POETRY: Ryan Quinn Flanagan – Paging Doctor Numbnuts

Paging Doctor Numbnuts

There was this drunk at the bar
many years ago
who wore a stethoscope around his neck
so everyone would think him
a doctor.
He was in rags otherwise, begging drinks in the worst way,
but always with that stupid black
stethoscope.
One day
a regular decided to screw with him
and wore a stethoscope of
his own.
The drunk drank beside him
for seven straight hours
and did not say
anything.
Then everyone wore a stethoscope,
even the bartender.
Waiting until the drunk went to the crapper
before putting them on.
When he returned
he walked about four feet
then his eyes got really
wide.
Like almonds split with a mallets.
MALPRACTICE!, he screamed,
MALPRACTICE!
MALPRACTICE!
Running out of the bar
so that everyone could share the same
dumb laughter
for once.

POETRY: JOEY NICOLETTI – SOMETHING IN THE WAY

Something In the Way

When I heard the news that Kurt Cobain died
by shooting himself, stacks of bedpans trembled
in my hospital room. Lyrics of saline

dripped in my arms. I saw an image of Kurt’s face,
his scruff blurry on the TV screen. I recalled
a concert I attended months earlier. I went

and saw Nirvana, Kurt’s group. They performed
an acoustic, hoarse rendition of one of my
favorite songs: Something In The Way.

The puncture marks on my arms were almost
almost completely strummed away
with the memory of each chord. I thought

of his music’s rawness; his screams and whispers
expressed how I felt: frustrated
with the world at that time:

love was never free. I studied hard,
just like my parents and professors told me,
only to find that my degree was a weathered shingle

in a job market of aluminum siding.
I unloaded trucks, and Kurt, Dave Grohl,
Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear unloaded

their music. I finally felt
as if someone understood me.
And then Kurt’s suicide. And then
my diagnosis: a condition that would

be with me for the rest of my life,
no matter what medical advances were made
or how it was treated. My pre-procedure meal

of ice chips—no dip—melted
in a metal dish. I thought of the mist
of second hand smoke above the stage,

hands in the air as Nirvana played,
me on a friend’s shoulders, singing along,
in my quiet, raspy voice. Before the nurse gave me

my final shot for the day, she explained
what the doctors had in store for me
to my father. I stared at the TV in disbelief.

My father changed the channel. We watched
a documentary about Jupiter, its Great Red Spot
a storm. Lightning crashed in its atmosphere:

my thoughts swept up in its off-key, cloudy air,
no sign of solid ground anywhere.

–

Check out Joey Nicoletti’s blog.

POETRY: Michael Bartelt – Don’t Try To Escape

Don’t Try To Escape

The empty beer glasses remind me
to take a break from this conversation
I’m having on the nature of impulse
with this girl I didn’t think had it in her.

I stand up, find out I’m drunker
than I thought I was, more open
to this environment
I thought wasn’t for me.

“Not divey enough,” I had said.
“Too many artsy fartsy types.”

New emptiness is being met by the band
playing that familiar song, this feeling
the bartender’s mustache is my own
and I like it, despite the joke I made
to Jack when we walked in.
I think I might have been
bullying myself.

Everything is becoming
too sentimental.
I think I might puke,
so I resolve to slowly kill myself
with a cigarette and some air.

I take my place
by one of those cigarette dispensers,
which I suspect has no need
for the process of emptying and refilling
because around it

there must be a hundred or more
cigarette butts becoming one
with the communist grass.

POETRY: Tom Pescatore – OXY

Oxy

frame by frame

your life escapes me

little white pill

many mashed words in a
mixer like mom’s 1950
powder blue or green
whatever my mind
sticks to whatever
memory pops out

whatever color smells right

like flour
wisps in sunlit circles
and by the time I write this
I am 30 years old
confined to my bed

in pain

high

higher still

too weak to resist the next four hours.

Visit Tom’s blog.

POETRY: A.J. HUFFMAN – Two Roses

Two Roses

leaning against a gravestone.

Tattered twin soldiers of past

lives surpassed. Blackened

by the brush of sun’s many fingers,

they cling to each other, refusing to relinquish

their kiss. Their memory

lingers like petals yet to be plucked

by the wind.

POETRY: Christos Kalli – The beauty of the screams that lead to birth

The beauty of the screams that lead to birth

Blue eyes handshake unless they are

beige walls. Rooms inside us grow

arms and legs. They nosedive into

each other. They decorate themselves

with cracked mirrors, graveyard wall-

papers, ground chandeliers, disco balls,

cacti, of course, and miniature arm-

chairs. Soon you will mistake them

with crooked smile paintings. In them

you will see the sun. He looks nothing

like them. It is close to loneliness,

but not too close, but close enough

to open like a cave mouth and be teethed,

obviously, with wisdom, among other

things. I can hear the screams from here.

I see the shiny head. They collide clearly

like two planets. The orbit was not fire

enough. I see a belly button. It’s a boy.

POETRY: Danny P. Barbare – The Blue Ridge Parkway

The Blue Ridge Parkway

Looking at the jewelry, bracelets, earrings,

and necklaces, books

about leaves. Clothes, wooden

canes, wind chimes

like dulcimers, angels, colorful rocks,

pictures of smoky blue lands and

paintings, calendars and postcards,

and maps, I look out the window at The

Blue Ridge like an ocean of mountains.

And buy a book to learn autumn’s

colors, as we leave Pisgah Inn not to

return before April, when winter comes

and the gates to the parkway are closed

for those cold snowy days. The sunset

glows in the trees and the tunnels howl

as Biltmore sits nestled in the valley

of Asheville and the leaves

swirl behind the car

as The French Broad flows in cool shade.

POETRY: JOEY NICOLETTI – PENNE VODKA

Penne Vodka

An American invention, you won’t find it
in Italy, as my spouse and I read
in a cookbook my mother made
when I was a child.
Before the salt is in the water,
before the water comes to a boil,
before the penne is put in, you must
make the sauce, first and foremost,
according to the recipe.

Another pointer:
“A cup of vodka and a can of tomato puree
will go a long way;” almost as far
as my mother and her family did
from Orsogna to Astoria, almost as far
as my mother-in-law and her family did
from Dublin to Los Alamos.

My spouse opens the can of puree.
I pour the vodka
into the bowl. We add most
of the remaining ingredients,
including an extra pinch of pepper, to taste,
as the recipe states.

My spouse’s phone rings.
I check mine. Low Battery.
I attach it to its cord and plug it into the wall:
a reverse of my birth,
when the obstetrician disconnected me
from my mother: the beginning of our estrangement,
which peaked by the time I began to shave.

It was only when she got sick
that I began to understand
that no amount of passion or anger
can uproot cancer
as if it were a tree flower, weed
or a family.

This and other recipes are the words
of our reconciliation. I have had to settle
for reading; for whisking my sadness away
in a bowl, and bringing it to a rolling boil
once it is in a pot. I have to wait
to add anything else to the sauce.

My mother in law is on speakerphone:
she and my spouse share a maniacal laugh.
I smile, and look at the pan of olive oil;
their laughter sizzles in slices of garlic, which releases
their pungent perfumes,
the scent of my mother’s most joyous self
ascending in my nose.

–

Visit Joey’s blog

POETRY: Gonzalinho da Costa – Three Miles South of the Canadian Border

Three Miles South of the Canadian Border

When Ragnarok comes, it will be bleakest winter. Snowstorms will pour forth incessantly, clotty ash engulfing the air. The sun will evaporate, the moon and stars join permanently with darkness. Rivers, lakes, oceans—vast expanses—will densify into sludge. Hills, trees, the entire land will disappear beneath rising snowy heaps. Wild animals, bony, starving, will wander about the whiteness. Domestic animals will perish from bitterest cold and neglect. Shuddering, everyone still alive will wrap themselves inside fireless caves.

When the world ends, it will all take place at the epicenter of all wretchedness, nexus of all misery, and seat of all gloom…three miles south of the Canadian border.

–

Check out the poetry blog of Gonzalinho da Costa

POETRY: RACEEN BUCKNER – Self-deprecating

Self-Deprecating

My mirror responds to my reflection
-a mixed signal response-
Disgust scowls at me…
At my increasing body weight
Rolls her eyes and gags
Stares at the mountain of my nose
Fear holds me tight- my only savior-
He holds me back from doing what I want most
He places tears in my eyes so I can’t see
Disgust laughs in the background.
When I wash my face- hoping for beauty-
“You can’t wash away fat and ugly!”
Fear scowls and puts more tears in my eyes.
I live by fear and disgust…
That’s the most self-deprecating thing about me.

Cacti Fur

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