Resa Mestel

THE LAST PAIR 1844

I do consider the Great Auk, mesmerized by Aurora Borealis,
how she conjures for me as I ride underground to The American
Museum of Natural History to witness her chubby taxidermy, flightless,

penguin-like bird, contemplate her demise. Our fashionable carelessness
begs feathers for hats and blankets, oil for our light and warmth, her tasty
meat salted and cured in ships barrels.

We risk transformation in her presence. She was thought to plague sailors
with ill wind and malevolence—primordial sea witch. I am under a spell,
smell a potion of her black and white defenseless beauty, follow

her valiant waddles on an island breeding ground. She is the pilot of an egg unique
to a parent’s gaze whose cracked shell and yolk crunch and ooze across a shoreline
playground and soil the sole of a man’s boot. She is fearless of the humanity who

strangled her and her mate on a rocky Icelandic ledge. I wanted to know the color
of the hatchling's eyes in the black and white pool of blood. All I heard were gurgles
and hoarse screams in the echo of the museum hall.


Resa reads "The Last Pair 1844":



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Resa confesses: "I was inspired by the history of the crimes against the auk which led to the discovery of Ogden Nash's "A Caution to Everybody." I wrongly assumed the museum would have a stuffed mount and a prominent display detailing its extinction, but the specimen is in a warehouse."


RESA MESTEL is a poet, weaver, community-based volunteer and Family Nurse Practitioner living in Ossining, NY. She has studied poetry at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Poets House, The Hudson Valley Writers' Center and Cornell University. Her poems have appeared in or been accepted by New Verse News, The Yellow Chair Review, The Westchester Review, and Poetica Magazine's Mizmor L'David Anthology.

David Spicer

FALSE CONFESSION

Let me amuse myself and devour
your attention, since I’m under arrest
and you’ve found Clarissa,
my lichen-laced .357 Magnum
lost on Pacific Road. Care if I smoke?
I won’t slobber. You want me to sing,
I’ll sing like a chimp, though I’m not
your straw man. Reject what I say,
I don’t care. My first victim—don’t
know her name—died in a coma in Vietnam.
I tossed the next one, Eddie Merton,
into a gully after wrapping him in a hopsack
shroud, lips glued, brains splattered.
Then the hipster rat Hindu—not a Hindu,
but an acidhead. I stole his shadow,
watching him disappear into thick air.
Voyeur that I am, I loved that! Drifting
to Nebraska, land of sallow ice
and baseball snowflakes, I met
a Detroit anarchist in a meat market.
Hog-tied her with rusty chains.
Sure, I’ll have coffee. Black. My next girl,
an Omaha librarian, fought me. It took two
minutes in a wheat field to pull Clarissa's
trigger. I sniffed every inch of Omaha’s body.
Don’t believe any of this? Join the club, pigs.


Gerald So reads "False Confession"



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David confesses: "I read about Henry Lee Lucas in Vanity Fair years ago, and recently Vanity Fair Confidential aired an episode on him; I found myself writing this persona poem about a wily, evil, deceptive character who loved to yank the chains of cops whom he deemed less intelligent than he was."

DAVID SPICER has had poems in Chiron Review, Reed Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Prime Number, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, Rat's Ass Review, Slim Volume, The New Verse News, Easy Street, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., among others, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, two Best of the Nets, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

Sara Tantlinger

THE WOLF OF MOSCOW

26 Shabolovka Street
patrons arrive, waiting
not knowing my changed name
and the Red Army I left behind
but I carry rubies in my head
red, red, always red

customer wants to buy a horse,
wants to get to know me
lonely eyes easy to find
in these days of newly approved
private enterprise

the vodka is rarely refused
but always ready and offered freely
except for the price of rubies in my head,
my hammer raining down
their throats slit
red, red, always red

the swollen beetle-black
bags of corpses float down the river
and I am called the Wolf of Moscow
but Sophia doesn’t mind the howling—
my dear wife, my little helping sheep
does not have lonely eyes
but she is still easy to find
handing me the hammer
understanding crimson needs

understanding that murder
is an awfully easy job,
but the pattern bleeds out
and the wolf leaves prints
in the dirt for two years
no more private enterprise

and the last of lonely eyes
is the last time this wolf sees Moscow
sees Sophia next to me
the firing squad all lined up
waiting to complete
an awfully easy job
red, red, always red


Gerald So reads "The Wolf of Moscow":



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Sara confesses: "I was reading so-called last phrases by serial killers (for research purposes, of course), and Vasili Komaroff’s was that he described murder as 'an awfully easy job.' That, along with him being known as “The Wolf of Moscow,” inspired the poem. I couldn’t resist borrowing those bloody details!"

SARA TANTLINGER resides outside of Pittsburgh on a hill in the woods. She is the author of Love For Slaughter and has published pieces with Page & Spine, The Literary Hatchet, and the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume II. Find her on Twitter @SaraJane524.

Michael A. Arnzen

C.S.I.: MY PSYCHE

Crimes blur together till I am the crime, till I am the blur—
Standing behind the evidence room, breathing heavy.
I am the sin collector hefting my black duffel bag full of guilt.

Scraping and dusting and plucking hairs—
It is a fetish, this investigation of clues.
Containers and bags and boxes lick sealed with my spit.

I can no longer separate you from my workplace torment.
Case after case, I am quivering above alternative chalk outlines,
Shooting your death pics.


Mike reads "C.S.I.: My Psyche":



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Mike confesses: "I was just musing over the way the CSI TV series uses locations in their titles when the title for this one occurred to me (I think it sounds like "Miami" anyway). The series spin offs do this thing with location that is relatively uncreative (in my opinion) just to bank on the formula, and so I'd hoped that by shifting the setting to psychological ground and playing around with the letters C S I (the letters lead off every line, in case you missed that) I might discover something else going on behind it all. The piece ended up becoming a character study to reveal the dark side that we all have, even those who obsessively fetishize objective reality and try to shine light on it all. I think that's usually my approach to crime poetry: to turn rocks over to see what is lurking unseen behind the surface... particularly those rocks we've become so accustomed to—like TV show formulas and the motives of an investigator who relies more on laboratory work than an investigation into the human mind."

MICHAEL A. ARNZEN (http://gorelets.com) recently appeared in The Year's Best Hardcore Horror (Comet Press, 2017) with his catalog of morbid fantasies, "55 Ways I'd Prefer Not to Die." A recording of "Vampire Stories: Live from Transylvania" has also been published to http://arnzen.bandcamp.com. Arnzen holds four Bram Stoker Awards for his dark fiction and poetry. He teaches full-time in the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University, near Pittsburgh, PA.

Jeff Bagato

THE NATURE OF CRIME

Mother Nature steals
back something for the wind
when she blows your tire
with a dropped nail

a hurricane steals a drugstore
roof and a couple hundred
condoms, roughs up the place
so no one will know what’s missing

the rain has stolen your sunny day

Devil’s Lake wants that whole town
in North Dakota to get out with
their hands up

like a loan shark it has organized
a billion drops of rain
to grab the real estate and hold on
for a higher price

meanwhile, the rains
are falling and rivers rise—
lightening strikes and grabs
at an apple orchard,
stepping back, belching

slipping into a grocery, you fill your inner
pockets and retreat, counting
the grab on the way home—
you can’t steal, it’s free, free,
and the rain knows,
the trees know, like the ants
that come in through the window

a lightning fire covers the tracks—
that nothing could be
free is the last law
of man

triumphant in the hills,
a rabbit gets another
grain


Jeff reads "The Nature of Crime":



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Jeff confesses: "The Gaia hypothesis, Earth First! and paganism inspired the idea that Wild Nature would invert the materialistic values of western civilization. Various fantasy scenarios spring forth, which eventually become a justification for shoplifting necessities like food, part of some lifestyle experiments a while back."


A multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, JEFF BAGATO produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music, glitch video, sticker art, and pop surrealism paintings. Some of his poetry has appeared in Empty Mirror, Futures Trading, In Between Hangovers, Otoliths, Your One Phone Call, and Zoomoozophone Review. His published books include Savage Magic (poetry), Cthulhu Limericks (poetry), The Toothpick Fairy (fiction), and Dishwasher on Mars (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.wordpress.com.

Tracey Ikerd

THE DOWNFALL OF DUNCAN SCOTT-FORD

Neutral ports full of spies, Lisbon lay in wait
for this naive merchant of the sea.
Baixa, city of refuge,
how Tagus' smile greeted me,
and washed me in its blissful tide.
Like Sebastian so young and green. I longed
to herald my country's fame.
An agent in the doubles game.
I wanted that - I wanted more.

I fished along the alehouse shore
for my sweet Karin, but met instead
an Abwehr who favoured my dilemma.
For a little intel he would pass to her my letter.
The truth he asked I did not know
so I sold him what sounded better.
Little did I know his honey trap was set.
And I caught deep in blackmails slanderous web,
coercion most foul.
A convoy of secrets I betrayed.

Like Jonah, under storm cloud eyes
I sat upon the swell.
Espionage adrift.
As regents swarmed down tainted wires,
racing to England’s sunny shore.
Kedge anchor dropped its chain pulling
me towards my fate.
If only Garcia had sheltered me under
his double agent’s wing.
In secret I was met, feeding
false intel was declined. My value
would be better met as scapegoat for the rest.

Eighteen pounds paid for my noose.
They'll hang this lesson
from the dock.
The price of treason
for all to see.


Gerald So reads "The Downfall of Duncan Scott-Ford":



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Tracey confesses: "This poem was inspired by the true events of Duncan Scott-Ford who was from my hometown, Plymouth. Through Duncan's persona, I wanted to portray an alternate point of view, one that shows his naivety, and that if British intelligence officers had used him as a spy his outcome would have been different."

TRACEY IKERD is a mother of two wonderful daughters and a granddaughter. After spending her working career in management she took some time off to complete her B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing where she is now patiently waiting for my results. She didn't write poetry until her final degree module and this poem is her first attempt at persona poetry.

Karen Petersen

PERSONA

Dead male body in hotel room
age 23, overdose
with yesterday's tan.
Cheerful coroner,
little black bag,
"This one’s easy."
Hot sun melting
the weeping needle
Parking lot tar,
footprint by the door
the last evidence of life.
This kid was no one
but he had a past,
and dreams
The ticking clock...
all gone by the stillness of noon.


Karen reads "Persona":



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Karen confesses: "This poem was written when I read a small AP news item on the increase in drug overdoses in Miami, and I thought of all those young people whose lives were now over, and forgotten."


KAREN PETERSEN, adventurer, photojournalist and writer, has traveled the world extensively, publishing both nationally and internationally in a variety of publications. Most recently, she was published in The Malpais Review and Antiphon. In 2015, she read "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" at the Yeats Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is currently at work on Four Points on a Compass, a collection of her poems from overseas. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Classics from Vassar College and an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Tonia Kalouria

LEBRON AIRS

Smart, dimpled, and graceful,
tall, handsome Kareem
shouts the FED EX’s message:
"MOM! I made the team."

Those plans made for law school
they now would abort,
for the future's a slam-dunk
when sneaks rock a court.

Proud Mom, nascent PRO,
– who both work without lull–
are so happy and giddy
they break for the Mall.

They giggle through colas,
and curled- ketsuped-fries.
"Now, let’s buy fancy sneakers!"
popped out Mom’s surprise.

"Those Airs you’ve been wanting,
–we couldn’t afford–
well, I’m proud of you, son!
They’re a fitting reward!"

Back home–in new sneaks–
Kareem heads for the park.
Shouting, "Don’t worry, Mom!"
"I’ll be home before dark."

He was walking on air;
life was nothing but net.
"I wonder what jersey...
which number I’ll get?"

While jumping and shooting,
his brain swirled and sang,
but with thoughts in the clouds,
he did not see... The Gang.

Bruised, broken, and bleeding,
Mom’s hero so sweet
on the Gang’s turf lay dying–
no shoes on his feet.

Thus, darkness struck early;
Mom’s heart skips a beat
as she I.D.’s her baby
beneath the white sheet.

Rosa's game plan each week's
now a trip long and hard:
Two subways, three bus rides,
one lonely graveyard.

Grieving Mom, supine pro,
still a team; both alone.
And her son's assigned numbers...
They're now etched in stone.


Tonia reads "LeBron Airs":



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Tonia confesses: "Unfortunately, violence over costly sneakers is not fiction, and not rare. They are a status symbol to be had at all cost by some young men. And some pay dearly."

TONIA KALOURIA is a retired Spanish teacher who played psychiatrist Tonia Wilson on Passions from 2002 to 2007. Her book, Aerobic Poetry: Critter Connections Collection, features humorous, rhythmic poems meant to be read aloud to help lower blood pressure and improve lung function. She has also published poetry in The Litchfield Review, Common Threads, and The Senior Years. She lives with her devoted husband of many years on the West Coast and has two wonderful sons and a lovely granddaughter.

J.H. Johns

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WENT

A moment of glory—
an instant of a thrill-
and
before you know it—
knew it—
you were back;

for the rest of your life—
though,
if you had been told,
you never would have believed it;

to become—
just another "laborer" in life;
a near-to-meaningless cog;
an infinitesimal aspect
of an institutional machine;

that cared nothing
for, of or about
your sacrifice,
heroism
or
unselfishness—

nada...


Paul Churchill Mann reads "And That's the Way It Went":



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J.H. confesses: "This piece is the product of observing the one-time proud, handsome, attractive, beautiful, shapely, fit, strong, enthusiastic, determined cross-section that you see in the supermarket, committed, relegated- imprisoned- in the embodiment of what they have unwittingly become."

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.

Nathan Lauer

LIVE! WITH A CERAMIC KITCHEN KNIFE AND KATHIE LEE

It would be beautiful if
looking up from his own blood
in his hand he saw your face
without the obvious line
from Shakespeare disturbing his
sad final thoughts of himself.


Gerald So reads "Live! With a Ceramic Kitchen Knife...":



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Nathan confesses: "The fictional narrator opines that iit would be beautiful if' events transpired as described and is not inciting any specific public figure to action; only that, and this is true by the way, many wonderful people say this – very smart – it would be the very very best assassination ever. Huge."

NATHAN LAUER is an American writer living in Hong Kong. He is an MFA candidate at Pacific University's low residency program, where he has been awarded the Pearl Scholarship. His work has appeared in the Asia Literary Review, Buffalo Almanack, Meat for Tea, The Valley Review, The Eloquent Orifice, Of Zoos, and the anthology Hong Kong Future Perfect (Inkstone Press, 2016).

Robert Cooperman

SILENCERS

The state of Tennessee
wants to pass a bill

that would legalize silencers
on their already approved

open-carry weapons:
So when fathers blast potential

burglars because they’re, you know,
black or brown or Muslim terrorists

or all three, and will murder us all,
the shots won’t wake the kids,

who’ve been playing first-person
shooter videos after they zipped

through homework in maybe five minutes
of tiger-maw yawning boredom.

Nothing more important
than a good night’s sleep, after all,

along with a hearty breakfast.


Gerald So reads "Silencers":



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Cooperman confesses: "This poem grew from an email from a friend from Tennessee, which he said, in the infinite wisdom of its Republican controlled legislature is trying to make the purchase and use of silencers on the state's open carry handguns legal. This struck me as patently ridiculous: isn't it enough you can pack heat on your hip and scare the hell out of non-gun carrying citizens who might, God forbid, be Democrats?"


ROBERT COOPERMAN's latest collection, Draft Dodger Blues (FutureCycle Press = FutureCycle.org, for orders) is just out. His other recent collection is City Hat Frame Factory, from Aldrich Press.

Darren C. Demaree

TRUMP AS A FIRE WITHOUT LIGHT #226

Demolish the idea of the floating cities. This was a dust world and can be a dust world again. After we eat the gigantic veil of Trump, we will need to spend the next decades in the fields and in the gardens. The forests will save us again, but we must make an offering to the dirt. The dirt must be the darkest thing in our world. Remove the cold smoke. Key the light. Shove your wrists into the deepest sparkle, and let it make you dark and dirty in the revolution of our world.


Darren reads "Trump as a Fire Without Light #226":



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Darren confesses nothing.

DARREN C. DEMAREE is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly (2016, 8th House Publishing). He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Oral Nussbaum

TURN THE CAMERA OFF

One of my concerns,
along with will Florida break off
and fall into the ocean,
or am I ever going to see
Dolly Parton's naked tits,
is that the decline of crime
and popularity of human kindness
is due more to electronic accountability
than a genuine desire to be moral.

Before technology,
when it was possible
to whack a human's skull
with a blunt object
and enjoy complete impunity,
we didn't need empathy, compassion,
or analysis of one's childhood
to settle a dispute
or make a decision.

But now,
everything is live
and in color.

It would be nice to believe
those who don't shoplift,
murder, or maim
are compassed
by true want
to do the right thing,
but without cameras and lights
would they be
so compliant to rules?

I'm really not sure.
But I do know
the power outage at Walmart
had nothing to do
with my new
seventy-two-inch flatscreen,
and my ex-wife
was never good
at going down unlit stairs.


Oral reads "Turn the Camera Off":



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Oral confesses: "I wrote this after I watched an old TV show where the gangsters just shot people in the street and walked away. I obviously got a little playful with the subject, but if you look there is a bit of a message."

ORAL NUSSBAUM, owner of Nussbaum Painting Inc. for thirty years, is a member of the Poetry Ensemble of Orlando and the Vice President of the Orlando Area Poets chapter of the Florida State Poets Association.

Angel Zapata

GODWIN

Somewhere along the way,
a pic of a gastro pub lunch plate
is replaced by first degree murder.

Now a killer can upload
a vid of his vic in real time,
post it on his newsfeed— liked!

Used to be enough of a scare
for gunslingers to prop empty caskets
outside saloon or barber shop walls.

Today, we have the option to pause
the bullet frame by frame,
return after lunch for a hi-def replay.

Here I second-guess my motive
to promote a poem through social media:
dare I shed such precious blood?

And the man Steve Stephens
murdered— gun in one hand,
phone cam filming in the other—

will become a meme, another
exhausted trend, a hashtag scrolling
by much too quickly to follow.


Gerald So reads "Godwin":



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Angel confesses: "The random, senseless murder of seventy-four year-old, Robert Godwin, really upset me. Talk about wrong place, wrong time. It could have been any one of us. This poem was written to help me deal with my feelings on the subject."

ANGEL ZAPATA calls Augusta, Georgia his home. Born and raised in New York City, his award-winning fiction and poetry is a conglomeration of street smarts and Southern charm. His micro-poetry chapbook, Pearl Street, was recently published by Rinky Dink Press.

Charles Rammelkamp

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

I didn’t even know my legal status
until I tried to enlist in the marines
when I was eighteen;
I couldn’t do it without a Social Security card.
I came to the United States when I was three,
my mom and my dad illegals.
Now I’m living in a sanctuary city.

My friend Karina, from Chihuahua?
She got her degree in biochemistry, Arizona State,
wants to be a pharmacist,
but now she might be separated
from her three American-born kids,
sent back to Mexico, to get her green card.

In school we read about the Jews
hiding in German-occupied Eastern Europe.
Gentiles who aided them faced capital punishment
if outed and captured.
Israel described these non-Jews
who risked their lives during the Holocaust
to save Jews from extermination
khasidi umot ha olam.

Karina’s afraid if she goes back
she could be there for years getting her papers
while her kids grow up in Sedona motherless.


Charles reads "Righteous Among the Nations":



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Charles confesses: "Among the many disturbing things about the Trump administration is its cruel immigration policy based on a racist xenophobia. Now, the bigot Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the Attorney General named after a Confederate general, has threatened to withhold money from cities that refuse to detain people based on their immigration status but without a criminal warrant. This is the real crime, the Trump administration’s policy. This is a Shanda."

CHARLES RAMMELKAMP's collection of dramatic monologues about the life and career of William Jennings Bryan, American Zeitgeist, was published May 2017 by Apprentice House.

Kristina England

EARLY DISMISSAL AT BURNCOAT HIGH

Yellow buses roll into procession line,
teachers on either side of students,
trained pallbearers of sorts.
School darkens behind them,
stagnant air laced with chemicals.
"Poison" says community and
another teacher coughs
cancer.

School committee waves hands.
"Not to worry. Not to worry.
We'll start scrubbing the dust more
often,we'll replace window caulking,
but let's not dwell on the certainty
of certainty that all of this is
probably connected."

Another teacher coughs cancer.
Yellowed buses leave in long,
quiet line, headlights flashing.
School dims, shroud so subtle,
you could almost miss
the years of ghosts
moving by.


Kristina reads "Early Dismissal at Burncoat High":



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Kristina confesses: "In 2008, a Harvard School of Public Health presentation raised concerns about high levels of PCB in Burncoat and Doherty high school in my home city of Worcester. The union spent the next 8+ years arguing with the school committee; testing was approved on March 31, 2017."

KRISTINA ENGLAND resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is a writer and photographer. Her writing has been published in several magazines, including New Verse News, Silver Birch Press, and Topology. She can be followed at https://www.facebook.com/kristinadengland.

Amy Holman

I'M A RABBIT GIRL

she says, and it's a child you see
in a room full of bunny toys and art,
not a music teacher in her mid-thirties
in Brooklyn, defending herself to the press

after the arrest. They need to be
wild, she says of the meat rabbits
saved from butchers, the lab testers,
Netherland dwarfs and Belgian hares

who listened to her flute, but you'd see
a tasty meadow with burrows and buttercups,
maybe her grandmother's farm in Poland,
not 182 cold bunnies huddled behind chipped

wood in an unused tire yard. They need to be
wild game for the zoo lions, she also said once—
to her shame—perhaps when the monthly
multiplications troubled the limited space

and budget. Rabbit girl could not see
her way clear in her failed million dollar, pastel
Easter Bunny breeding project she later
passed off as an attempt to develop a children's

bunny garden under the F/G overpass. To be
caging leporidae—as a fraction were—in a
padlocked shed on the Gowanus auto strip, hops
in the face of flutey rabbit girl's pastel lion

luncheon community. But then, you can see
that with the herd biting and raping each other
and contracting syphilis, that special, confidential
quality that her first rabbit, Snowflake, shared

with Rabbit Girl, was diminished. She's to be
caged for 45 days, kept from owning rabbits
for five years, and see a shrink about collecting.
She's resisting with a suit against the bunny

activists and the ASPCA who, anyone can see,
do not want people owning animals, which,
by the way, she didn't because you can't own
what is wild, or what needs to be.


Amy reads "I'm a Rabbit Girl":



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Amy confesses: "Recently, there was a headline in Brooklyn about the conviction of the Gowanus Bunny Hoarder, and I knew that a poem lurked among the herd of distressed and wounded bunnies in an abandoned tire yard in the neighborhood named after a toxic canal. I had somehow missed all the other news reports—from the time of the police raid on the tire yard the day before a projected snowstorm to the arrest, the hearings, and sentencing. However, when looking for information on the breeds of rabbits kept by the hoarder, Dorota Trec, I came across all the previous news pieces, and in each, Trec named a difference reason for having kept the rabbits. That’s when I knew the poem was more about her than them."

AMY HOLMAN is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and prose writer and the author of the poetry collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window, published in 2010 with Somondoco Press, and the poetry chapbook, Wait for Me, I’m Gone, which won the 2004 Dream Horse Press Annual Chapbook Prize. Her fiction chapbook, Lighter Than A Dream was a finalist in 2015 at Anchor & Plume Press. Recent poems have been in Gargoyle, The Westchester Review, and Rabbit Ears: The First Anthology of TV Poems. This publication with The Five-Two, is her "second offense", having first had a poem up on the week of April 7, 2014. She is a literary consultant to writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, and teaches poetry workshops at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. More about Amy can be found at her website: www.amy-holman.com.

Peter Braddock

THE BEGGAR GENERATION

Scared of life, the open, breathing world
outside of parents' insurance and meal plans.
Are we supposed to be scared or happy
because all I see is ignorance.
In the halls men sing
"fuck that pussy, fuck that clit,"
why?
What the hell is there in singing those songs
and sucking on a woman, sticky like lollipops.

Drunk in the morning,
in line waiting for food I listen,
"The food here tastes like shit,"
"I can’t wait to get the fuck
out of here", standing outside
the sandwich glass. "That bitch
I swear has something wrong with her,"

working 5:00am to 10:00pm.
Two kids, a drunken husband
and a mortgage.
Minds of the 21st century blinded by ignorance.

Walls built 200 years ago to represent
the greater version of yourself,
where men's "ideals of old" lie dead
under the floorboards beneath layers of
piss, beer, and cum.
Fat fucking fraternity men dribble spit
and laugh, grinning with their alcoholic
breath watching virgins drip cum
from every hole in their body—
laughing—
imagining through their jeans,
holes to fill.

In the news I see dead kids and bombed villages,
politicians yelling at young Africans
"those fucks didn’t die how they’re supposed to."
Walking through the mounds of dead bodies,
slicing off fingerprints and dental records,
gathering supporters for the next election.

Where is the red wheel barrow
to carry out these animals?


Peter reads "The Beggar Generation":



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Peter confesses: "I was reading Alan Ginsburg for the first time, and understanding his work did nothing--and crying for seeing that. Today we still have young men growing up in the dregs of masculinity and racism, and sadly, a President who epitomizes these attributes. It's just sad, that's all."


PETER BRADDOCK is twenty-three years old looking to apply for graduate school this winter. He typically writes poetry about personal experiences, dark or lighthearted, and wants to learn to write more fiction. His mother recently asked him to do something with his hair, he replied, "I am doing something, I’m letting it grow."

Anne Graue

HER BEHEADING

sordid garments laced
with brazen-faced
dishonesty

her convicted eye
her heart
her little neck

she shed her self
the germ of her
on peaceful knees

her folded hands
on white ermine
the red skirt

her throated falcon
ladies waiting
a crucifix for her waist

her gaze
a disturbance then
the gleaming descent


Anne reads "Her Beheading":



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Anne confesses: "I have been obsessed with Anne Boleyn of late, and this poem is a manifestation of her last moments. It is part of a series of poems concerned with the courtship and marriage of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII that resulted in such a violent end."

ANNE GRAUE lives and writes in Mahopac, New York. Her poetry has been published in literary journals including The Westchester Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Fem, Random Sample Review, and Yellow Chair Review. Her chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter, is forthcoming in 2017 from Dancing Girl Press.

Nancy Scott

DAY OF JUDGMENT

My father did not try to stop me.
I think he’s proud
one of his children will enter Paradise.

Dark-eyed houris
will kiss my bleeding wounds,
cloak me in a hulla robe.

O, Allah, I have lived by your words.
I wish to leave this bitter earth: scorched
sand, dust, uprooted olive trees, old men
staring into cracked coffee cups.

Land that imprisoned my brother,
beat my uncle senseless near Ramallah,
turned our home to rubble.

In the camp of my youth, my grandmother’s
swelled fingers peeling an orange,
tattered books we shared with others,
my father struggling every day to feed us.

Last night I prayed
with comrades near Bethlehem
for the strength
to carry out my mission.

They say at the first drop
of blood, my sins will be forgiven.


Gerald So reads "Day of Judgment":



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Nancy confesses: "Although I wrote this poem a few years ago, it still feels relevant today. When endless hostilities become the norm, it made me wonder what beliefs or rationales could ultimately convince a young Palestinian to become a suicide bomber."

NANCY SCOTT is managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets and author of nine books of poetry. Her most recent, Ah Men (Aldrich Press, 2016) is a retrospective on the men who have influenced her life. She is also a visual artist and a frequent contributor to The Five-Two. Originally from the Chicago area, she now resides in New Jersey. www.nancyscott.net