse. 

My dad was policing the property, in preparation for mowing the lawn, when he came upon the dead bird. “Someone killed a robin,” he said gravely. He looked at me. “You don’t shoot robins, do you?” he asked. He had a right to ask; I had mercilessly badgered him to buy the wretched Wrist Rocket. I shook my head no. I was never sure if my dad believed me; we never spoke of  it again. I had never been aware of any particular feeling on my dad’s part, respecting birds or other creatures. Later I would learn that they had played a part in his growing up in the country, on a farm. And I admired my dad more than any man alive. Which brought home the enormity of what I’d done. 

Distraught, I retreated to my bedroom, where I stashed the slingshot in my closet, never to use it again. The next day I threw it out. At supper that night my dad told my mom about neighborhood kids killing birds. 

“You shouldn’t kill a robin,” he said simply, and I felt bitterly ashamed. It was the first and only time I lied to my father. A hard, life-changing lesson to learn at just eight years of age. 

At this point it would be great to tell you that I became a millionaire and devoted my life to preserving wildlife and saving species from extinction. Not quite. I did well at math in school and ultimately became a college math professor. I settled into academia nicely. With only a few classes to teach and a few additional office hours, I had a lot of free time. After I got married and bought a house, I put up several bird feeders. I also supported the Audubon Society until I heard some negative things about it. After a spate bird-watching, I had to admit it bored me to tears. I reasoned that the best thing was to raise my kids, Sam and Judy, with respect for all life. On this my wife Susan and I agreed. 

The kids won’t get any weapons, real or fake, as presents. I’m happy that Sam wants to study to be an environmentalist. Judy is making her old man happy too: she is doing great in her math classes, and wants to be a mathematician like me. On a research grant I used my math skills to work on species preservations. It wasn’t easy because there were so many variables: birthrates, predators, available food, genre ratios and the like, but I’m happy to say we’ve had some success. The Ontario Mouse that was near extinction is now thriving. The Klamath Darter, a small fish, is making a comeback. 

I was invited to give a lecture on  the subject in Eugene, Oregon, my home town. My speech was going well, but I wondered about a bald guy in the front row who looked familiar. He seemed to hang onto every word, even when I went into boring statistics. After the talk, I cornered him at the post-speech buffet and asked him who he was. He didn’t answer immediately, and then it dawned on me: Mr. Spangler, our neighbor from my neighborhood when I was growing up; I hadn’t seen him for 25 years.  

“Is that you, Don?” I asked, stunned. 

He admitted that it was and then went on to tell me how proud he was at how I’d turned out. He hesitated a moment and then said he’d had some misgivings about me back in the day. I furrowed my brow and asked him what he meant. Without a word, he turned up a brown paper bag and from it pulled a 30-year-old Whamo Wrist Rocket. He told me he’d seen me shoot the robin all those years ago and watched as I tossed the weapon of death into the trash. He’d saved it, he said, for just such an occasion. “I’m proud of you,” he said solemnly and it warmed my heart that my life had come full circle.