New poem: Rus Khomutoff- The Eyes of Truth

 

New poems: John Grey

MEMORY BANK

 

Pork sausages in butcher’s paper –

is that your memory?

It is mine.

Friday was my mother’s after-work

shopping night.

First, the Cash and Carry.

Then the baker’s.

Finally, the butcher shop

with its sawdust floor,

and Dick the Butcher

in black-and-white-striped smock.

 

I hid behind her,

couldn’t bear the sight of pig corpses

hung from hooks,

or the grind of the sausage machine,

or the slap of raw fatty meat

on a blood-stained bench.

 

You tell me

it was nothing like that

in your childhood.

Every slice of meat

was clean, packaged, refrigerated.

To your young mind,

there were no slaughtered

animals involved.

 

And you had parents,

two of them,

who sometimes sat you

in their shopping cart,

and wheeled you down the aisles.

And a car in the parking lot besides.

 

My mother and I always took a cab home.

The driver stuffed the parcels

in the trunk.

We sat silently in the back seat.

It was a quiet good enough for a funeral.

Pork sausages in butcher’s paper –

it was a funeral.

 

 

THE HIT

 

I was surly.

I was argumentative.

So I took the hit.

No warning.

Just somebody’s fist out of nowhere.

 

Everything started to tilt.

First one way. Then the other.

Standing was suddenly beyond me.

So I let go. All of it.

People, family, the lousy jobs,

the sour love life,

even the sorry excuse of myself

I kept dragging around.

My legs shot off like

they had somewhere else to be.

My head spun the other way.

And the rest of me hit the ground

with an almighty thump.

 

I didn’t move. The dust settled.

The pain slowly quit.

 

No big deal.

I started liking it down there.

It became a second home to me,

in that promised land

below the stampede of shoes,

the forest of legs,

the sagging bellies and swinging arms,

the whole human zoo stomping past.

 

People tried to pull me up,

voices coming from every direction,

but I’d already started spinning again,

right there on the floor.

 

It was safe enough.

You can’t fall any farther

when the ground has already claimed you.

And for once,

I was out of reach of the one asshole

who’d always done the most damage -

me.

AUGUST IN THE CITY

 

It’s mid-August.

almost 10 p.m.

And uncomfortably humid.

The darkness doesn’t cool a thing.

It’s just an extra sticky layer

on top of what the day left behind.

 

Of course, I can’t sleep.

So I get up,

open every window wide.

That’s a useless undertaking.

More steamy air moves in

to my apartment uninvited.

 

Down below a drunk stumbles home.

He’s oblivious to everything.

I’m jealous

 

Come back to bed

says a voice in the background.

How soft, how persuasive it sounds.

 

But I live alone.

It’s just the heat talking.

And it’s trying to get fresh.

 

  

 

 

RODENT POPULATION

 

Rats are roaming,

anywhere, everywhere,

with many other rats for company.

 

Noses, feet,

find their way

from rough nest

into the thin, scattered lights

of late night in the city.

 

It is true they’ve no idea

how feral they are,

what native wildlife

they drive out or devour,

what diseases they spread,

the kind of shudder they send

up the backbones

of humans who come across them.

 

They scurry in and out

of cracks in the wall

or scramble

up and down drainpipes,

ransack the dumpsters,

the trashcans,

even break into apartments,

snaffle up the crumbs.

 

And you can’t take your eyes

off these little night‑shift hustlers.

They are doing what they were born to do.

And that’s just like the rest of us.

 

A rat pauses.

It black eye catches the streetlamp glow.

For a second,

you see yourself in that twitching shape.

It’s just a creature trying to make it.

You know the feeling.

 

 

 

 

JUST THE WAY YOU ARE WILL DO

 

You deny your own beauty.

There’s a barrier of hostility

between the mirror and your face.

 

That’s why the comb

almost tears out the hair.

And the lipstick

smothers those lips.

 

The air between

yourself and your reflection

is like a charged fence.

 

Stupid me,

barging in

and touching it.

Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Willow Review and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, the Bayou Review and Plainsongs.

Short fiction: Jack Phillips Lowe

NO STEAK FOR ANGEL

Late shift. Buchman gets home after midnight, exhausted—and yet, still too

jacked up from work to go right to sleep. He stumbles into the front room, flops onto the

couch and kicks off his shoes. The remote waits where he left it, on the coffee table.

Buchman uses it to fire up the TV.

The set blinks to life halfway through a Rockford Files rerun. Buchman had seen

this one before—had seen them all, in truth—but he’s too tired to do anything but stare

at the screen.

In that episode, Rockford is hot on the heels of a psycho-killer who’d tried to rub

out a flight attendant friend of his. The friend, natch, just happens to be a stunningly

beautiful blonde, which accounts for the psycho-killer’s interest. Of course, Rockford

wins the day and the psycho-killer dies of a lead overdose. Instant TV justice, circa

1976.

Buchman’s not too tired to recall one significant plot point. Rockford’s victory

happens only after he taps Angel, his ex-jailbird pal, to gain access to a vacant house

that serves as the setting in which the private detective traps the murderous loon. In the

process, Angel almost gets his ass shot off when he’s caught in the crossfire between

Rockford and the baddie.

Then comes the epilogue: Rockford, hardy har-har, is fucked out of his fee for

playing white knight for a sweetheart. But all is not lost; there’s a delicious steak dinner

and “dessert,” lovingly prepared by Miss Friendly Skies, waiting for him at her

apartment. Angel? He’s nowhere in sight.

Buchman shuts off the TV. Angel, he muses, goes out of his way to help a buddy

and nearly gets plugged for doing so. That’s not worth a lousy steak? Rockford,

Buchman concludes, could be a real dick sometimes.

Buchman spends a few minutes pondering that thought, until he dozes off.

Bio: Jack Phillips Lowe was born, raised and still resides in the Chicago area. His poems and short stories have appeared in Piker Press, Synchronized Chaos and Bold Monkey Review, among other outlets. Lowe's most recent poetry chapbook, Brautigan's Blue Moon (Instant Oblivion Press, 2025), is available on lulu.com.  

Poems: Stephen Mead

                                                                   Spring Trees

 

begin in fog, a gray softest

where smallest flowers start, bead by bead...

I can taste their gems of viridescence

& then the white pearls unfurling

a shell song between limbs.

 

Black does not fracture the space

but blends with what sun touches -

gentleness now, its vivid issue

through erasures of rain drops.

 

At this moment I am on the phone

forty blocks, fourteen minutes & four continents

away on the pages of intimacy cabling my voice

past the picture of you heard in every sigh

as you speak, & these trees, in abundance,

entirely seize my vision.

 

So, love, spirit to spirit, our senses collide.

 

                                                                  Amaryllis

 

 Amaryllis -

Say it - the hum of incantation,

the swell hymn of petals unfurling

laps of scents, tongues,

texture-smooth moving over taste

buds to the territory of pores,

of visions opening for the months

of touches, the moments of mouths...

 

There entire lifetimes are encapsulated,

a coronation on green stalks,

the soft blades assuming light at the tips,

& more hip to living than you or than me,

except when we pause, make a bed of song

in these bulbs growing their godhead infinitely.

 

 

                                                                         Once, was

 

Wind-----

easy dreaming back to that blackness

I was the light of in motion, those waves,

these rain drops, my gusts just breaths

for moments more breezy

when moments happened to stretch,

wrench, except sighs, wise

in their innocence, returned on blossoms,

surfaces, skin, with my every crest

there, there & everywhere,

a message blessing, a blessing sent.

 

                                                               

                                                                  Find You an Older Man

 

of youth, eternally wise,

of musical bookishness,

of serious play,

of arms,

Venice entirely,

of a body,

gondola-shaped,

& a soul

of mariner-salt.

 

Maybe he's your own age or younger.

Maybe his soul is only a cove

you need to make up.

Maybe the same goes for him

in regards to you,

but let's not start with maybes;

let's start with the heart

who will hold you for yourself.

 

                                                                        Sheets

                                                                                              

We play in peek-a-boo swirls

fresh from the laundry line,

the wind, our canvas, & I

in my Mary Pickford pigtails

& you, swashbuckling Douglas

Fairbanks of the highest seas

bed-stretching before our

Do-si-do flap to flap,

next promenade back,

corners meeting pleats

our hands smooth

& soothe tight

for a nickel's bounce

as we dive in afterwards

like fountain wishes

with shore-leave passion

of laughing heels & kicking legs.

Bio: Having worked a variety health care and Civil Service jobs to pay the bills, Stephen Mead, now retired, always managed to squeeze out time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, an online site depicting artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall.

Poems: Abin Roychoudhury

Eclipse

The fan is whirling, as if a sun

A butterfly on my mosquito net, as if a moon

And I'm the earth, lying, darkness

Union

No one is home

And the door is open

I embrace my solitude, kiss it, 

Engraving streaks of lightning in her breasts

And two bodies, as if two disheveled waves—

Though the door is open, solitude doesn't leave, when the union ends...

Grief

A lonely ant walks across the wall,

getting drenched in the rain...

I gave it all my grief.

Considering it food, it ate all my sadness up.

Having consumed the grief, it became human, and I—an ant

Bio:-

Abin Roychoudhury (born September 2, 1987, in Mangalkote, West Bengal, India) is a prominent Bengali poet, essayist, lyricist, and writer. He gained special recognition in the literary circles for his debut poetry collection, Itipurbe Bolini, published by Ananda Publishers; his other notable poetry collections include Golap Nirapekkha Noy and Bibarna Cycle. Leaving his teaching profession behind, he fully devoted himself to literary pursuits. His popular song "Norom Sobdo Chhuye Dao" is available on major music platforms. He has presented essays at All India Radio, alongside participating in the Krittibas and India-Bangladesh Poetry Festivals. His poems have been published in all notable magazines across India and Bangladesh, as well as in international platforms such as Revista Innombrable (where a selection of his Bengali poems was published in Spanish translation), Atunis (where his Bengali poems appeared in Turkish translation, alongside features on Atunis Galaxy Poetry), World Inkers (jointly published from America and Senegal), Australia’s Multicultural Press, Belgium’s Atunis, Philippines' Artista De Colores, and the Albanian literary magazine Gazeta Destinacioni, desh, abp, sindh courier, etc. Furthermore, he has expanded his literary footprint into translation by rendering Turkish poet Serkan Engin's English poem into Bengali, which has been published on the international poetry platform AllPoetry. For his contributions to literature, he has been honored with the Mallika Sengupta Smriti Puraskar. Currently, he resides in the village of Panuhat near Katwa, West Bengal.

Poems: Paul Bavister

The Beast

As we lay awake in the pub campsite,
there was no howling in the woods,
no thick fur brushing the tent,
no shadow leaping onto the gatepost.

Whining sheep kept us awake
until tractors rumbled across stony fields –
time to take the fidgeting kids
for their morning wash in the toilet block.

We spent the day walking on the moor
until we were dizzy with heat.
In a pub, we ate plates of chips
and pretended to be the beast.

The landlady showed us a photo
of pawprints in the mud,
then battered us with stories
of all those dead sheep.

The kids gulped. We felt our way to the tent.
Halfway through the night, the sheep,
trapped in their fields, fell silent –
the kids had rolled so close

I could hear them blinking.

 

 

Eric

I walked into the brightly lit pub
to celebrate an uncle’s eightieth
and as I loaded my paper plate
I got stared at like I was a ghost

then one of the old boys called out
the name of the granddad I never met:
Eric. Everyone was quick to tell me
he'd died before I was born.

They told me he was a right clown
and once kicked through
the town square in his size thirteens
and accidentally flipped a pigeon

dead. To me he’d only been the phrase
he died before you were born–
but at the party I found out how
they missed his weird jokes

then they huddled together
and whispered how one of their dads
found him writhing in the street
clutching the ulcer that killed him

but when they saw I was listening
they moved on to how
he’d dress up at parties like a ghost
and from beneath the sheet

would flap those size thirteen feet.

 

 

Garden Party

I resented not being invited to the garden party.
I'd done all the work: planted borders,
rolled lawns, hammered up hanging baskets.

I felt I deserved to go, so I did.
I swilled down a glass of fizz
and a drowning wasp

stung until my throat began to close.
I had a vision of myself on the terrace,
shouting orders at a younger me

to get a different job, stop
struggling, engage my brain.
I woke in hospital,

embarrassed at crashing the party.
Was the lawn flat enough for the marquee?
Had I watered the borders?

The poison burned in my chest.
The nurse wired me up,
then I was sick, and in the sick

was a tangle of legs and wings,
a sting. As I recovered, I looked deep 
into my phone and found

the invite I'd missed to the garden party.

Bio: Paul Bavister has published three collection of poetry with Two Rivers Press. His work has recently appeared in Dark Winter, Soup Can and Rusty Truck.

Poetry: MK Kuol

I do not ask for a life

free from pain, if there is such a life;

i do not ask that every wish

of mine be granted whenever, wherever;

i do not ask to only win whenever i fight;

i do not ask for doors that only open

whenever i knock them;

i do not ask that thorns prick me not 

whenever roses i pick;

i do not even ask that i only know

of the joys of abundance &

not the despairs of lack all of my days.

lord, i only ask of you to grant me

the fortitude to bear what i have to bear

without crumbling under its weight,

i only ask should my fate be as the fate

of sisyphus, to eternally roll up a hill

the boulder, grant me the strength to.

***

 

eternity of cold chaos

the sixth seal breaks the sun blackens to a soggy soot

the moon mellows to a parched potato the sky shrinks

into an all-mouth star with gnarled shadows for false teeth

a silver staircase ricochets off a horus chest resting its thin

chin on anubis’s splintered shins an obsidian-blue owl hooting

emerald elegies shoots across the sky hacking a white horse

towards a mangled mirage of an eye-capped babel pigmented

meekly against the fragment of its dulled imagination

a lust-drunk jesus basking in the afterglow of his legends

gently glides his silk-smooth tongue across mary’s thumb-thick

clitoris in the lush light of easter noon the angels shock-stunned

hide their eyes behind their pearl-rimmed wings in mecca

a joy-washed buddha moonwalks out of the closet to the violent

applause of lenient pilgrims the third trumpet blares the mountains

squash to sand-size grains the hills hatch into salt-lumps

the earth lumps into a purple-crusted cake of ice blood-tattooed

with the fluttering silhouettes of warped-limbed gods baphomet’s

sun-bright flame off-flickers its strangled ghost a faint fade

freckle-etched on the dark barks of myths a crow-headed apophis

its wings wind-clipped belly-crawls hades-ward through smoke-licked

clouds its lead-heavy throat cracking with dust-dry crackles

in his winter-dead eyes a frayed black & white portrait of a masked

man leeching blood from the slit neck of a mutilated ten-years-old girl

in a macabre-art-adorned room is impressed the portrait blurs

before crumpling into a grainy montage of an amputated boy asking

his sobbing mother if severed legs can regrow atum heart sizzling

with the loud hunger of holy anger let a wind-shattering wail &

a falcon-winged whirlwind swirls in an eye-blink the world into nun’s

throat where it thaws into a sunless eternity of cold chaos which upon

osiris & atum eternally roam holding hands like teenage lovers

    

***

to that farmer cursing god because your prayers for rain went unanswered

imagine yourself god:

a fiery-eyed wool-haired patriarch

garbed in a gold-sashed light

sitting on a sapphire-washed throne

eyes stretched taut over this universe

stretching beyond the grasp of mortal

imagination seven scarlet stars blaring songs

in your hands a double-edged sword

dangling low out of your lavendered mouth

like a scrotum on a warm summer day

imagine about your throne

a full moon of white-robed gold-crowned

elders on their little thrones golden

bowls humming bright incense before

their feet & four-faced four-winged

angels, skins sparkling like burnished bronze

bodies struck stiff in a rigid rhythm like

heartbeats eyes stuck ice-white voices

thunder-fierce as they croon:

holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy…

imagine jesus your personal assistant

now burnt out after hours

running on cheap caffeine & imposed

discipline hunched over a laptop sifting

through millions of emails of supplications

each uniquely earnest happens upon yours

& as he is about to grant you your wish

a notification pops up on the status bar: the hawker

across your street prays for a clear weather!

***

instructions on surviving a loss

when everything under the sun conspires

& imagine you a job & rob you of everything

you hold dear: your children; your wealth; your health;

your peace of mind, succumb not, succumb not

to the alluring pull to tear your clothes, to shave your head,

to sit in the ashes, to slouch into silence, to curse

the day you were born, to curse god. instead, gather yourself

into a quiet & breathe slow, deep breaths. steady your eyes

on the stars until their cold lights sit stagnant in them

& speak your heart clean to them. drag yourself into the shower

for a long, warm bath. snuggle yourself to bed & cry to sleep.

when the long night draws to a close & spits you to the shores

of an owl-eyed day & your heart is still ruby-red with sores,

gather yourself out of bed to the open fields & walk barefooted

through the meadows until the wet noses of dewed grasses rub

smooth your aching ankles, until the perfumed songs of nature cruise

soft into your ailing ears. bathe whole in the wild wind until its timid

caresses heal your heart of its bruises. feast full on the scents of flowers.

soak yourself in the young sun until the juice of its light seep

into the cracks hollowed against the skin of your soul. do everything

you can to survive, to live through another day. do everything.

often, the only way, the only way to overcome a loss is to outgrow it.

***

a google search on why trees shed leaves during dry season hints at survival mechanism.

it says, & i quote: “...by dropping leaves, trees reduce water loss

through transpiration & prevent dehydration,” which is to say

dry seasons, mean as they are, are kind enough to strip trees 

of their beauty, of their dignity to save them from a possible

death. hypothetically, they say: “what is beauty, what is dignity 

compared to life? what is shame compared to death?” perhaps

the trees do not know of this. perhaps, like us, when we suffer loss,

they wail. perhaps they withdraw. perhaps they vent. perhaps they revile.

what if our losses are as such, means the universe is protecting us with

from the worst possible & like the trees, we hurt because we are oblivious?

BIO: MK Kuol is a self-taught poet from South Sudan whose work has appeared on The Selkie Publications, ANMLY, Beach Chair Press, Konya Shamsrumi, Kalahari Review, D'lit Review, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.