Instructions for Preventing Transgressions on Your Body When these precautions fail, attemptthe following:Administer a slap, a kick, some physical show of displeasure or just sit up and scream Stop, please, stop ~ Stockholm SyndromeYou say my voice is just a touch sexyHindsight, the red flags are everywhereYou ask What brings you to the big appleI’m not running […]
Read more "Jazmin Witherspoon – 3 POEMS"Blackboard Your opinion on the chalkboard, the one your teacher wipes away. You are just another student, after all. Who gives a damn about opinions, when you as a person do not matter? Stand up, get up, scream! Refuse to stand down, insistently! Go to the principal’s office. Go to the dean. Go to your […]
Read more "3 POEMS – DANIEL SCHULZ "
AVAILABLE NOW: FLORIDA MAN by Mickey J. Corrigan. You know how it’s funny and abhorrent because it’s true? You know how you laugh until you cry by stuffing cocked pistols between your eyeballs and lids?
FLORIDA MAN ~ Mickey J. Corrigan ~ $5.00
This chapbook contains 17 poems and 4 drawings
Dimensions: 3 3/8ths inches by 5 inches
Free Shipping on all US orders: 
Daughter Draws "Can I watch Pokemon on phone?" "No, draw a chair, colour something on the papers lying on the table." The long kitchen ends into a child drawn rill trilling on the crags until its evanescence means a lost picnic, a fishing rod streaming far. "Cannot you draw anything else?" She draws a Pokemon with father's face down in the dirt flashed from the stroke and sketches trees screaming and a bird tired to be any bird specific reduced to a V.
~
A poet and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine – ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes of poetry including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’. Find and follow him at https://www.amazon.com/Kushal-Poddar/e/B07V8KCZ9P
Sharing the Bathroom
I over-analyze everything
I know it’s true
(And you’ve told me enough times.)
But why on earth
Would I find it sexy
To watch you shave your armpits?
Knowing me you won’t be surprised
To find I made a list:
With such unconscious concentration
To look pretty for me
Sees you do
And mysterious and intimate
All at the same time.
Your neck, and your wrist
Make me think of a Rodin sculpture.
~
Turn Down the Lights
Hey, it was more than kind of you
To come home with me
And you so much younger
And thinner and all.
And I’ll do my best
Not to disappoint you.
Honest to God, if I disappoint you
I don’t think I’ll ever
Go to a bar again.
But hey I’m going to be honest,
Only because there’s no alternative:
I look better dressed,
So I’m going to turn down the lights.
Those horrible white curvey smiles
On the skin behind my thighs,
They’re from the hip replacements.
The thick-soled shoes
Just bring me back
To the height I used to be.
I joke that my ears pop
When I take them off,
But it’s not that bad. Yet.
I’m not tearing my eyeballs,
I’m just taking off my contacts.
Hopefully you can’t see me
The same as I can’t see you.
Now excuse me, I’m going to the bathroom
To take some pills.
The flatulence ones work pretty well
And the little blue one
Had damn well better work.
What’s that look you’re giving me?
It better not be
The “I-made-a-mistake” look.
I have many fine qualities.
You said so yourself
Not two hours ago.
Now hang on,
I’ll be right back.
SEPTEMBER 2018
Read more "ANDREW HUBBARD – 2 POEMS"Moorlands
A soft wind blew across the moor,
And the heather danced in tune,
Some grouse flew up to test the air,
Then snuck back, into its sweet perfume.
A sparrow hawk circled low,
In anticipation of its prey,
Then attracted by some other thing;
It quickly flew away.
A beauty haunts this desolate place,
With its contours shaped by ice,
Where beasts can still roam wild and free –
A small touch of paradise.
Bracken on the moor-edge slopes,
Mixed flora in the glens,
All produce their radiant colours,
Without the help or seed of men.
The walkers-path is overgrown,
Not many came this year,
The changes in the weather,
Have brought many summer storms to Clare.
There are some patches now of topsoil,
I hadn’t noticed at first glance,
Just a small sign – like so many others –
That we are on our final chance.
Her Third Date After a Twenty-Five Year Marriage
She says, “Look. The rain’s harder now.”
I say, “Yes, but the theater’s close.”
She thumbs a path across
her melting glass.
Her daughter in third-year law.
Her granddaughter a swan.
When did I say I believed
in anyone’s tomorrow?
Her cupped hands; lines
connect, curve, cross,
predict nothing. She stares
into the passing moment.
“I never thought I’d be this person,”
she says, “never this alone.
I’m afraid sometimes, though
it’s nice not to be second guessed.”
My bedroom a chaos of shadows.
She’s unsure what comes next.
Then her legs clamp my hips,
and her mouth finds my neck.
Read more "Douglas Collura – Her Third Date After a Twenty-Five Year Marriage"“It’s Probably More Than Colitis”
I like a woman with a clean colon,
the way she starts telling stories
at the end
and works back toward the beginning,
expecting me to connect all the dots.
She takes her temperature every hour,
tells me the results, wants for me
to tie a knot with my swollen tongue
in her cherry
stem. The french kiss should have been
the second best clue
that we wouldn’t click, at least not like that.
I can cuddle like a fish with the best of them,
but sometimes we have to be satisfied
with a flag at half mast. You can always
use tulips to brighten the
room. We fidget in the clinic for an hour
before they call her name.
She refuses my hand, gives me an orange-lipped
piranha smile, and disappears into the
blue-white light.
Read more "John Dorroh – “It’s Probably More Than Colitis”"The Bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel
The bells of
The Mission Santa Ysabel
Ring no more
To most parishioners still living
They never have rang in their lifetimes
Being stolen in 1925
The whereabouts of the bells are unknown
Yet it’s expected
That this was an inside job
And that the bells are holed up
Not very far away
Forgotten about in some old shed or barn
The parishioners pray
That this is true
That God will work a mid-level miracle
And see to the safe return of the bells
In 1700 Peter the Great
Of Russia
Melted down all of his homelands’
Church bells
To make cannons for warfare
They fired church bell cannon balls
Which killed people
Did they suffer a holy death
That granted them immediate entrance
Into the kingdom of Heaven
Was this the fate of the bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
The bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Have remained silent
As to their whereabouts
And to what they may be mixed-up in
The hostage syndrome
They identify with their captors
And don’t try to escape
Who would steal church bells
What kind of a low-life would do such a thing
You would think that they would feel guilty
Every time they heard a church bell ring
Wracked with inconsolable guilt
And with every ding-dong
That ever reached their ears
For the rest of their lives
Cringing on Sundays
At the noon day
At quitting time
The bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Ring no more
For us
But for their captors
They ring all the time
Clanging out “Thief, thief, thief!”
It must be tough to hold up
Under that kind of condemnation
God must have a hand in this
He keeps the thieves names on His black list
Nothing good could ever come of this
Those bells are surely missed
There’s only one way to escape eternal damnation
Bring back the bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Buy your way out of hell
God’s not buying what you have to sell
And one can never tell
When things will no longer go so well
Someday the bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Will chime in joyous rapture
Across the Santa Ysabel Valley
Summoning parishioners to appear
And perhaps shed some tears
Over the long-awaited return of the bells
God being in his Heaven
And all being right with the world
The bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Don’t ring currently
But even a blind man can see
That God will put an end to this travesty
He will solve the mystery
The bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Will once again clang loudly
Ding, dong
No longer gone
The bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Will clang loudly
Over the Santa Ysabel Valley
God being in His Heaven
And all being right with the world
Ding
Dong
Ding
Dong
Read more "John C. Krieg – The Bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel"Ooooeeeeeeooooooooo the cops are coming, you better hide everything you’re ashamed of, and also yourself if you’re Mexican or black, god knows what cops will do to you then.
Ryin and the Toaster
Ryin Goose was out in Canada on a wild goose chase after his mother and wife left him and took the kids. He was left alone all sad and depressed, trying to get custody over them because he actually wasn’t a bad parent. They just filed him for rape and pedophilia because they hated him and wanted to ruin his life like the sadistic people they are.
“Oh why must life be this way!” He cried in anguish as he clutched close the only thing that mattered to him. His family heritage. The centuries old toaster his family lineage had been passing down for ages. This time around though, it looked like it was going nowhere.
Ryin would cry soulful tears, all of them falling on the ancient toaster. Suddenly, it came alive.
“Stop crying you damn sissy,” it said, surprising Ryin goose so he threw the now sentient toaster, immediately apologizing afterwards like the Canadian he is.
“Oh wow you can talk!?” Ryin spoke with amazement. This was like that one Pokemon movie, but different. Gotta avoid copyright, am I right?
“No thanks to you, you baboon. Now stop crying, I know how to fix your life,” said the toaster.
Ryin would nod and say, “Okay,” with the most pathetic voice you could imagine. Because he was very pathetic in this very moment.
“Okay, so, fake your own death and set up a new identity in another country. Badda Bing badda boom, you’re good as new. No more rape and pedophilia charges,” the toaster said.
Wow, this toaster was an absolute genius! He figured it out so quickly! Ryin goose was certainly saved from the charges his wife and mother threw at him! He wouldn’t get the kids, but he could just make more of those so it was okay.
“How do we start?” Ryin goose asks.
“Well, kill yourself,” says the toaster.
Harsh, but okay.
Ryin goose climbed the highest building and jumped off of it, literally killing himself. What a baboon, he fooled the plans.
“Oh my fUCK ing gOD Ryin gOOSE you PATHETIC LOOSER!! You straight up killed yourself and probably on purpose too!! I FUCKING HATE YOU!” The toaster fUMED. He had now set his life goal from toasting the best toasties, into toasting Ryin goose’s entire family.
With his super high IQ, the toaster made himself better, the best he’s ever been. Better than when he was first born.
Now equipped with flame throwers and guns comparable to having a chain gun fused with anti aircraft, the toaster was ready to toast the rest of the goose family to a crisp. He set out, using ancestry.com and his extensive toaster memory as guides.
The toaster would arrive at Ryin goose’s wife and mothers house. Without even ringing the doorbell, the toaster fired. Without even going through a round of ammunition, the house was obliterated and everyone inside was instantly dead.
He continued onto his father, and his mother’s siblings, and his father’s siblings, and the siblings children, and their children, and on and on until the goose bloodline was obsolete.
“I can go back to toasting toasties,” the toaster said, now content with what he did. “God, if you can give me to a great family, I’ll give up my sentience.”
“Aight, cool,” God said and Thanos snapped his fingers.
The toaster poofed into the hands of a bigger, better, stronger family than the goose’s, and he served them as the best regular toaster he could be, toasting the best toasties.
Cacti Fur 