Jack T. Marlowe

one night last winter

sometimes
a man just
needs to be
alone.

sometimes
a cold night is
more welcome
than a warm bed.

this is one of
those times
late at night in
mid-winter
when slumber
beckons; but
even at this hour
disquiet can
drive a man from
his own home.

somewhere
a neighbor is
putting out the cat
another is
putting out the dog
and others are
putting out the lights.

up and down the
street, things are
winding down for
the night.

one man is
unwinding on
his front porch
or trying to

a restless observer
sitting beneath
pale yellow light

watching the
gypsy moth's
naive flirtation with
death, and the
dwarf boxwoods'
uneasy stirring
green dissenters
muttering against
the wind

watching breath
turn to mist
as it hits the
cold air
the occasional
car that breaches
the shadows
the ash on the
end of a cigar
as it slowly
grows longer
and longer
then finally
drops off.

he's not sure if
this qualifies
as 'quality time'
but it's his time
time to just
sit and think—
or not—it's
his choice.

and for the
moment, that's
something
that no one
can take away
from him.

sometimes
a man just
needs to be
alone.

CP

Jack T. Marlowe is a working-class malcontent from Dallas, Texas. A writer of poetry and fiction, he is also a veteran of the open mic. His writing has appeared in Zygote in My Coffee, decomP, Red Fez, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Jack is also the editor of Gutter Eloquence Magazine.

Nana Ollerenshaw

ANAESTHESIA

Anaesthesia
sleep of disbelief:
I am and I am not,
a space unlived, not time
with sense of passing, but part of
two eternities on either side of being.
Conscious now, I wait for what has finished
unconvinced the act is done,
life turned off and on,
not normal sleep
where dreams
queer with logic, run.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian, and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Suzy Devere

SOMEWHERE NEW

i will live somewhere new
without you.

no dogs.
no babies.
no pigs
hogs
horses
or goats.

lots of flowers
and weeds
and trees
dirt
hills
pebbles
and
bricks.

i will live somewhere new
that we have never been together.

a place with patio
or a back stoop
maybe even a front
porch...

the important thing
is i will live somewhere new.

without you.

CP

Suzy Devere has been many things to many people. Her work has appeared in various on-line venues, including Black-Listed and 3:00 AM. She has lived all over the world but right now lives next door to you.

Rebecca Gaffron

Somewhere Inside

Somewhere inside there are words for you, hidden like March crocus beneath the snow, unseen but known, waiting to burst out in riotous colors that speak of dirty smudges on your fingers and black arcs under your nails. Details of a man who works for a living.

Nods in the direction of some forgotten noble quality, like the wool vest you wear. And I could trace the tear in your faded jeans in my sleep, how it stretches over the thin, white pocket-fabric, hinting at your hidden skin.

Somewhere just out of reach lie the elements of a dark poem. Your love for her, lost. And lost again. False accusations of trysts that exist only in imaginations. We embrace our previous commitments, but you have a weakness for redheads and I have a history with men with your name.

And we are drawn back in again and again to a story about a man who pauses to give a stray tripod cat an affectionate pat. A man who smiles, while his world crashes in pieces around him, and works to the tune of his own whistling, while I imagine the melody is meant for me alone, a sign that he is nearby and I am in his thoughts.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is fascinated by sea-green spaces, words, and men who behave like cats. She is a sometimes writer and can be found at her virtual home, rebeccawriting.wordpress.com.

Joseph A. W. Quintela

The Misunderstanding of Jake Sinder

A city snowed under. A trite white cliché of a setting. That's where Jake Sinder was when I found him. Drunk. Making snow angels and pissing on wings. An hour earlier he'd sent a text: "In Central Park—find me". I'd thought: "Why not?" Sinder was always worth a laugh. A year later to the day. The funeral was somber. The family probably hadn't spoken to him in a decade. I winced every time the minister said "Angel."

CP

Joseph A. W. Quintela writes poetry on Twitter. His stories and poems have appeared here and there, and he edits Short, Fast, and Deadly, though he is none of these things.

Kjersti Furu

Vacuum

This is the last time. I'm making a promise that this'll be the last time and I'm nailed to the floor, feeling the floorboards against my chest, my stomach, my thighs. My throat is sore from all the cigarettes and I'm trying to count the cigarette ends in the Majorca ashtray, breathing heavily and the ashes spreading out on the floor. All your vinyls are scattered around me, some of them I've taken out of their covers, the black discs reflecting the lights from the streets. You don't know anything about this. You don't know anything about lying here breathing in ashes, breathing out ashes, breathing and knowing that you're actually alive, no matter how unpleasant, how pleasant. You don't know anything about how it's almost 5:30 in the morning and I can still hear the wind rattling in the scaffolding across the street. You don't know anything about lying here and listening to the world being sound asleep because you are deaf there under the covers; are your toes still peeking out from underneath your duvet? I lift my arm and drag the needle back onto the Billie Holiday record, hoping for a second to make a scratch to forever remind you of these nights you do not know of. This will be the last time.

CP

Kjersti Furu lives in Norway and enjoys lying on the floor listening to music in headphones. She started writing down stories when she was six and hasn't stopped since. It's all about making sure you'll never run out of ink. Or eyeliner. Every now and then she'll post stuff here.

Sarah Savage

What I've Always Wanted

We spend a long weekend in the Adirondacks,
Snuggling in a lakeside B&B
And holding hands in the Lake Placid shops,
Buying a wooden windowsill mouse and blue ceramic mugs.
It's the most romantic vacation we've taken together.

But it's $10 CVS sunglasses that choke me up.
Checking himself out in the rearview mirror,
He is pleased, not because he looks mysterious, tough, or young in
them ­ although he does,
Not because they block the sun well ­ although they do.
These sunglasses are so cool, he says.
I can see you reflected in the lenses.

And just like that, I realize I have what I've always wanted ­
Not an expensive weekend away,
Not a guy who looks good in shades,
But a love from him that runs so deep it saturates even his sunglasses.

CP

Sarah Savage is a horsewoman and an avid hiker currently living
in New York. She usually writes to make sense of her outdoor
experiences and to share them with others, but this piece is really
just for Tom.

Christina Murphy

Meditations

let the wings of blackbirds,
the call of mourning doves,
be letters to you;
words can fail but not the self,
opening to life and beauty like the
energy of a mountain stream,
visible within momentary forms;
the rocks and the heavens
know the stream in transcendent ways
limitless and true,
the lonely passion of purpose
within perpetual change

CP

Christina Murphy lives in a 100-year-old house along the Ohio River. She and the river have much in common in that they both continue to move from east to west. Her poems have been published or will appear in a number of journals, most recently in ABJECTIVE, Counterexample Poetics, Splash of Red, and Blue Fifth Review.

Nancy Calhoun

Just Listen

What do I need from you, you ask?
How can I help?

You can do so much,
but nothing much;
nothing much, but it is everything.

No strategies, theories and please,
no solutions.
Just listen. Just listen.

why would you think you know
what I should do in a life
you have never lived?

My solution is within me,
we both know that.

What I need from you is
your full attention

so that I might hear
my own answers,
in my own voice.

If you always have a plan,
and always know what decisions
I should make,

I will have to
stop asking
you for help.

—From Sip Wine, Drink Stars


CP

After several years as a business executive, opera singer, and general seeker-after-enlightenment, Nancy Calhoun has found her calling as a poet. Her first collection is entitled Sip Wine, Drink Stars and is available here, along with more about her and her work. Nancy lives in southeast Arizona’s wine country, and writes beside a panoramic view of mountains, grasslands and wildlife.

Karen Kelsay

Redemption

Today I'm scrubbing chocolate spots
after gathering the neighbor child's
ribbons from my damask chair,
thinking how her fidgety hands
have smeared the French windows
and left Popsicle prints across my gilded
light switch. I watch her towhead
bobbing across the lawn beyond
the bougainvillea as she threatens to twist
off the pinkest geranium blooms
and capture the cat.

Our extra bedroom has become
a collecting place for this gremlin's
wardrobe, complete with jewelry stand,
pairs of black heeled shoes, sparkling
little Capezios and grimy-footed tights
I dutifully wash by hand in the porcelain
sink each evening, after I iron miniature
clothes and slip peanut butter sandwiches
into a backpack layered with homework,
then kiss her goodnight and walk her home—
thinking how sometimes in this life,
we are offered redemption.

—first published by Flutter Press


CP

Karen Kelsay, a native Californian, spent most of her childhood weekends on a boat. She received a Pushcart Prize nomination for Hymn of Autumn in 2009, and is the author of five chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, The Lyric, The Christian Science Monitor and The New Formalist.

DsD

I SHOULD STILL FEEL AWFUL

I'm kind of schizophrenic, I guess, cause today I feel really pretty good. I feel sexy and hot, I want to go put the kids in front of a movie so I can masturbate. I want him. I want him to be home to spend time with me and just have conversations and I want his kisses and his cock. I am afraid of this euphoria because I'm afraid it won't last. But I am enjoying it for now.

I think he told me everything. I mean, everything that matters. I don't know, and I'm not ready to trust, but I hope. Certainly learning about the half-dozen or so other women he's fucked came as a surprise, but I'm not going to tell anyone about those because I don't think they matter. At least, right now I don't. I'm also afraid that I'm not being true to myself—what woman in her right mind could hear her husband, after talking about his lengthy affair with a woman he loves deeply, also tell of six or eight random fucks? And then end the conversation with our own hot sex? Am I crazy?

On the other hand, I don't want to talk myself into being weird just for the sake of it, or convince myself I should still feel awful. I think that the anger and pain are not gone, that they will re-emerge, and I will have to continue to deal with them. I am ready for that—not excited, of course, just ready.

But for now, I feel good.

CP

DsD lives and writes in the raw. Trapped in a cave, she tends her cubs by day and licks her wounds at night.

Hattie Wilcox

Dirt Sandwich

—Inspired by Charles Bukowski

I thought I made you feel young
I thought you liked loving me
my fat lips my big ass my long dark hair
my see-through-blue perfumed lace pants and
my punky Melrose Avenue shoes
you know how much I liked the look of you
your beautiful feet your eyes
fixed on me uninterruptedly
so much sex without trying your chest
hard, defined like when you were 19
when your big runner's thighs
could get past mine and open 'em wide
any day of the week any time
I left for almost 40 years
to return and you're pushing 58
and being mature we found it funny
love ridiculously crazy, hilarious
the way we laughed every second
when you'd say fuck this and fucking that and
now I really really loved the way we did it
so smooth and natural
a beautiful melody like a rushing river
singing out a symphony
named us
until you stopped
and your silence made me ponder
maybe I made you feel old
maybe I was too much earth, too arty
for your old-farty elitist party
the best they can do for fun
high-priced fundraisers and you
in the middle, invisible, blending
in with your monogrammed cuffs
and your hands around me
then maybe not, maybe you couldn't
go to the depths or navigate
the rise of the sun or the hum
where did she come from?
what charities have you chaired, hon?
where did he find her? what a pair . . .
look at all that hair
squash-blossoms around her neck
when did you say you two met?
she's not his kind of girl really
there's something about her
she's too . . . what's the word?
still you decided to go ahead
do me with a new bottle of wine
pour yourself another glass
after dinner, and night after night
down it went to collapse
the present into the past
erase how we loved the best last
dangerously, recklessly, even though you
no longer long-haired, ragged and running
no longer scrounging for money
for your gas, your drugs
for the slab of the life you live now
you always loved to get shit-faced
and do your own bit of 'anything goes'
so you took my mouth and folded me
back into the warmth
of that indefinable space
you took up in my arms
you stayed naked for days and
slumbered so, I smiled and watched you
until one morning you watched me
and I felt the spec of distance
fly in my eye and you got up
you let it all go, you turned away
snuck back into the old man
holding tight his last stand
a nondescript woman in pearls
with bad teeth, a fat car and a grand house
where you slept every weekend
before you took a break
to start it with me . . . geez
I never knew until you were gone
and hey . . . yeah I heard
good times cost a fortune these days
everything costs more now
and it's a goddamned dirt sandwich
when you know so much
and it's not enough

CP

Hattie Wilcox's love of poetry and piano led her to songwriting and the 2008 release of her debut CD, Red Bird Tattoo. She has won prize money for her lyrics and has lived to see her first royalty check. She continues to write poetry—her first love. Find out more at http://hattiewilcox.com/

Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Walking 29th in Baltimore, 1983

Walking 29th in Baltimore: tired, self-pitying
because I wasn't a bird or something able
to pass the snow-bend
a woman passed by, to my left shoulder
flitting her hands outspread like wings
of hawk or sparrow: what are you doing, I said
I'm flying she said
Just found out I don't have cancer
going to see my baby boy
just found out I ain't gonna die...

Now, if I dove into your eyes as moonlight dives
through the screened porch, spooling
to puddles on the round of your belly where
I trace the dark hairline
like a curtain's frill;
If I dove into your eyes
would I fly like that woman, would I
rather be a bright gash of red
on the concrete like the lavender smudge
on the hat's brim
that woman in Baltimore wore...

(Too much food, too little sleep.
Too much water, too little chocolate: perfect—
because paradise is here on earth, I may as well
get used to the idea.)

CP

Carolyn Srygley-Moore lives in Upstate New York with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared widely in journals to include Antioch, Mimesis, The Pennsylvania Review, and the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. She is a Pushcart nominee and her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available here.

John Hartness

Deployed

She stands staring out from what she hopes
is an inaccurately named widow's walk
looking at the sunrise
and wonders what he's having for supper
where the indigenous citizenry
have never seen a shrimp much less with grits
for the weekly breakfast for dinner night
on their Target gift registry new dishes
with the hammered pattern silverware.

As he goes to bed that night
wringing sweat from his t-shirt
and pouring out a little piece of the desert
from his boots and underpants
he remembers that it's Friday at home
and his mouth waters a little bit
and the smell of the salt and pepper batter
she rolls over the chicken
before she tosses it in the antique black cast iron skillet
her grandmother gave to them at their wedding reception
on that unseasonable October night
where the overdressed guests sweated
right through their rented finery
and the mosquitoes gorged like second cousins.

She looks out over the water
sun at her back making a brunette angel
with a cigarette dangling from one hand
long ash finally dropping onto the head
of an ill-placed gull picking up scraps.
She watches the water
he stares at the sand
waiting.

CP

John Hartness is trying to rationalize his hillbilly upbringing with the city noises of Charlotte around him. You can find more about him here.

Howie Good

ADDENDUM

I like the way it sounds
like a splash of bells,

and a giant stumbling heart,
and the prayerful name

of the saint of vagrants.
And I like what it means,

something added ­
Sorry, or Love you,

or tomorrow.

CP

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of the poetry collection, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.

Judith Quaempts

Address Unknown

Dear Michael

How many years has it been
since we were locked in one another's arms,
when your slightest touch set my heart pounding,
and all but stopped my breathing?
Army brats, we knew the drill,
we knew it had to end.
Wait, you said, just one more year,
we'll graduate, I'll find you then.
I knew the odds. Better to amputate.
Get it over with. Move on.
Maybe if I'd been less cynical,
or had more faith—but I wasn't.
I didn't. I chose the coward's way,
writing you to end it.
You called from boarding school.
You're all I have, you cried.
Michael, what was I supposed to say?
We were sixteen, you were 3000 miles away.
Years later, I tried to find you,
calling information with your name
and the last town where I knew you'd lived.
I woke your brother at 4 a.m.
He screamed, Don't you know what time it is?
I couldn't ask, afraid you might have gone
to Vietnam and not come back.
How I wanted to hear your voice,
say your name, tell you my heart
remembered all we had.
Into your silence I would have said,
I always loved you Michael.
I would have said, I hope your life
has been a happy one, then hung up
before you asked,
Who is this, anyway?

CP

Judith Kelly Quaempts lives in rural eastern Oregon and is an active member of Internet Writers Workshop. She has been published in 50 to 1, Flash Fire 500, Drunk and Lonely Men, and T-Zero.

Kenneth Radu

Swan Song

Worms in the heart,
brain cells riddled
by primeval dreams,
blood gone sour:
whatever leads
to love of extinctions
is there, insistent
in the mute chemistry
of nuclei.

A wild swan whiter
than first snow flew
from a wilder north
to civilized terrain
where it sat for a day
on a frozen pond
and warmed the cold air.

Shot:          dragged
bloody across the gray ice,
feathers cracked off;
later seen by a camera’s eye
curved around ducks
port butts and bags of corn
in deep and cold conservation.

CP

Kenneth Radu's poems have appeared in fourpaperletters, Leaf Garden, Asphodel Madness, Eviscerator Heaven, and elsewhere. He lives in Quebec.