Chris Stanifer

"sentimental flesh wounds"

I haven't the voice for sweet promises,
clenched teeth and sneers
keep them at bay,
empty of delivery now are love’s useless offices,
a sly hand,
a wry smile
and cupids arrow flies astray,
nicking skin but drawing no blood,
sentimental flesh wounds
and no more,
a boot heel scar etched in sucking mud,
sun dried,
petrified
and pushed out through a slamming door.
prosaic dramas draw across the stage
in cherubic verse,
the heart has slain the muse
with fire tempered hotter by my rage,
a scorched hand,
a clenched fist
and a picture of the one who lit the fuse.

Chris is a professional Chef, working and living in Las Vegas, Nevada

Justin Hyde

fence posts and stop signs
 
as i
opened the screen door
coming home
from racing slot cars
at jay dougan’s trailer
 
my father
called to me
from the shed.
 
he was sitting in a lawn chair
point of the horizon
in his eyes
 
paper sack
in his fist.
 
i'm not gonna be
around forever
 
pretty soon
it'll just be
you and your mom,
he slurred
squeezing my
shoulder.
 
i stood there
stoic as a fencepost
 
staring at the cement
between our feet
until he let go.
 
i remember
it was raining that night,
 
the smell of earthworms
 
as i fell asleep
telling myself
dad was a stop sign.
 
something to be
endured.
 
nothing
more.


the last time i saw my father's dad

a line of drool
hung off
his chin,

the gravel road
vibrated it
onto his shirt.

help him
get that,
dad called
from the driver's
seat.

i scooted towards him
grabbed the handkerchief
from his overalls.

he was leaning
against the passenger door
and didn't move
while i
did it.

i was twelve,
grandpa
had never put
more than five words
towards me.

in his day
he'd been a trick shot

sponsored by
a rifle manufacturer,

but all i knew of him
was slumped in a chair
in the rotting apartment
above Gerth
hardware.

we stopped
at a
rusty gate,

the three of us
stood
in front of
grandma's
grave.

grandpa said something

it was drowned out
by cicadas.

wind
blew the drool
across
his cheek.

i grabbed
the handkerchief
without being
asked.
 
Justin lives in Iowa where he works as a corrections officer.

Tim Kenny

Berlin

No more goodbyes we
said, in the shade
of Café November.

There were flowers and yellow paint
on the balconies of Husemanstrasse.

We sipped our coffee. The sun
shone on broken brick. I lit
your cigarette.

And no more walls we said,
in the shade of Café November.

The children ran past,
hands full of arrows.
We laughed, while
in the face on every
passer-by, our eyes
were wet.

Tim Lives in the Northwest United Kingdom

John Rocco

The Alley

Without trying and without an idea of trying
I drive straight down Nightmare Alley.
The old metal trash cans are stuffed
with bodies and murder weapons.
The concrete is a mosaic of blood and dreams.
I’m looking for the caged bird
kidnapped by a collection agency 
but all I find in the Alley are
old movie actors struggling to stay alive
pumping bullets into each other
slugging whiskey
getting grilled by the cops
and the Devil thumbs a ride.
I’ll never catch the bird again
unless I can drink the shadows
and piss them out as sunlight. 

John wrote a novel called FUR (Published in Heaven Press, 2005).

Jason Hardung

TURNING OUR PALMS UPWARD

Outside this ship’s window easterlies drop
static rain, it flashes
low and constant like an obscure a.m.
station desiring an antennae.
The broadcast beckons past

years when lightless highways were
the esophagus into the stomach
of the beast.
When circles of silver bells faded
became leaden and dissolved before
I awoke.

When I was a street
light on any corner in the barrio
dirt under my nails and dust
resting like silt on the floor of my arteries.
When finally man stood upright and learned
to turn palms upwards towards
the sun and all he got was loose
change from passerbys.

Through the window sea mist salty
rises and hangs over the Pacific.

Jason lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Chris Toll

Insulator Drive Blues

My glacier
hotwires a supermarket
and leaves town
in a hurry.
Good and evil
is an illusion.
My cathedral
blows its brains out
in the graveyard
behind a prison.
The struggle
is between light and dark.
My slaughterhouse
mixes a martini for the moon.
Be light.

Chris lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Stephen Morse

I KNEW IT WAS THEM

I thought it was the owls
I did see one carry a rabbit away

Then I thought it was the raccoons
they did eat all the sweet corn
even when we dusted the ears
with chipolte powder
BUT
I think the rabbit pen needed a top
and the sweet corn an enclosure.

I knew it was the crows
I saw our landlord shooting
his shotgun at them in the dark
and hacking the lilac bushes
with a machete to get at them.

I knew it was the crows when
they found him dead in the garage
in his old never restored convertible
that he'd been planning to fix
ever since he got back
from vietnam.

I knew it
they have patience
live in murders
eat dead things
I knew it was them.

Stephen earned a Master’s degree in Creative Writing
from San Francisco State University.

Anthony Liccone

Meat House

He manages his way here
bones inside faded and dry,
always past the moon flowerbed
and belated lamppost that lights
at a time when men flicker and
are driven in their madness
of a woman’s passion, her warm
sentimental understanding,
sweet in sheets of satin.

He kills the silk of thoughts
the reluctant tendencies that
lie in wait, white lies whisper
that this isn’t right,
for a man to empty his wallet
those precious hard-earned
dollars for a roll around
fifteen minutes before releasing,

the horses they gallop and
men come to gamble
in the odds of winning a
heart from their loneliness.
A pearl from the gritty clam.

It is at these moments,
a woman has her power
as a starving baby
at the breast-swelled mother.
Delilah how she broke
the boneless soul of Samson
at four in the morning
with her thighs and trusting eye,
foul love
that runs around the same
track, the same circle
of men desperate
always come with their
wallets of cash and condoms.

Walking away
to the backroom wash-house,
they rinse their weaknesses
maelstrom down the drain.
Throwing dice
against kouros statue,
they leave broke,
soon to return again
to eat the dust
their shoes previously
stamped at the door.

Anthony lives in TX, but his heart still resides NY.

Peycho Kanev

Sunday boring Sunday

at the window
I watch a man with a lawn mower
and it’s quiet in my room
no music
the shades are drown as always
and I watch the movements of
the man in this quiet Sunday
morning
the walls just stand there
and even death is trivial like
love is trivial
suddenly I understand the meaning
of it all
the roses
the sun
the jails
the hospitals
the museums
the churches
the suicides

the silence

and the question now is
Bob Marley or
Bob Dylan.

Peycho is 27 years old. He lives in Chicago IL

Jon Gavazzi

“For Tomorrow”

It was winter
and the pale static of
white had never shown more
brightly than through the
absence of leaves, and
the hollowing winds swept
away all that the roots had
cast aside, and nourishment
trickled with a lethal indifference
from an icy fortress of a
dam while the forests died over
and over again with each passing
of the sun.
But it was winter, then.
And nothing else. 

Jon lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Juliette Hernandez

“The Slaughterhouse”

I lay in bed
Nothing.
I walk to my desk
Nothing.
I stare out the window
Nothing.
I listen to the birds
Nothing.
I stare at this page
Nothing.

4:30 pm, 2005

I’m still in my robe
wondering what
the world is like
outside.

So, I went to school
worked and studied
until I lost my life
to it and faded away
until I graduated to
the un-employment line.

I went to the bank
to watch people
with money give it
to the tellers like minions
offering up their sacrifice
to the gods.

I went to the grocery store
to watch people rush around
hunting and gathering
junk food and extra large snickers
like hungry hungry hippos
desperate for all they could swallow.

I went to the beach
cruised the boardwalk
depths of beauty to my right
houses I could never live in
to my left, excessive and
imposing like their owners.

I read the paper
and read all about
the stars in Hollywood
their lives are just more
exciting and important
than the rest of the world.

4:30 pm, 2008

I went back home
checked my email
read all my junk mail
ordered some pills
and then ordered more
via Ups Red.

I applied for a job
because I’m qualified
they gave the position
to a friend
not so qualified, but
he was a friend.

So, sitting around
still in my robe
it suddenly hits me
I realize I know exactly
what it’s like to be a cow
waiting in line at the slaughterhouse.

Juliette lives in Torrance, California

D.L. Martinez

Imperfect Teeth

I feel them jutting,
rubbing, rubbing,
against my lips.
Like a used-up lover,
predictably,
annoyingly,
pushing, pushing,
making themselves felt
in every moment.
Every moment.
We’re here, they shout.
We’ll push until
you love us, they shout.
You will love us, they shout
You’ve no choice
but to love us, they shout,
because we’re going nowhere.

My imperfect teeth
consume my thoughts,
distract my thoughts.
Just like my latest
ex-lover who smiled
with laughing eyes
when I said goodbye;
taunting me,
emasculating me,
ultimately releasing me
back into the wild.
I didn’t smile back then.
I couldn’t.
Not with my teeth.
My imperfect teeth.
The result of getting
my dental work
done in the same
strip-mall as my
laundry.

(Previously published by The Houston Literary Review)

David lives and writes in Denver, Co.

Keith Wood

GIVE AND TAKE

Three Chinese girls
are huddled in a doorway.

So still,
so very quiet
and attentive
I can't help but smile.

Their faces are ivory.
Their eyes do not blink.
as they look to the sky,
which is a bruised wash
of pink and grey.

Rain is coming.

It's hurricane season
and we've gotten lucky
so far.

I walk past closed windows,
drawn blinds,
closely mown lawns,
polished automobiles.

It's all a front.
I learned this
a long time ago.

I hear muffled screams,
shouts from close by.

A man's arm is raised
behind fluttering Venetian slits
in an act of defiance
and fury.

It's give and take
anywhere you go.

Keith lives and works in Columbus, Mississippi.

Cat Benitez

jesus candles

guadalupe's flashing
like god's open
for business. but my feet
are nailed
to the carpet. ash blots
and smoldering crickets legs
twitching...
still violining
against the
pavement.
i'm a horrible person.
10 steps away
red meat yelps
on the back side of
what is not
a chemical barrel.
chef appears
in an apron
holding a glass of wine.
real men wear animal blood
on their t-shirts
like admiral's gold. real women
ache to bleach them.
pray to sand their nails down
to the heart
against a washboard
for them. i was born
with bushels of garlic tied to my
wrists a brillo pad
clenched
between my gums
and a smaller baby tied
to my back. my hips
tore my mother
to pieces
and she thanked
god. chef
loves the jesus candles.
makes a mean
southwest casserole
and offers me a beer
as he pours himself
another glass
of red.

Cat lives in San Francisco