Alcoholic Nights

alcoholic nights smelling of overproof rum and cheap rotgut,

when the smoky clouds in the living room refuse to dissipate.

nights when the liver twitches and demands a sacrifice even if

it means emptying the wallet and going to work the next day

with a massive hangover and in a genocidal mood.

these are the nights of true danger, when you have no idea

where you might end, what you might do.

it’s like gambling, only you can win more, and lose even more.

you can lose your job; you can find a girlfriend.

you can end up injured and/or missing body parts,

or wake up having created a masterpiece.

it’s the alcoholic nights that smell worse than a skid row dive

that have the greatest potential for anything and everything to happen.

Calls From Nowhere

sometimes. during good drunk nights, I wake

up in a fervor, confusing my alarm clock for a phone

call from Christine; on a couple of occasions, I’ve even

“answered”, hearing her voice in my half-asleep state of stupor dreaming.

it’s been thirteen years since I last heard her voice on the phone,

when she told me she’d be moving to Copenhagen while I was

away on vacation, and I sometimes wonder what would I do if

she somehow found my new number and gave me a real call.

would I go back to her? would I tell her I’ve turned into a better person?

would she even believe I’m not the whoremongering alcoholic junkie

she met, saved, then abandoned?

I have no idea; part of me wishes for her to return to my life, for 

a second chance with the only woman ever coming close to

replacing Emily in my heart. on the other hand, I traumatized her enough

that I know she would never be able to trust me. perhaps, it’s for the

best we haven’t stayed in contact; it’s for the best I haven’t

seen or heard from her in thirteen years.

I prefer half-dreaming imaginary talks with her, hearing her

tell me she’s happy and that she found someone who

doesn’t shoot heroin in the bathroom or drains two bottles of Four Roses

during a calm Saturday afternoon.

Boozing It Up Early

boozing it up early, once again chasing the midnight train.

memories and future moments are juxtaposed in a nightmarish

amalgamation creating more restless nights. heading to work

with a liter of bourbon in the blood and almost no sleep, 

the mind’s racing for reasons beyond my control and will.

booze clears some things up, and it blurs others.

no definitive answer found in any of the twenty empty bottles

of the past fortnight; perhaps the next twenty will have something

refreshing to offer.

Frigid Winter Nights

remembering frigid winter nights in a tiny

apartment; clouds of smoke choked out the air and vapor

crawled out of the spoon like thin blue snakes. Emily and I would sit

on the blue foldout couch already stained by melting junk.

hunger in our eyes, lust in our souls, everything felt so goddamn

all right—even if nothing was. 

we’d kiss as the spoon was burning, and the first bubbles appeared.

sometimes, we’d trade a look of anticipation and sometimes, our

glances would express worry over what the fuck we were doing.

nothing could stop us; not even our love.

yet, those frigid winter nights, laced with cheap booze and heroin,

were the best months of my life.

madly in love, slowly dissipating into the madness I came to know

as life. and I had Emily by my side, begging me to burn the spoon

while kissing me.

frigid winter nights that’ll never return, and that’ll live

forever in my mind; no one else could have been there,

no one else will ever be there.

the frigid nights of junk beauty are interred in my heart,

and a lot of women have failed in their attempts to destroy them.

Homeland Security

The police must be raiding 

houses, their sirens on full

blare, searchlights waving

like crazy magic wands made 

out of lasers, though imprecise

at fixing locations, finding what

is hiding out there in the dark

For a moment the light is

terrific, enough to read by,

if you were so inclined, had 

the time, were not otherwise

occupied

by all this chaos

by all this confusion

No one questions what is

going on, no one asks who has

the authority or what for

Why bother?

Asking will not change what

has already begun, what is going on

They must know what

they are doing, these policemen

and women

Knocking on doors in the night

Yelling, “Open up, open up!

It’s the police!”

We have no doubts about what

they are doing

We always open up

We have no choice

Futility Music

That’s what they

call it:

the interrogators,

assassins

spooks

Heavy metal to us:

Twisted Sister

Metallica

Kiss

Angry music:

Limp Biskit

Slip Knot

Rage Against the Machine

“Interro-tunes”

say those in the trade,

approved by your

Defense Department

“Mood music for

jolting your jihad”

Unholy, infidel

noise, horror sounds

the ultimate

cultural clash:

pure torture:

“We’re Not Going to Take It”

“Shoot to Thrill”

“The Sandman”

Drowning Pool

“Let the bodies hit the floor”

“Glow in the Darks”

This new interrogation

technique;

beating the prisoner

with phosphorescent

sticks,

you know, the kind

they guide airplanes

down runways with

at night,

beating them until

the sticks break,

coats the prisoners

with the stuff that’s

inside,

makes them easier

to keep track of

when they glow

in the dark

Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s

Novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, mixed media

on paper

Under the sign of an hourglass,

men in loose fitting Hawaiian shirts

look up to where the sun should be

and see an absence of light, 

see a strange colored chemical haze,

what the clouds have become and

no one can explain how this came about;

not even the scientists in tie-dyed lab

coats who caused this abstract transformation;

nor the rear-guard SS troopers in their

atrocity exhibit offices, walls covered by

portraits of tyrannical rulers throughout 

the ages, their rulers and ours; not the lackeys 

or the bootlickers kneeling down in ruined

streets to kiss the shoes of false Popes,

Grand Inquisitors wearing heavy, plush

robes to conceal their executioner gear;

not satan’s soldiers on wheels; not pale

musclemen, minutemen, plunderers of the dead;

not the burgermeisters nor their whores:

the taxi dancers, cabaret queens, make up

artists, made up as tainted gypsies, hot to

the touch; not the anarchists with their 

apolitical tracts but the atonal music they

listened to as the rockets came over the spent

horizon, some exploding in mid-air recreating

the memory of the missing stars, others not

ignited and no one knew why.

Gravity’s Rainbow: Paper Collage with Pills,

Hemp Leaves, Acrylic and Resin on Wood

after Fred Tomaselli

Gravity’s Rainbow as extreme Art,

a hybrid form combining found objects,

over-the-counter Medicinals, antacid wafers,

dissolvable capsules, antihistamines, low

dosage aspirins, the enteric and the regular,

all strung as helix amid drooping plastics,

necklaces and furbelows, the ornamental

and the functional, an almost tapestry,

tableau of modern life, of lost and found

Art, affixed on a field of black, the universal

and the particular, random designing, scars,

the wounded back drop, the sky.

When you first

see them, the men,

seated, waiting in

the desert, you wonder,

why have they gathered

here? What are they

doing?  Are they so

devout, nothing can

keep them from praying?

Not the approaching

storm, the darkening

whirl of dust and dirt,

a tidal wave of earth.

No, you realize, prayer

is not what has brought

them here but war;

that lone man standing

some yards away is

a soldier, an armed

guard and that jeep

nearby is not moving

but idling, more men

inside, waiting for what

happens next.  Waiting

for the hovering craft,

the first of many, about

to land despite sight line

zero, this ghost ship in

a wasteland, here to ferry

the doomed, the prisoners,

home.

Franz Marc’s Battling Forms (1914)

A piece of Klee,

geometric, tarnished

as the skin of martyrs

uprooted from their

graves;

the hell they were

interred in no longer

consecrated ground

but something profaned,

damaged by earthquakes,

artillery barraging;

their rude crosses bent,

dismantling, even eternity

markers impermanent as

the town’s people who 

died here breathing mustard

gases;

their collective exhalations

a poisonous cloud, a pale

horse, pale rider nightmare

wrenched from Chagall’s

worst dream;

all of Munch’s lost tubercular

children gathered behind

locked church doors balanced

on the edge of a precipice;

or like a Kandinsky composition

in red, a folk dream inside a blood

red chamber, the one the artist

never finished, the one no one

could ever finish.

April

This is where a twenty-cent popsicle melted,
glistening under the summer sun.

This is where a farmer stood
with his apples and cherries on the sidewalk.

This is where they left bike trails from their Sunday outing.

This is where a dog once chased a tabby through a sprinkler.

This is where a boy lost his first front tooth.

This is where newlyweds built their dreams,
and where an old couple closed their lives together.

This is where lost toy trucks and dolls and rubber ducks
lay in the bushes for many days.

This is where the green leaves turned reddish-brown,
year after year.

This is where some sobbed and cried,
while others celebrated.

This is where the land now lies barren,
where luggage was packed,
where cars drove away,
and where voices slowly faded.

April 8th

A still, settled atmosphere.

A bedroom door left slightly open.

Sheets tucked in tight.

Stuffed animals waiting on the bed.

Clean, cold pens aligned in a row.

A thin layer of dust resting on the tops of books.

Warm rays of sunlight seeping from behind closed drapes.

A pair of slippers neatly placed, untouched.

Outside,

the smell of dinner,

dishes clinking,

a television humming,

voices and footsteps passing by.

Summer Arrival

As I round the corner, he greets me,

standing on the sunlit, sandy steps—

small bare feet,

ruffled hair,

a sheer white dress,

and a cheeky grin.

The puppy trails behind,

his bell jingling with each tiny paw print,

his tail wagging eagerly.

Orange sunlight gleams against the vases and grains of sand,

filtering through outstretched bushes

of poppies and sunflowers,

and draping a gentle warmth over me.

Every bloom carries the freshness and fragrance

of a bright midsummer afternoon.

Then she rushes through the doorway,

an apron clutched in her hands,

half-worn sandals slipping across the porch.

The scent of fresh bread follows her out

and soon fills the entire front yard.

Abbie Huh is a student at an international high school in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently preparing a creative writing portfolio for university applications. In addition to writing poetry, she enjoys working with ceramics and exploring the connections between visual art and language. Her work often reflects an interest in memory, identity, and the details of everyday experience.

Dealer by Ivan Salinas

There’s Only Peace In Death Press

www.darylgussin.com, $14.00

Reviewed by A. Iwasa

This collection of poems starts off with a two page long paragraph, stream of consciousness type piece, from which it takes the name, “Dealer”.  It definitely sets the tone for the rest of the book.  Off the bat, you may assume it’s about a drug dealer, but that assumption’s promptly turned upside down when Salinas writes about “a dealer in the deep web of the night” found while looking for a car, “I was going to get a brand-used baby from a sketchy Spanish-speaking dealer, following a family tradition.”

Though the details are different, it’s the kind of scenario I could easily see someone from my white family in the rust belt playing out, and not a far cry from my limited misadventures on foot and public transit in So Cal.

Finally getting to a place “more of a junkyard than a dealer” that can only be described as “seeing through a veil of grainy radio static,” it’s the poetry in everyday life.

Generally what I like about prose poetry is performance.  Even when it’s a scene I’m not connected to, the context is what can make or break it for me such as my preference for the Beat Generation’s novels, as opposed to their poetry which defined it for so many people.  But Salinas’s work is different.  Though I consider chap books to be the ‘zines of the poetry world, Salinas is both a poet and a ‘zinester.  Dealer is mostly laid out like a ‘zine with funky photography, and some experiments with creative layout and hand drawn art.

I’m not sure how some of the most creative pieces such as “Discount Auto Dreams” and “Statement of Facts” could be read out loud without losing their charm.  Spoofs of forms, or perhaps actual forms filled out the way you might if you were feeling snarky and had no intention of getting whatever the form is for, they’re 110% ‘zine material, or perhaps wingnut flyer or demo tape layout.

They’re the kind of pieces that make me feel at home reading Dealer compared to your average poetry chap book.

Somewhat similarly, I spent a little too long figuring out that the last line of “PO441 vs. La Yahualica Auto Electric” is actually a line.  A mostly conventionally laid out poem unravels, and though I have some funny ideas about how a live reading might go, I mostly appreciate how the formatting gets creative to tie in with the end of the poem.

It’s not all mundane; coming out of Los Angeles in 2026, lines like “Tinted Fords and GMCs prey on the road, planning grand theft auto at gunpoint in federal uniform,” address the bigger picture also in “Hey Mula,” without flogging you over the head.

But still, it’s the poetry of everyday life that draws me in and wins me over.  I can’t help but be sure Salinas knows someone who “used to say the border/was just a rumor in asphalt.”  And, that “He said the line was real/only when the engine stalled,” as in “Federal Limits Do Not Apply.”

Another very cool aspect of this collection is that the poems are printed in both English and Spanish.

Dealer can be ordered here.

Da Vinci’s Portrait 

I am Mona Lisa and I am art

Send me your sweet love letters for a start!

Go on bended knees with your proposals!

There will never be counterproposals.

Come with your dreams and many fantasies!

Come from your different nations and countries!

Come with your longings, it’s a gazing spree!

Let your gazes take you to the high sea.

I feel the impulse of your strong desires,

for to my heart, every man aspires!

Build on my smile, I smile to tempt a lover!

Your lustful desires I will uncover

with nothing more than my own gracious smile.

You desire to have me walk down the aisle,

but I am nothing more than Da Vinci’s Portrait,

and a portrayal of his artistic trait.

(First published by Micromance magazine in 2025)

Joseph C Ogbonna is a widely published poet. Some of his many works have been published by Synchronized Chaos, Spillwords Press, Micromance magazine, PoetryXhunger, Waxpoetry Magazine, Borderless, Orenuag Journal, Ihram and more than two dozen anthologies and magazines. He also has two self-published volumes to his credit. His works, ‘Napoleon to Josephine and Josephine to Napoleon,’ had been aired by the BBC Radio 3 for a historic documentary.

He is a graduate of Nigeria’s famous Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he bagged a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Education. He has PGD, MBA, M.Sc and M.Ed degrees from other Nigerian institutions of higher learning. He lives in Enugu, Nigeria with his wife, Chizoba.

Protest

war is not a protest but a lack of protest
death is not a protest but a lack of protest
laughter is not a protest but a lack of protest
peace is not a protest but a lack of protest
revolution is not a protest but a lack of protest
life is not a protest but a lack of protest

a soldier cannot say no
a citizen cannot say no
a suicide cannot say no
a lonely shadow cannot say no

letters do not arrive
letters do not sent

a bed under an apple tree
an apple on a bed

a drop of execution sleep at sunset

In today’s rapidly changing world one of the most pressing topics is the great importance of books in developing children’s thinking. We can say that by reading books, children are finding solutions to the world’s most complex problems, thereby contributing to the development and future of our countries. 

Today, the only thing that leads children to perfection and success is the book.  In my opinion, every child has read a book at least once in their life. For example, a piece of work, a novel, a drama, or simple literature from a book.  By this, I mean that books primary invite children to reading and literacy. Furthermore, through reading books children are enhancing their mental intellect and critical thinking in serious areas.  That is to say, easy solutions to the economic, social, and spiritual-culture problems of our countries are being found with the help of books. Another aspect is that the gems of Uzbek literature teach children the roots of our history; the reason is that it shows how humanitarian, brave, and most importantly, patient the Uzbek people are. Based on this, I want to say that to build the future, one must look back at history; as a result, history will pave your way to success, drawing from it is own hardships.  This opinion of mine is, on the contrary like a battle on a reflected stage.

Because in the war, thousands of our grandfather fought putting their lives in the line, and if necessary, sacrificing them. Do you think they did not have fathers, mothers, spouses, or children waiting for them anxiously at home? Of course they did! But they possessed pride, honor, and a sense of responsibility. I can say with confidence that these books will help children take steps toward a great future.

Furthermore, children learn how difficult life can be and how to respond to it appropriately.  In, reading books can be useful not only for children but also for adults.  For instance, Yu Hua’ s famous work “To Live” helps to further increase the patience and resilience of our women today. In my perspective, this book reflects the hardships of an entire family, and even the suffering of a woman who lost all her children and her ability to endure these difficulties. I believe that this story can serve as an example for our women. 

In final conclusion,  a book is not just an object that leads people to perfection,  but rather a guide that shows them the way.  It is known that for many children,  a books a source of knowledge and one of the most enjoyable activities 

My name is Ismatova Dilnura.  I was born on October 11, 2010, in Shahrisabz district of Qashqadaryo region, Uzbekistan. Moreover, in order to expand my worldwide and mental capacity, I have been learning various languages and reading books.  In addition, thanks to my knowledge of foreign languages, I have been participating as a volunteer in my events, festivals, and large pavilions. And also, currently, I am continuously developing myself and further increasing my knowledge in order to realize my many dreams.