J.H. confesses:"Having been up and down that road going through Gilgo many times, I have always wondered-over bodies and time- how can one realistically park- at night, at any time- on that road- I mean, I know you can see in both directions quite clearly- but how do you park, take out a body- or even dig a hole- without seriously upping your risk of being spotted?
I always thought that whoever was doing it came at it with a boat from the ocean side...Unless he was dropped off."
J.H. JOHNS “grew up and came of age” while living in East Tennessee and Middle Georgia. Specifically, the two places “responsible” for the writer that he has become are Knoxville, Tennessee and Milledgeville, Georgia. Since then, he has moved on to Chicago- for a brief stint- and New York City- for a significantly longer stay. Currently, he is “holed up” in a small town where when he is not writing, he tends to his “nature preserve” and his “back forty.” His goal is to surround his house with all sorts of vegetation so as to obscure it from the gaze of the “locals.” He is assisted in this task by his coonhound buddy and companion, Roma. J. H. Johns was a Pushcart nominee in 2018.
R.J. confesses:"Prostitution. Recent articles/videos highlight the illegal street circus taking place in NYC Queens being ignored by authorities. Hawkers are even ‘brazenly peddling’ to children - unacceptable. In the 1970s Nevada began regulation of the industry with enforced parameters. As the ancient occupation continues, is Nevada’s solution worth consideration?"
RENA J. WORLEY is a Word Artist residing in rural Michigan. First published in the Five-Two on May 27, 2019.
Tom confesses:"The world is full of weapons and opportunity, so I'm always amazed how seldom a crowbar is swung, a glass ashtray thrown, chicken wings served sans poison. In the world of my protagonist, the incentive to violence is even less rare, and harsh justice is often found in the conjunction of the two."
TOM BARLOW is an Ohio author of short stories, novels and poetry. Many of his best noir short stories have been collected in "Odds of Survival," and his crime novel "Blood of the Poppy," is available on Amazon. Learn more at tombarlowauthor.com.
“'Really angry' gunman who killed 3 at Gilroy Garlic Festival cut fence, shot randomly for less than a minute.” –USA Today
While I attend a Monterey poetry reading where
two Latino poets promote love and unity,
one more furious white man cuts through a fence,
with his automatic rifle, shoots down
fifteen festival attendees, killing three,
including a six-year-old boy,
thirteen-year old girl.
When will we, as a nation,
discontinue spewing useless aphorisms,
no longer facilitate poison
seeping into hearts and minds,
bind wounds, staunch hatred,
reject division, halt wanton bleeding?
When do we quit mouthing platitudes,
lance festering resentments,
drain away sickness, cauterize anger,
make America safe and sane again,
put rational adults
in charge of our healing?
Please, no more thoughts and prayers.
We need moral leadership, action.
Jennifer confesses:"My cousin’s family had left the Gilroy festival thirty minutes before the shooting began. The escalating gun violence in our communities never seems to abate while our legislators offer bankrupt platitudes rather than realistic solutions."
JENNIFER LAGIER lives a block from the stage where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar during the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. She serves two rescue dogs, dabbles in photography, taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, helps coordinate Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium readings. Website: jlagier.net
It’s 2 AM & we’re coffee-drunk in a Waffle House off the highway that cuts across Alabama like an old scar. We eat heartburn rib-eyes on blood-soaked toast as our waitress gives us someone’s else’s check. You pay the cost. You don’t correct an Alabama woman no matter how wrong she is.
You crack open another biscuit, watch me eat with eyes like Katrina streets. Los Angeles is a long way behind us & old names are buried among ashes of torched c-notes & cheap luggage. Your hand is a grenade; you delete your partner’s phone number from your speed-dial.
We borrow a motel room from The Joker, who wears sunglasses indoors & buys the lie that we’re newlyweds. Shotgun wedding, I think, remembering the sounds of bullets. Our life together will always be an alternate history.
You take your gun to the bathroom. I panic every time you close a door, wondering if I will hear a flush or a bang. You stare out the window when you think I’m asleep. You, my love, will sleep when you’re dead.
Libby's YouTube video reading of "L.A. Nocturne" coming soon
Libby confesses:"I went through a brief period of writing TV-inspired prose poems that vanished as quickly as it came on.This is my favorite of the three that I wrote about my favorite show, THE SHIELD, as a sort of imagining of what Shane Vendrell's life would be if he had gotten out of LA. But Shane's just the allegory; I think all of us are on the run from something at some point in our lives."
LIBBY CUDMORE is the author of THE BIG REWIND (William Morrow 2016) and the Martin Wade PI series in ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Her stories have been published in BLEED ERROR, ORCA, MONKEYBICYCLE, HAD, RECKON REVIEW, THE NORMAL SCHOOL and SMOKELONG QUARTERLY. She is the 2018 recipient of the Oregon Writer's Colony Prize, a current Anthony and Shamus award nominee and a four-year alumnae of the Barrelhouse Writer's Camp.
Good girls act up, their grades are low,
their mums go on a stealing spree,
their aunties’ police sheets grow,
‘be nice’ is not their cup of tea,
they’re into theft or burglary,
and forgery while feeling blue.
They are retaining water, too.
When caught, into a cell they go.
But once in prison, we foresee
they keep up hustling like a pro,
behaving so disorderly
that guards report and ask maybe
the governor to follow through.
Are they retaining water, too?
Kath’rina Dalton wants to know
do menses cause this, are they key
to crime and mood swings, yes or no?
Well, do they now, statistic’lly?
Kath’rina draws tables to see
if her hypothesis is true.
Is it retaining water, too?
So, is it PMS or flow?
Well, with a probability
from here to one in Tokyo
premenstrual tension they may plea:
hormonal woes should set them free.
The women prisons hold, who knew,
they are retaining water, too.
Sylvia confesses: "This poem was inspired by Katharina Dalton's 1961 article “Menstruation and Crime” in the British Medical Journal."
SYLVIA WENMACKERS is a Belgian philosopher of probability. You may find her near a field of four-leaved clover or on Mastodon as @SylviaFysica@scholar.social.
J.H. confesses: "We have one family member much along the actuarial chart; throw in an inheritance; throw in the "birth" of intrigue, greed and betrayal- with the birth 'rearing' its ugly premature delivery before anyone has actually died- and you have the inspiration for 'A Crime Unspoken.'"
J.H. JOHNS "grew up and came of age" while living in East Tennessee and Middle Georgia. Specifically, the two places "responsible" for the writer that he has become are Knoxville, Tennessee and Milledgeville, Georgia. Since then, he has moved on to Chicago—for a brief stint—and New York City—for a significantly longer stay. Currently, he is "holed up" in a small town where when he is not writing, he tends to his "nature preserve" and his "back forty." His goal is to surround his house with all sorts of vegetation so as to obscure it from the gaze of the "locals." He is assisted in this task by his coonhound buddy and companion, Roma.
Milk stands in wooden basins
A fly crawls along blackened rafters
an escape from the midsummer heat
I have many names in the villages and fields
Robin Goodfellow, Puck, Hobgoblin
Spirit of mischief, trickery and jokes
I trace my fingers over the clotting cream
in the evening twilight.
I chuckle to see it turning sour.
In the herb garden, parsley, thyme,
sage, rosemary, burdock,
I touch them so softly –
they wither and droop.
Out in the pastures, the sheep graze.
I ride on their woolly backs
in the dim light I leap
from one to another
In the farm pond eels twist and turn,
through the green, darkening water
I sprinkle a tincture of dried yew
In silver, moonlit meadows
I dance in the magic fairy circles
I creep into lovers’ chambers
strewing heartsease, wild pansy
over the linen pillows
As the horizon lightens
I sleep in a buttercup
Sarah confesses:"This poem centers on the 'crimes' committed by the spirit Puck or Robin Goodfellow in the 16th century and famously in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'."
SARAH DAS GUPTA is a retired school teacher living in Cambridge, UK. She hastaught in UK, India and Africa. Her work has been published in many magazines/journals - 'Paddle', 'Dipity' 'Waywords', 'Little Seed', 'Bar-Bar', 'Bull', 'The Chamber', Intrangience', 'Dorothy Parker's Ashes', Green Ink' and others. She is interested in equestrian sports, politics, history,
the environment, old churches, and ghosts.
he throws the drunk
to the barroom floor
sickening crunch
of skull on cement
but the drunk is up again
nose flattened
and blood
from a thirty stitch gash
streaming down his forehead
he’s half-blind with it
but doesn’t know
he’s hurt
and he’s still throwing
haymakers
like he’s Don Quixote
and the bar is full
of windmills.
eyes wide
with the knowledge
of what he’s done
the first guy eats the next three
punches clean on the chin
before we pull them apart
Adam confesses:"I’ve seen this a few times and experienced it myself: that moment of stunned inactivity when you
realize what horrors you’re capable of inflicting on another human being."
ADAM STEMPLE is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."
Osip Mandelstam wrote a poem
making fun of Stalin. It got Osip
in a lot of trouble. He recited it
at a salon where it got some laughs
and then someone informed on him
and he ended up dying in a Gulag
in the Soviet Far East. I wrote a poem
making fun of Donald Trump and it got
no attention because this is America
where nobody listens to poets or reads
their poems. And maybe Osip would say
I should be grateful I live in a country
where nobody listens to poets or reads
their poems, a country where you are free
to say what you want to say, no matter
if it’s false or hateful or hurtful or divisive
or throwing gasoline on the fire that
OK maybe you didn’t exactly start
or exactly yell in a crowded theater,
but you’re fanning the flames and it’s
not only legal but politically expedient,
and all the snow in Siberia won’t put it out.
Paul confesses:"I published a poem making fun of Trump called 'Trump Inaugural Poem' (because he didn’t have an inaugural poem). It got no reaction. I couldn’t help thinking of Mandelstam–who got a reaction–and of the crimes of Stalin, and of the crimes of Trump. Then I wrote this one."
PAUL HOSTOVSKY's poems have won Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best American Poetry, and The Writer's Almanac. Website: paulhostovsky.com
The late eighties. Since my
last visit home, you’d been on the jury
of a murder trial. A young
black man shot a black teenage boy
in a fast food restaurant
one night after the place had closed.
The man had been staking it out.
He entered through a back door
and ordered the girl employees
and the boy a cook to lie down.
He got seventy-eight dollars.
Before he fled he fired
two shots into the boy
who somehow phoned the hospital
but bled to death just when
the ambulance arrived. I don’t
know how the man was caught.
You said he had moved
recently from city slums
and that his mother
and father on the witness stand
were inarticulate, like they
weren’t aware of where they were
or of what was happening.
But the man had a brother
close to his age and this brother
was an executive for IBM.
You said it was strange
one was good, the other bad,
both having the same blood.
When the verdict was read
the one convicted of manslaughter
shouted obscenities, showed
no remorse. He was in prison.
You showed news clips
of the crime, the trial,
spread on your coffee table,
indelible in your mind.
You kept seeing the trial,
the family of the deceased,
the face of the killer. His name,
Alonso, was all I recalled.
And today, recalling your
account, I saw the kitchen
terrified eyes on brown
tiles drops of blood.
Peter confesses:"The source of this poem is an actual crime committed in New Jersey in the mid 1980s, I believe. A friend was on the jury for the trail, and he both told and showed news clippings about it. So it’s pretty much a crime poem that reflects a harsh reality."
PETER MLADINIC’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is due out in September 2023 from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.
“Ever notice how John Lennon
goes almost Full Othello
in some of those early Beatles songs?”
“Such as?”
"Well, there’s that song
from the Hard Day’s Night album,
‘You Can’t Do That’: If I catch you talking to that boy again..."
"Oh right! The guy threatening
his girlfriend because she dares
talk to his pals. He tells her
they’d laugh in his face
if they’d seen the way she was flirting."
“Everybody’s greeeeeen.”
“The green-eyed monster!
It’s a matter of pride.
Only, there’s no Iago goading him on.”
“Then there’s that one from Rubber Soul,
‘Run for Your Life.’ Even the title’s threatening!
He tells the girl he’d rather see her dead
than to ‘catch her with another man.’
Same deal with the jealousy.
You read stories in the tabloids
about jealous guys killing their girlfriends.”
“And here I was thinking
all those Beatles songs reeked
of puppy love, holding hands.”
Charles confesses:"I was always a little astounded by how vicious some of those Beatles songs sounded. Even “She Loves You” – is the guy the “hurting kind”? Is that verbal or physical? Well, best not to overthink it. All you need is love, right?"
CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His latest poetry collection, A Magician Among the Spirits, poems about Harry Houdini, is a 2022 Blue Light Press Poetry winner and has just been published. Another poetry collection entitled Transcendence has also just been published by BlazeVOX Books. A collection of flash fiction, Presto!, will be published in 2023 by Bamboo Dart Press.
Prepping for surgery
your nurse asks
about the scars on your forearms.
You laugh remembering
the sweltering July heat in ‘84
and your yearning for something new.
You picked the lake house
because they normally went up north
for the weekend, an escape
to cooler air and colder water.
There was nothing to do
but break the window
and undo the lock.
But shards of glass, ragged like shark teeth,
ripped your forearms.
You bled through the house
finally picking up a pocketful of jewelry
and a boombox. As you went to leave,
you heard the door behind creak open.
You bolted for the tree line,
boombox slapping your thigh as you ran .
He fired twice.
Rock salt burned your butt cheek and calves,
leaving divots the nurse can’t see,
reminding you of the time you spent locked up.
Melodie confesses:"This poem was inspired by a few stories I heard when interviewing an ex convict. He spent his early teens years as a thief, stealing from empty homes. Eventually, he did a life sentence, 36 years 1 month and 14 days, for a B&E that went wrong."
MELODIE BOLT is a Flint citizen and poet. Her work has appeared in places such as Paper Dragon, Qua Literary Magazine, and Prairie Schooner.
I don’t speak your language
and you don’t speak mine–
but there is this smile,
the one that means I wish
I knew your language,
this shy, innocent, ignorant,
helpless smile that says This is all I know how to say
in your language,
this smile I imagine
someone among the first
explorers might have smiled
at someone among the first
Indigenous people they encountered—
just might have–
before all the violence began.
This smile that somehow survived
all the violence,
and all the ignorance,
and all the unspeakable crimes,
and blossoms here on my face now,
and on your face.
Paul confesses:"My roofer hired men who did not speak English. They were brown, of indeterminate ethnicity–Arab, Mexican, Guatemalan, Marshallese? It was hot. I brought them water. I could only smile at them. They smiled back. I never feel so white as when I’m smiling at a person of color. Thence the poem."
PAUL HOSTOVSKY's poems have won Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best American Poetry, and The Writer's Almanac. Website: paulhostovsky.com
Adam confesses:"No matter how many times we’ve screwed it up in the past, I’ve always believed the dream of
America—the dream of a country united not by race, religion, or culture, but by the tenets set out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—was something worth fighting for. I wrote this poem when I felt the fight was lost."
ADAM STEMPLE is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."
I waited behind the wall to watch them
fawn skin and giggles
crisp uniforms and ponytails.
I knew they’d be a juicy treat and I salivated
drool dripped
a pond formed
deep, dark
I gazed into it and it stirred
ripples appeared
it clouded,
I stepped back and screamed
the building shook and shuddered
concrete and dust,
I looked into the pool and saw
Nothing
Charmaine confesses:"I have been thinking about the structures created to perpetuate the Colonization of Indigenous
people and people of colour world- wide, such as Residential schools, and the subsequent crimes against children that went unpunished."
CHARMAINE ARJOONLAL is a social worker who lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. When she’s not squeezing in writing, she enjoys hanging out in coffee shops, biking and swimming in cold lakes. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Under the Gum Tree, MUTHA, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Charmaine is on Twitter @arjoonlal.
"We shall prove this enforcer named Hawk
Shot these men we have outlined in chalk..."
"For the defense, sir,
We call Mr. Spenser."
Hawk nodded, he knew he would walk.
Peggy confesses:"My husband and I used to take turns reading out loud to each other. Robert B Parker's Spenser books were some of our favorite out-loudables. One night in 2004, after a particularly fun read, I wrote this limerick and sent it to Parker via his agent. 'Fun inspires fun,' I said. 'Thanks for all the inspiration.' Parker wrote back that he had fun, too."
PEGGY LANDSMAN is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate (forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2023), and two poetry chapbooks, Our Words, Our Worlds (Kelsay Books, 2021) and To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing, 2008). She lives in South Florida where she swims in the warm Atlantic Ocean every chance she gets. A selection of her poems and prose pieces can be read on her website: peggylandsman.wordpress.com.
Since 1986, the rose has been
the national flower of the USA.
But just like Blake’s rose, it is sick
and the worm in the rose is the NRA.
Some kids in Dadeville were shot dead
at a Sweet Sixteen birthday party.
Alabama governor, Kay Ivey, said:
“There’s no place for violent crime in our state.”
Yet in 2022, Ivey signed a bill into law:
no permit needed for a concealed handgun.
The NRA, always quick on the draw,
had also made sure to lobby for it.
In an ad for Ivey’s re-election campaign,
the governor pulled a handgun
from her purse, as once again
she wooed her gun-friendly voters.
And only recently in a Louisville bank
A disgruntled employee carrying a rifle
shot his companions at point-blank
range, killing four and wounding more.
If some black kid knocks on your door,
the NRA says, “Stand your ground!
Teach him not to hang around:
Just use your Magnum 44!"
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Tony confesses:"As an Englishman living in Spain, I am constantly appalled by the level of gun violence in the USA, the malign influence of the NRA, and the hypocrisy of politicians who pay lip service to condemning gun violence while actively pandering to their gun-obsessed voting base."
TONY DAWSON has lived in Seville since 1989. His writing has appeared in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Poems-for-All, Chiron Review, Pure Slush, and Loch Raven Review, as well as online at London Grip, The Syndic Literary Journal, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, Beatnik Cowboy, and Home Planet News.
...mountains of men, oceans of bone, an engine whose teeth shred all that is not our name. — Tracy K. Smith
In Tennessee, white nationalists
brandish guns, threaten to murder
an eleven-year-old trans girl
whose traumatized parents contact the FBI,
hire a private investigator and security team.
When she boards the school bus,
friends shield her from jeers,
mob faces twisted with hate.
At an ultra-conservative conference
speakers call for eradication
of LBGT individuals.
In MAGA land, new regressive laws
play well with fascists in training,
have emboldened the crazies.
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Jennifer confesses:"This poem captures the experience of family members who live in Tennessee and are raising a trans child. Tennessee has passed some of the most virulent legislation designed to oppress and threaten the trans community."
JENNIFER LAGIER lives a block from the Monterey stage where Janis Joplin performed and Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar. She has published nineteen books, in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines, edits the Monterey Poetry Review, helps coordinate Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings. Website: jlagier.net, Facebook: www.facebook.com/JenniferLagier/
We say, “Good night,” but the night
incorporates nothing good.
The river exhales an opaque mist.
We both hear the splash of a corpse
tossed from the bridge. We return
to the spot on the pavement
where our alibis had lingered
not quite long enough. The stiff
may turn up so far downstream
no one will blame us for dashing
to the all-night diner to regroup.
The stainless well-lit space
hums to itself. Cops perch on stools
and chat up the waitress. Her face
is cloudy as a nebula. Smiles
droop from it like rusty sickles.
We order coffee and console
ourselves with knowable facts.
That splash may be innocent.
Maybe it was a buck deer leaping
into the river for a bath.
Maybe it was suicide
and therefore not our business.
But there was something absolute
about that splash, something creeping
through the mist to shiver us.
Only murder crawls so many
legged up the spine and haunts
bystanders with a lack of clues.
The squat cops gnawing burgers
are prepared to handle the dark side
of this village. But we know nothing,
except that the river’s very cold.
Was that your carcass or mine
tossed so casually into the dark?
Let whoever finds the victim
drifting downriver alert
whatever authority lingers
in this world of gray excuses.
The mist is so thick tonight
it erases all but the cruelest
moments, leaving minor dramas
to terminate well before dawn.
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William confesses"I don't remember how this poem came about. There's an episode of Midsomer Murders in which someone is dumped off a bridge near the Badger Pub and splashes loudly and convincingly. And an evening walk in Peterborough in which my partner and I crossed the Main Street bridge and discussed whether it would be a good place to dispose of a body. And often when I visit the diner, cops are eating burgers. So some authentic elements But I'm not sure. Maybe from a dream."
WILLIAM DORESKI lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Venus, Jupiter (2023). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
