by Ankh Spice There were no windows and we spoke of home as therapy – those who had tongues not yet unhooked by their dosage Mrs Jesus sang, predictably– Ave, ave, the roasting flare of the sacred heart the warmest hearth – her rosarychattering DT-teeth in time with our rolling eyes Quiet Joni said nothing, but beyond her starved-skull-smile a Read More
Category: Rumbling Rhymes
Cocktails & Dreams, Baga, Goa
by Satya Dash quantum of pepper in a Bloody Mary so perfectequates tipsy to happy rolling down my throatin jeeps of pinwheel candy seducing stomachyou Sir be a fine mess belly blushing a baby’s pinkmy frame a door to seaweed pleasure to impermanenceland of bones heaped on sour cream a cathedral’s holyharmony of slow guzzling throat raised prostrateat gravity’s feet Read More
How You Belong in the World
by James Diaz You can find lacewings on warm nightstaking away what we don’t wantfeeding on aphid honeydewmicroscopic antlions clearing the fieldslike mommas with bad brainstossing babies into dumpstersby the freeway at night but I wonder, in our kingdom,who gets to decide that sort of thingwho among us is wantedand who just gets tossed to the bottomof the satchel even if Read More
Animals
by Jerry K. Robbins What if animals can stand apartFrom themselves, circumspectEven the lowly skink,Look around themselves and reflect“What am I to think?” What if a horse’s plaintive neighIs his way of announcingThat life is more thanRunning in circlesAt the beck and call of man What if an elephant coming across bonesThat once were enfleshed and aliveSees that these bones Read More
In Heaven There Is No Beer
by Robert Beveridge I lit a smoke, leanedagainst the wall. Customerswould come, I knew,they always did. Secondhandvegetables are a specialtymarket, but a popular one. The demand for used Brusselssprouts is on the rise. The wanein popularity of the gently-readhabanero is cyclical; these thingscome back into fashion, as sureas people will always shell outfor onion in uniform cubes. The old joke Read More
Goodbye to This and That
by Constance Woodring I am old. Thank God. I will be dying soon. Thank God.I made shrimp cocktail this evening. The shrimp were frozen, cooked and in a bag marked:“no chemicals added.”As I write this poem, I still have a taste in my mouth. As if I made swimming pool water shrimp dip.I do not have children. I do not Read More
This Election
by Peggy Landsman The stress I feel from this electionaffects my mind and my midsection. I read the news as vivisectionand no disease escapes detection. There’s never been a worse selectionof demagogues, the Trump collection, for public office whose rejectionwe must vote for this election. Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work Read More
Much Disregarded
by Rickey Rivers Jr. Depressing news, normalized. Can’t get away from, running like water in the brain, night thoughts. They run up the bill. Ironically I can’t pay them mind only attention. Sleep service is different from lip but leave a tip in my jar please. Help me with relief in form of speech and not pills. Trouble in the Read More
Conversationalists
by Visar Flour-sacks waving like flagson the windows in the afternoons. The people in this town sit by theirwindows, breathing on anything thatpasses. They sit on dead Volvos bearingBluetooth stereos on their shoulders,where the words are streaming, never ending. The caves in our skullshave become like whistles, to crack back sibilants at the world.Our tongues have ghosts in them, our Read More
Your Hometown Is an Apocalypse
by Justin Karcher Buzzfeed tells methat the world is endingjust as it’s always beenand they’re probably right the night sky where I grew upalways felt like a run-on sentencetoo many dashed dreamscompeting for spacethey all blended togetheryou could never tell the narrativejust that it was a desperate onethe stars were apostrophes that didn’t really belongbut we put them in there Read More