John Grochalski

idiot morn

stuck in the doldrums

idiot morn

as the cats meow and hiss

smell each other’s ass

coaxing myself out of bed

to the sound of the neighbor’s watching

infomercials

with a wine acid stomach

and a fatal disposition

not a soul on the street

just streetlights

and damned christmas ones

really feeling the idiot morn

as i suck down cockroach laced coffee

and a walker percy novel

to the sound of rain and wind

as others move

from one hell to the next

with their radiators boiling

the climate change rag

with their small bugs scurrying toward

the sugar and flour bowls

this idiot morn

my stomach in knots

my tongue twisted

my brain a lump

my fingernails bitten down to red, raw flesh

at the thought of being only at

the beginning of the week

at the thought of more idiot morns

like this one

to come

the sight of sunrise blending

with the budding traffic

where horns honk infinite

and there is

already no hope for mankind

in less than the first hour

of alertness

on these

long

long

everlasting days

of our gifted existence.   

John Grochalski is the author of two books of poems The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008) and Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Kevin Ridgeway

Middle of the Desert Blues

miles between

trailer homes

the pet pig

keeps biting me

while the men

with tools

for appendages

and saucer eyes

hit on my mother

with toothless

swagger and

Crisco crusted

greaser coifs

ashes from many

cigarettes dangle

before dropping

in a floating

dance to the dirt,

this junkyard

among many

other

grand castles of

orchestrated garbage

on this uncharted

treasure map

of desert land

are all faded glory with

its people burning amongst

the growing torch of

dry debris 

unmarked graves dot

its parameters

skulls hold

lit candles

lighting

pipes and

unfinished butts

the damn pig

won’t stop

trying to eat me

alive

Kevin Ridgeway resides in his native Southern California.  He lives in a shady bungalow with his girlfriend and their one-eyed cat.  His work has appeared in a wide variety of online and print publications.  

A.g. Synclair

December in Three Parts

I

Just east of the Gallatin, we cling to little nuggets of time. A bone in the ear reminds us that Christmas will be different this year, spending money we don't have on whiskey we shouldn't drink.

II

Outside the kitchen window two sparrows fought to the death. A few broken quills and a dying declaration that there is no god, from two young sparrows, dead, in a tangle of frozen leaves. You try to imagine why they fought. Probably over another sparrow. I suppose love is hard, even for a bird.

III

There is a story behind everything. Behind boulders. Behind stars. Behind endless miles of fence posts. The men here smell like fish. The women here live in the space in between. We are all once removed from small degrees of separation, from the Bridgers, from the Big Sky and beyond. The natives saw you coming from a thousand miles away. They are desperados. They know how you tore your shirt.

A.g. Synclair is the editor and publisher of The Montucky Review, a journal of poetry & prose. His work has appeared in numerous web based and print publications. He lives, writes, and collaborates in southwestern Montana with his significant other, the artist and poet Heather Brager.

Peter Schwartz

7 Years

year of the coconut

sorry, if there are more zoos than animals

but you can't afford that kind of dizziness

use my hair to make yourself less violent

but please admit the you they love is small

and can't find his breakfast in the trees

year of the sun

there is a tiredness that ancient conquerors

had to conquer first, if you can wake up already

that gone and still march over yourself into

the daylight, you might still be able to find

your own exhausted corpse

year of the broken chair

hearing your first marathon made you want

to run backwards, but you'd already stepped

in something blurry and headless, a separate

kind of seedless that made you desperate to

immediately reenter the food chain, you just

didn't want that corresponding baptism

year of the match

beware of perfect similarities, nobody's

quite the beneficiary they pretend to be

and playing chameleon doesn't last

year of the cloud

headless, you made your own zoo

up there by the real hereafter

where there is no architecture or medicine

for even the worst cold, where every

drifting one of you is feral

and your metabolism makes wishes

you can't understand

year of the white raft

the drone of your own filter

became too loud, you almost drowned

in your own promised soup, yet some-

how you swam when your trap-

door broke (you had to)

year of the glass eye

nothing's sadder than an empty zoo

so you replaced one eye and built a green-

house to help forget the animals by

planted something you knew

would break, too

Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in PANK, Opium, and The Columbia Review.  He's also an artist, comedian, and dedicated kayaker. 

Gerry Boyd

When the Sun Arcs Low at Dawn

cherry pie scales of coloratura scent drift lightly

white across gleaming uplifted patinas of sound

and rhythm cannot exit so quickly across deer

skin stretched taut against pale December skies

of cirrus and crystal ice that brush near heaven

with vertebrae scales sky stiff frozen high in azure

canvases chiaroscuro field and ground blanched

to spin a colorless globe with blue focus glowing

on Ionic foothills whose spiny bones revel under

the leafless supplication of grey trees that reach

for a god that is half-moon hidden behind fiction

that arises in bored parchment dried to reaching

so far too far when the sun arcs low at dawn

Gerry Boyd lives in New Jersey and enjoys 'messing around with words'.

Kim Göransson

exile

I dreamed that my special vowels

had been restored. That you woke me up

in the middle of my great monologue

and told me I could live on.

“It's OK, you can live on.”

One by one I hammered the nails.

One by one I hammered into the wall

hoping you would hear me and

change your mind. And wrote to you

in that language that sings

using all the voices I could think of

and you listened and understood

every word as if for the first time.

My exile is nothing special, I said, it's ordinary.

When I say I miss places I really mean I miss you.

You are all the places I will ever miss.

Beneath the eyelids.

One by one we return to the labor room.

One by one forgetting, names, addresses, romances.

There are so many things I don't know about you

and there is never enough time

to get our stories straight.

Learning a new language, you said,

is harder than sleepwalking.

You're in the kitchen frying onions,

crying won't change anything.

Never wake someone who is learning

a new language, you said.

They might get stuck that way.

My great monologue is in me I know it on days

like this when remembering is all, staring

out an empty window.

Barely touching, barely there.

Wear your hair down tonight baby and call it

an experiment in feeling. Frozen

lakes a thousand miles away slowly

thawing become my insides.

You can't say you fully understand a lake

until you've walked over it thinking, I'm walking

over you I'm walking over you until

you reach the other side.

The other side of you is where I will be.

The other side of you is where we will settle down

and start a family.

roadkill II

since we last spoke

the buzzards have been

and gone

and done their thing

the grass grown

thick with it

but still no

sign of

colors changing

in the other room

mother and daughter

sleeping as one

carry away

the afternoon

Kim Göransson was born in Umeå, Sweden, but lives in Virginia, USA. He writes mostly poetry and edits the small e-zine kitchen.

Kelli Allen

Bedroom Mythology

It isn't bearable,

the drawer

opening into another

drawer.

The ritual

of looking,

all transparency--

echoing cauldrons

emptied

of what?  Gunfire

heard under a bed

and we could sail over

every surface

of dissolution

or even beginning,

but my declarations

are shifting,

so instead

I jump.

Blackjack

When you came,

I was already a split

stalk.  A clear critic

against the coming

quarrel would warn

my inevitable flinch

is perhaps an affirmation.

However, much like hesitant

zodiac heeding, I believe

only what you offer

as testimony in the fiery

designs of this diary--

A salary kept useless

by a single bamboo pin.

I carry zinc in the pocket

of your skirt to coat

my fingers when they slip,

galvanized into a proper name.

Kelli Allen is a poet, editor, and scholar. Her work has appeared in many international journals and several anthologies. Allen is the author of two chapbooks. She holds an MFA in poetry and currently teaches literature and creative writing in the St. Louis area.