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in the winter blues
stuck in another
waiting room
heat raging in
the winter blues
coat rack full
my imagination
hoping something
young walks in
soon
i don't think it
wants to dream
about the wrinkling
skin under three
layers of clothes
fresh out of some
vacuum space
saving bag
although,
it certainly has
dreamed of worse
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plenty of happiness
honesty hurts
laughter doesn't
cure shit
money can buy
you plenty of
happiness
true love does
have a fucking
price
cheaters always
get ahead faster
and death is
a relief
it's up to the
user if it is
sweet or not
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i never asked to be born
on the cranky
days
i remind myself
i never asked to
be born
then i'll think
of my father
and the worms
six feet under
the ground
the anniversary
of the day we
put that fucker
down there is
coming up
suddenly
a smile
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past any sense of reason
there's a darkness
deep inside of me
that every blue
moon or so wants
to come out and
play
stir some shit up
push the envelope
well past any sense
of reason
this is where i always
tend to hold back the
desires and do my best
to just play it cool
but one of these days
they might as well get
the riot gear ready
madness has no timetable
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high heels
the sound of high heels
on tile floors
scratches that itch i will
always have in the back
of my brain
of a long-legged queen
digging those heels in
my chest
with a skirt on short
enough that i can enjoy
the view as i embrace
the pain
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Yellow Mama, The Beatnik Cowboy, Terror House Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Summer in the City
Dorian talked to me like I was an equal, even though he was an adult in his late 20s and I was a child of 13. Debi, our sister, was closer to Dorian’s age and like a mother to me.
Sometimes Dorian did unsafe things or said things an adult wouldn’t say, which made me concerned but not enough to tell our parents, except once when he found a gun and shot it in our room.
We used to take long ambling walks with our Doberman late at night in our Queens neighborhood. Across from our house was my cousin’s house. Her parents divorced and she no longer lived there, but I knew the house well. Next door on one side was Adrian, who was from Haiti and whose dad had a yellow taxi in their driveway. On the other side was Anabelle, an only child who was a little odd, maybe because of that. We walked past Jay’s house, a large white brick structure. He was three years older than I and an Orthodox Jew. I liked talking to him, but I hated when Debi said he had a crush on me. “I gave him $5, so you have to marry him!” We passed a small stucco house where another only son lived with his parents. He was Debi’s age, and he killed himself one day. He was a dentist. We turned the corner and passed the Greenbergs’ house, another family from Lebanon who were close to my parents.
Their son was bar mitzvahed in the backyard when I was six. We walked on 112th Street, right by a home for foster children. This is where we sometimes encountered a pack of dogs. I was scared for my dog because although he was fierce, he was outnumbered. We went all the way to the high school, with its large dark running track surrounded by a fence. On the way home we passed Barry’s house, the local stoner. His was the most beautiful – red brick with stained glass windows and a purple kitchen. Barry jogged obsessively before jogging was even a thing.
Dorian and I talked a lot on these walks, and he called me Arn, even though that wasn’t my name.
“Arn, let’s go swimming,” he said one night. He said he knew of a great pool: John Jay Pool on the Upper East Side. We rushed home to pick up our bathing suits, then got into his black Camaro. The windows were open, and the night air was thick with summer as we drove up 68th Drive, passing the Annex, where the local boys played stickball, and then 108th Street and Yellowstone Blvd, until we came to Queens Blvd, which we took to the 59th Street Bridge. Dorian had his left foot resting on the dashboard as we drove, his long brown hair fluttering in the wind and his large nose sitting perfectly on his face as he smiled. “This is going to be so fun,” he shouted above the motor, which rumbled below my feet.
Once at the pool, I stared at the tall black gate. It had spokes on the top. I clasped an iron post in each hand and peered into the long still pool. Dorian pressed his Chinese slippers firmly onto the bars and shimmied up like it was nothing. He perched on the top and waited for me to join him. He had so much confidence in my abilities to climb that when he held out his hand to me, I somehow reached him, surprising myself. Once at the top, I put my arms around his neck as he lifted me over the spokes.
I took off my Levi’s as Dorian dove in, his body sliding into the pool without a sound, and started his methodical laps. When Dorian swam, It looked like he was part of the water, gliding through, barely breaking the surface or making a ripple. He was muscular and lean, his hair streaming dark in the night.
I slipped into the inky pool and floated on my back, my ears submerged, staring at the sky. It felt like I was the only person in the world. Water usually scared me, and the empty pool was eerie, but if I looked towards my brother, I could get my breathing back to normal. The multitude of cars on the FDR Drive below us seemed far away.
I’m not sure why I agreed to go wherever Dorian suggested. Maybe I said something like “Are you sure this is a good idea?” or “Are we going to get in trouble?”, but in the end, I always followed him. Almost every outing turned into an adventure. My parents didn’t seem to worry, and anyway, they had lives of their own. They often went out with friends and came home late, assuming I was tucked in bed or with one of my siblings.
On the way home in wet jeans, we took a detour to Mamoun’s, on MacDougal Street in the West Village. It was a small, narrow place with dark walls. It had Lebanese takeout food and was open all night. It smelled of mint and cardamom and meat. We got shawarmas, meat shaved off a gyro stand and stuffed into a pita with tahine, lettuce, and liffit. We ate them on a stoop across the street, where we sat bent over and let the tahine drip to the ground between our feet. No matter how many napkins we had, it was never enough. The tea was hot and sweet in Styrofoam cups, just the way we liked it. Sated and tired, we people-watched in silence, blowing on our tea. “All right, Arn, let’s head home,” he said.
He drove us back to Queens, the motor’s hum pulling me to close my eyes, my beautiful brother by my side.
M Y J E W E L
You're the poetry I study
In you, I find myself busy
Getting to know you weren't easy
It's as hard as reaching the sky
You're the book I flip through
In you, I find comfort & solace
A truly human being I become
For you enlarge my mind.
You're the music I always harken to
In you, I find myself in the elysian field
A field of complete bliss & cockaigne
It's as sweet as the seventh paradise.
Ubali Ibrahim Hashimu
An Infant Poet ✍️✍️
in nature
sea spray
a residue for the lucky
i decide as showered
standing alone on a rock
in pink moonlight
wondering
and worshipping
i dance in circles now
celebrating what just is
learning to laugh and cry
alone in silence
singing to my shadow
watching days
evaporate gently
omen maybe
magpie peck on head
protecting next generation
smile in evaluation
applaud bird courage
forgiven quick
at dawn
appreciation of all
disseminates softly
with age in nature
and that itself
is an indication
of measured time
remaining here
the fish
i’m in horror
watching him
pull up the hooked fish
on the end of the jetty
where i am taking in the sunset
and while i know i can’t do anything
to save the fish
from this accepted by most slaughter
i look into the fisherman’s eyes
and quietly say
‘that poor dying fish’
to which he shrugs
but i get a sense
by the look he gives the fish
and me
that just for moment
hearing my words
he falls into what i said
and i suppose
that counts for something
regarding the fish
and the life
it has lived
on planet earth
our shared home
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.
Time Gets So Big
What’s left
are my mother’s linens
and every damn coffee cup
chipped and cracked
What’s gone - the summer leaves
stunning
when examined up close
in the strips of sunlight
that dart through the trees
Why so sad? Don’t reminisce…..
it will remind you of us
of this – that time just grows
so big like that
It’s an ache in my toe
(from a bunion that grew out of the side of my foot)
cracks in the walkway
my child’s college tuition
haunting to be paid
unopened boxes of candles
forever waiting for laughter
to be paired with glasses clinking…..
We braced ourselves
for those tremendous waves
at Jones beach
we just dove into their bellies before they hit
we caved into each other
in preparation for all the deaths
so big - the list
of thank you cards I meant to send
another wedding
another baby born
somewhere
in this endless family
-- We Don’t Stop --
Who can wrap their pretty head around it
shrouds me with busy-ness – am I busy enough?
can’t I just watch - for a moment
as the hummingbirds delicately
buzz the feeder?
stare at their sweetness
before death stares into me
Feel my heart
rapid now
slower soon
slowly
time just gets so big like that
so fast
Devil’s Playground
I got lost
in the aisles of your woe
shopped all your poisons
passed row after row
of angels
with harps on warped rocking chairs
Thought time was a falling leaf
yet I’m still here
bones and soul
body a violin case
holding the shroud of Jesus
I’m old like the music
that echoes through the store
my head is concrete
lead pellets in my socks
dragging corpses
through centuries of wardrobes
stage after stage
drug after drug
journeys that left us
with permanent memory loss
a gimp
and missing teeth
like who’d a thought…
a walk in the park
an ancient game of handball
long drag of a cigarette
O-shaped smoke
eyes so freakishly blue they glowed
Who’d a thought
we would create kryptonite
and it would blow up into a long-winded
sci-fi flick with us
as the creepy creatures left sifting through
the scraps
When God Made Man
He put that extra succulent rib
in man’s body
only later to rip it from him - that perfect baby back
and rewire it with a few upgrades
We knew back then to hold tight
grip our orgasms
work fingers to bone
a kids mouth
forever sucking
We knew back then
we were fused
with mooncut bone
some extra-terrestrial beam
perhaps to wreak havoc on man
who couldn’t bare the thought
of any one of us fugitives
being the backbone
of their succession
Billion Dollar Bombs, Baby
We human beings are
squishy, soft little blobs
pumped full of life's liquid
that can be killed
by a sharpened stick,
but we decided
to go all the way to
the other end
of the spectrum
to mass extinction.
Barbarism in the Next Apocalypse
If society were to break down,
if civilization reverted back to basic animal instinct,
if there were no laws or government,
if there were no rules or regulations,
if the food was to become scarce,
if the storms were to come ashore,
if the levees were to break,
if the lights were to turn off,
most cruel men would not be murderers or profiteers,
they would become rapists.
Meltdown
Is the world's most dangerous
elephant's foot
afraid of a mouse,
as much as we are
afraid of its next step?
The first day of hell
on your last day on earth, the person you
could have become will meet the person you
became.
Plague
The rats will follow us to the moon,
stowaways in the circuits of space rockets,
settling in the walls of our little colonies,
sneaking to eat all of the celestial cheese
and transit and transmit the fleas of disease.
Chris Butler is an illiterate poet howling from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut.
can't live alive
gays can't love
soldiers kill each other not kiss
***
my body can be mine
someone uses my body at will
my body can be separate from me
my body is too human
my body is too heteronormative
my body repels me
my body humiliates me
my body won't let me sleep
i want to wake up
***
two boys kiss like doves
sky overhead
soon morning
we will be stoned to death
***
a woman
with tears instead of a body
digs her own grave and becomes
a small insect for big husband
***
the body has grown without me
the woman from the clinic said that
I was a woman and I exploded on a mine of disappointment
quiet waves on the shore of a loud clumsy body in my understanding
small white mouse
huge hooded crow
eternal wall between me and me
***
Night city seeks protection in the sun
City (not) says:
(Silence)
It's raining
/ /
(Devastation)
White men and black guns
Bullets are ringing:
Skr dzg jz
People die:
Quiet
Quiet
***
The red triangles of the walls of this night - everything is already clear that you are not
Everything is so clear
Everything is so clear
***
Faces fell to the ground,
And in a stupid head only one question:
whose?
***
Bloody blood burger with
Рotatoes fries free
Freedom
From the rules of the road and
Laws of gravity
Desires of narratives
Оwn body
Who will win the last war in the world
And what's next
Small bird
At the glass of a non-existent universe
Red rednery
Instead of green greenery
Diluted cola
Sunken eyes
Automaton shins
With soda gas\gas chambers
Video and photography
Porn online free
In the depths of the graves
***
Without solving the problems of existence
Finding no reason for it
Metro dispatcher
To this woman who will no longer become a mermaid
Not for the first time or for the last time
Allowed to die
Tirhi tirhi lonely wind
In the abdomen of escalators station
Go drink the chicks of memories
They start talking in order to
It was not heard
Tears
Between the female ribs
And who said she was a woman
Who counted her ribs
Who ever said
That you (can) die
Dispatchers in the subway
###
In the morning the station was disinfected
No traces of memories were found
Responsible
Place for signature
Winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs, Bronze Medalist of the Chestnut House Festival, laureate of the Tyutyunnik literary competition. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Published in the journals Dzvin, Ring A, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Colon, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, on the web portals Literary Center and Soloneba, and in the Ukrainian literary newspaper Ice Floe Press.
