Happy Rock/Under the Table - Shawn Martin Macrae

Happy Rock
I withdraw my bank account and take the first train out of town. I hide out in a cheap room. A low place with rusty running water and bed bugs that will feast upon my flesh, but that's the least of my worries. I dead bolt the door and close the curtains. I convince myself that I'm free of conviction, as I load my pistol and set in on the bed. I sit by candle-light and think about how I left him back at Happy Rock. A secluded place in the woods where a rock overlooks the lake along the back side of town. It's a place we'd frequent for the sake of getting stoned; a happy place but not anymore. Had he not mentioned my time behind bars, his ball-breakin' malicious remarks about consequence and loneliness, I would not be barricading the door with the table and chairs that furnish this rat infested room. I knew he passed the instant I heard his head against the rock, his eyes gone blank. Maybe it was the drugs that made me panic, forgetting to push the body into the lake. I'm usually sharper, my senses more acute. It's too late now. I sit and wait for them to find me; to take me away, but I won't go peacefully. I listen to sirens echo throughout the vacant late night streets. I blow out the candle and sit silently in the dark.


UNDER THE TABLE
It was a friday night, and Beckett finished her off. He zipped up and ushered her out of his room, and she sank into the comfortable cushions of his couch. They weren't dating, but the feelings were mutual in a sense that there were no feelings. No emotional baggage to drag about. Her voluptuous assets kept him interested, and she stayed so long as he filled her pockets with her drugs of choice. Whatever allowed her a momentary state of ecstasy.

-Lookit dis bastard, Beckett laughed.

Having spent an hour passionately hugging the porcelain bowl, Joey was sitting adjacent to her, lounging in the recliner already coming down. They'd all been popping a variety of uppers as if the pills were a taste of the rainbow, but the fix was running its course. He seemed to be veering in and out of consciousness, cradling the bottle they'd been previously passing around. Vixie chain smoked cigarettes and watched Joey slowly fall into that state of catatonic despair to which she hoped she wasn't bound.

-Ya think he's alrite?
-He's fine, Beckett replied.

He walked over and gave Joey a swift kick to the shin. It barely startled him. His eyes only widened and briefly twitched around the room before he dozed back out. They both laughed, and she contemplated snatching the baby's bottle, but Beckett beat her to the punch.
They poured shot after shot, as if to duel, as loud down-tempo blared through the stereo speakers. They playfully mother-fucked each other awaiting a white flag, or any sign of surrender. Riled up by the persistent banter, their voices rose over the the music and filled the room with a cacophonous racket. Then it hit her.
She felt as if she forcefully threw herself against a self constructed wall of bricks. She was coming down and getting drunk harder than ever. Her heart raced a mile a minute: that blood pumping Olympian striving for unattainable hurdles. She started fidgeting, as if an ant colony were crawling along the marrow of her bones, and she doubled over as if to vomit, but collapsed to the carpet writhing and wailing.
Beckett leapt to his feet with exclamation as if out drinking a 110 lb pound girl deserved a pat on the back. He staggered about the room pumping his fists like a typecast asshole on a shitty reality show. He seemed to care less when Vixie's eyes rolled to the back of her head, her body slowly going limp on the living room floor.



Shawn Martin Macrae is a nervous man. A paranoid and delightfully miserable man. He is a writer. He lives in a small town somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and when you feed him after midnight he becomes a ghostly figment of his own imagination. That is when he writes the bleak and often unsettling scenarios you can find haunting various online literary venues.

White Collar Crime/Bloody Sam - Ross Peterson

White Collar Crime

It was midnight when I got the call.

Gin drunk and covered in shadows,

Mary Anne O'Shanter spewed the fix.

Her husband, the Fat Man, and Fontaine

were pulling out.

No deal.

I rolled a cigarette,

forgetting about the one I left lingering.

Set up,

I inferred.

What I needed was a shovel, some suspenders, a can of soup,

chewing gum, a gallon of gas, and a Halloween mask.

It didn't add up.

The kidnapped McLean baby,

the stolen .455 Webley-Fosbery,

the midget named Carlos.

A piece of the puzzle was missing.

I knew I was close,

but what did the dude rancher with the gold teeth mean when he said 'I was born ready'?

Why did the flashlight salesman take all the Gideon Bibles out of the Wagon Wheel Motel and flee for Arizona?

Why would Mrs. Baker lie about her uncle's shoes?

I was like a hawk hovering over dozens of squirming bald pink baby rats,

I was ready to kill, to feast, to have seconds and thirds.

Problem was,

I didn't have any talons.  

Bloody Sam

Scorpions

eaten alive by fire ants

and freeze frames of ass-kickers.

The gloomy 1850s desert pisses yellow mustard

onto the 5-o-clock shadows of Slim, Buck,Tex, and Nobody.

Bloody Sam

sweats tequila through his bandana

like some fictional character,

clasping his gut wound

in slow motion,

and falling off of his horse.

Ross Peterson is a freelance writer from Missoula, Montana who strives for a hard-boiled, bizarre world with his poetry; he also writes genre movie reviews for both VHSCollector.com and Splatter-Shack.com. He's pretty awesome.

hail mary, full of grace - rachel seiderman

shelly has a preoccupation with jesus. after a kiss or two
she's soft like pure gold, she wears a cross
around her smooth-skinned neck and no one questions
it. she laps up glory. her tongue is a checkerboard
and i have three kings skipping back and forth along her
pearl teeth. her gums are pink, strawberries and cream, i
lick her greedily in public, in church. we sin in the last
row of pews, then she goes and crosses herself and asks
the good lord and his sweet son for forgiveness.

last summer i sat idly playing with shelly's hair
as she explained that jesus, her savior her dear darling her
manwhore, died to save her and her alone. there was
loud ungodly music screeching from speakers in
passing cars. she told me that teenage boys worship
all the wrong things. instead of breasts and
fingertips and slow tongues they should feel the
pull of the madonna, the only mother. mary, mary --

quite contrary, i say. shelly shrugs and smiles.

at night i lay in bed. shelly regrets nothing. shelly
has god and jesus and joseph and mary. the father, son and
holy ghost.

once, once shelly regretted something. i kissed her hard and she
shied from me. i was too rough. i scared her.
i broke something fragile in her body, she bled and wept
and prayed and prayed for salvation. she screamed and railed
and steepled her fingers and said jesus! with feeling.

what happens when jesus is too busy? when god forgets
to look down lovingly from his high horse? when the
virgin mother bleeds like all women and the myths and lies are
uncovered by people who aren't even looking to lay christianity
to the wayside?

maybe joseph ejaculated into mary's bathwater. sperm
are first-rate swimmers, shelly. sperm could find a needle
in a haystack and then shoot themselves enthusiastically
through the pinhole. it's time to face facts. the god of
abraham is the god of his offspring, and jesus's father may some
day turn a blind eye to hitler's atrocities and stalin's and the
catholic church's. the rosary beads are growing cold in my
open palm.

Rachel Seiderman is a first-year Master's student at Michigan State University.

ars erotica/from wind sock etiquette/unfinished things - zach fishel

Ars Erotica

Your skin
is a favorite

dresses
shadowed hem

pulling the hair
of stair

climbing angels
amiss of angles.

It’s not the motion
but stillness of

a chewed lip,
the spit

caught between
the recess

of breath,
drowning

in another’s
bitten pause.




FROM WIND SOCK ETIQUETTE ( 3 sonnets)

(I).

I sleep in seashells to hear
the     ocean.          Forget it
     or otherwise, on
either side of the shore.
Doubled speak
spoke in doubled up sureness.
The lapping either way
        erupted
                        divine.
Teleprompters tell us
what to watch. The news is not new,
nor     ever    will it be seen
in this optional
apocalypse.

(II).

Nooses are not solitary,
as a rope is wound of three chords.
Chords of sheet music spray
the studio floor. Talking suspensions
with magicians is illusionary.  Scatter the scrabble
board            and count the waves.
        Light pollution can corrode an en
tire car in several
short years. Too much repetition
zips through a  streak of cobwebs
woven in triangular (dis)repaired intentions.
Hug nothing in a mirror,
since someone
else will already be doing it best.

(III).

                Stretch marks
of etched great black
pack rats reach the straps slung
to the bed
              posts of eternity. A shotgun
in the mouth of an addled
whore isn’t much different
than an empty tomb filled with
        the privy of a hip
against a hip,
as married folks fuck for money.
                She is asleep with the wasps
in the smoke.




Unfinished Things

(For Jordan Herzog)

Impossible home
sickness clings
to shoelaces stumbling
down the bus steps
in mid-April as
a kite dives and
suddenly you’re
given control.

Park fountains and
watermelon stands
are the taste of
wet grass and batting cages
next to the hotdog
vendors and hula-hoops
running away
from children
hunting jobs
and doormats,
fleeting as the stardust
welcoming us home.

Diluted apathy is a
cheap wine in
the cornfields
we’d sneak
off to in another life
neither of us are brave
enough to live.
The jug in the dirt
with letters never written,
just waiting for the
constant abuse of
June bugs humming under
The porch lights
In a rough whisper
of drifting light.


Zach Fishel is the owner/operator of Horehound Press, specializing in
limited edition chapbooks and broadsides. His poetry can be found in
numerous journals and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart. His
first chapbook can be found via NightBallet Press or you can feel free
to contact him directly for anything word related at
zachary.fishel@gmail.com

FROM A ROOM/A TENNIS MATCH TO LOVE/IN FACTORY SHADOW - John Grey

FROM A ROOM

You figure the native is restless
in his small jungle of a bedroom.
He torn toms email.
Or earplugs himself into

a downloaded cave,
before a make-shift altar
where his Gods spit fire
or take turns swapping solos.

He does not speak to you.
unless the bumps, the bangs,
the mattress boings, cell phone
whispers, the breeze from his

air guitar, is a language.
It is. You spoke it once yourself,
though with less technology.
Yours was the bone you prayed

that one day would take
your toss at its primitive word,
turn into a spaceship.
He has the spaceship.

But not the steering. Little navigation.
It's not a jungle like yours was.
It's a universe.
He's moving forward —

one digital bleep to your pound
of a base drum,
tapping the invisible, the world-wide,
not your letters, your late-night radio.

But it's all in a room like yours was.
An isolation like you knew.
It's what you were
bewildered by what you've become.





A TENNIS MATCH TO LOVE

I'm staying at the old house for the weekend.
She keeps my old room in a time warp.
Banners and posters. A couple of books.
The single bed I gave up for the double life.
Window is the best match for what I'm feeling.
Nothing's changed.
It's still much more looked out of than stared into.

So what do I see.
Aliens on the old decrepit tennis court.
Less gravity where they're from.
They're not used to lob shots
dropping back to earth.

Maybe they're ghosts
and are whacking that spectral sphere back and forth
on what used to be a court
but is now just a field,
overgrown with mist and weeds.
That's my mother, a prime-time player in her youth.
She's battling a second cousin.
Someone's yelling "Love!" or was that "Deuce!"

Or are these just real people
on a freshly laid tarmac,
its service lines drawn like a new city grid,
net bobbing, umps focused,
crowd roaring, and top seed battling
second pick for the tournament.

No, it's just memory.
I was twelve and found this racket
in a cellar trunk,
within its frame, more gaps than string.
I ran up and down the backyard of this house,
slamming that ball at no one.

This is the window with the best view of the games:
the dearth of real players,
the service not returned.




IN FACTORY SHADOW

Factory shadow can't quite reach
the two of us, lying together
in the least of the great outdoors.

It's more a parcel of land
than a meadow
but the dandelions don't know that,
cap the grass like sun.

Gray, mournful doves
rustle through dead leaves.
Toads squelch in brown mud
like fingers tapping jelly.

Crickets warm up
their unseen orchestra,
click and clack
between nearby gear and belt.

For all our deep breathing,
we can't out-exhale the funnels.
A purr, a sigh is lost.
Our sounds of being
can't hold a note to industry.

So you impress my chest
with your throbbing,
a pulse on a par
with bellicose assembly lines.

Ears to the ground,
we hear the rumble of trucks,
the hissing of smoke,
crackling of fire -
strange are the heart's commissions.

All-centuries struggle - Jeremy Marino

The mien of man

is a starving alleyway hound,

the underdog below the moon's false caress,

its tongue lapping for gritty action,

maw quaking with each deafening roar,

ready to pounce from the shadowed concrete pass

and cleave open the full content stomach,

and tear away the warm ropy throat

of the aberrant alpha male,

and lead the pack

himself.

"When I'm not thinking about the world at large and the small people forging it, I spend my time tinkering with old electronics. Old electronics for an old soul. Unfortunately, the pulling of other hobbies, such as writing (surprise), thinking about writing a piece and never writing it, learning languages, 3D design, and martial arts spread me out too thin. I hate being a college student, but love learning regardless. I draw inspiration from everything I possibly can, and suggest you do the same, reader. I'm all for making new contacts, acquaintances, and friends. Shoot me an email at j.marino3714@gmail.com. I'll talk about anything, really."

ZOOM ZAUM/IS WHAT YOU DID/DIGGING AT THE ORE OF LUST/ACROSS SEAS - Peter Grieco

ZOOM ZAUM

This commuting to work
in
private motor vehicles
is a
de-humanizing procedure
where
to humanize is to attune persons
in
greater sympathetic contact
with
other persons & the living environment.
Iso-
lation, insulated, self-aggrandizement
the lonely
man on foot has more of the universe
going
on with him than all these acclimatized
passengers.




IS WHAT YOU DID
for Bob

You stitched
& pressed
& packed
& drove    
a knife
through cheese.

You stopped
swayed backwards in a chair
laid down your clawish hand
put words away in a drawer.

You held up an electric torch
to someone’s face
to see what was there.

As long as things you see
don’t go pass you in a blur,
you’re okay.  Everything
pans out.  One line
brings up another.

You heard
a woodpecker
tapping in the dark
as wind
blew
through tall
bamboo.



DIGGING AT THE ORE OF LUST
for Anne Carson

Time goes whirling
through landscapes bent
on its agenda, endlessly making
an end of things

a passing shadow we follow like a needle
stitching together moments
of a blank nostalgia
a too soon afternoon of thunder

a brain chemistry of naked
injury & chronic despair.
Seduced into thinking we’re immortal,
suddenly the affair is over.





ACROSS SEAS

I love her as I love the unknown
pure & secret, without fault
the way our mothers used to wrestle
over the fence.  I love her the way
cabbages love kings on a sunny morn.

I love her as the beginning & end
of me, so troubled & alone—
I love her as down upon the ocean
& time across seas.  But what
of that, if we no more connect

than fast upon heat
or blue among gulls’ reckless passion?


The author is a former university writing instructor who has published around 100 poems over the past five years. He is currently studying mathematics in Buffalo, NY, his native city. He enjoys studying French and composing songs for the guitar. You can find some of his music at: http://www.youtube.com/user/pjgrieco and can contact him there as well

go to bed.the door is locked/my will - b.j. jones

go to bed. the door is locked

the front door
it’s locked
it’s locked
I tell myself
myself I tell
myself I tell
next the gas stove
sniff it up close
no gas smell
sniff it again
real close
no smell no
back to bed
is the door locked?
?
up again
and I am up
it’s locked


my will

and when I die
I don’t care what you do
sell the house
find someone else
give the clothes away
box up the pictures
bury me or burn me
all I ask
have everyone
at the funeral
sing We
Three Kings
do this one thing
and I promise to
not haunt you or
the children I
hope it’s in
September

B.J. Jones writes about rogue pharmacists, phantom limbed windmills, quidnuncs, Luciferian calories, amorous bowling shoes, Funkhousers, martyred coupons, Nietzschian wire hangers, invisible tomatoes, and pen clicking adversaries while living in Dubuque, IA with his wife. Some of it even gets published.

shoes/eric/vitae/unencumbered - holly day

Shoes

if it hadn’t been for the new shopping mall

they never would have found the bodies.

six skeletons, strung with dried skin

tied to trees in the heart of the forest.

after the bodies were identified

as coming from good, upscale families

that still lived in town, naming

some of the new roads leading to the shopping mall

after the dead girls

seemed like a good idea.

after further consideration, though

they decided to just give the girls

a really nice funeral.

Eric

my nephew comes home

from the war

cocky, proud, boasting

of how stupid the people “over there” are

how backward their way of life is

it breaks my heart remembering

the baby in my arms

the little boy with the wide brown eyes

who dreamed of driving his own tractor

someday

who is this man

telling stories of military exercises

of kicking down doors to rescue children

from their “ignorant” mothers

drinking beer and showing off his scars

what have they done to

my sweet little friend

Vitae

he was already dead as a doorknob when they found him

his head cradled in his arms, phone cradled in his hand

he could have been sleeping, dreaming of Saturday

except for all the blood.

it must have taken unflinching persistence, patience, fear

of the timeclock tick-ticking in the corridor

to complete crunching the day’s sales receipts

with a hole as big as a ledger in his chest. 

Unencumbered

oh, the whirr of wheels and wire and endless

scraping of skin on silvery track, my sleep, the scrape of skin on

splintered wood and wondering what they’ll say when they find me,

the rush, the roar, racing toward the light

the fading, floating echo of speed

oh, the imagined eyes of an imaginary crowd as the train

pull into the station, the concrete landing,

the eyes of the crowd opening wide

as the train pulls in and the hands reach out

trying to catch me, stop me,

much, much too late

oh, I love a train

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school district. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Worcester Review, Broken Pencil, and Slipstream, and she is the recipient of the 2011 Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her most recent published book is “Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch,” while her novel, “The Trouble With Clare,” is due out from Hydra Publications in 2013.