Two Poems by Tim Frank

One Man Crimewave
 
One morning,
by the wild thickets
of an overgrown fish pond,
thirty grey squirrels
lay neatly aligned.
Yellow bleach
seeped from their mouths—
limbs stiff, eyes glazed.
They were seriously dead.
Tiny tombstones
made of paper and bricks
were placed by each rodent
with angry epitaphs
scrawled in sinuous font.
A child shrieked at the sight,
shaking
the leaves from the trees
for a minute,
then she switched on her tablet
sang sleepy lullabies
and simply forgot.
On the high street,
the McDonald’s front window
was cracked like ice.
A fresh ball
of white cabbage,
balanced on a worn cricket bat,
was left by the sliding doors
along with a dozen Burger King whoppers,
congealed and dry.
Then a chorus of bass-heavy
techno
rumbled around town
emerging
from spiked public trash cans
near bus stops, dive bars and busy coffee shops.
Some people recoiled
at the staggering blare,
but others danced like lunatics,
with beers and bongs and didgeridoos
until lunchbreak was over.
Finally, the villain
surrendered to the cops—
fingertips slit
to hide his prints,
clutching a banner that said,
“The world is mine!”
written in broad strokes of clotted blood.
But he was a small-time crook
from a small estate
where kids brawled
in dank stairwells
over cheap phones
and underground train tickets.
And no one cared for him,
not really—
not his filthy mutt
who just gazed
at maroon skies
while chewing the toaster,
nor his mother
who cried
when her teapot got cold
or when the sun wouldn’t set
before the clocks hit noon.
 
 
Useless

Jessica is useless at holidays.
She lathers lotion
onto her watery eyeballs
then dips her head in the sand
to shield her bottle blonde hair
from the whip of the sun.
She’s clueless at dinner—
she gropes her buttered peas
fumbles her corn niblets,
pours gravy
down her chest
and then pukes out the window.
She can’t text, either,
she hurls vile emojis,
accents and hyphens
all jumbled
into a blur
of reckless words and ideas.
Jessica is cruel—
she’s sleeping around
and she’s no good at that either.
I filmed her
swapping spit with some guy in McDonald’s,
burger sauce smeared
across both of their lips.
I challenged her
by the drive-thru
and she said,
“I’ve had enough of your insults and the constant gaslighting
about my all-over eczema and my thick monobrow.
No wonder I seek comfort in
cheeseburgers and fries
and a kind man
who just lets me be?”
I have flexible limbs, a rat
eating snake
and a full head of hair,
but not much else.
I’m a weak man
with a flimsy facade.
Maybe I’m the useless one
who needs to make changes.
“Four double cheeseburgers,
and five Big Macs, please.”

That’ll cushion the blow.

Volta, by J.L. Moultrie

I was eight the first time I experienced heart-rending fear. We had just been evicted for the first time, and my mother, brother and I moved in with my older sister. It was summer and she’d just filed for divorce from her husband.

 

Their dog, Mink, was tied by rope in the backyard, next to the garage. He barked viciously and charged powerfully until he broke loose. I bolted down the long driveway and didn’t look back until I reached the far end of the block. I remained there until sundown.

 

***

 

Winter came and I was unprepared. I peered into the snow; tiny drops of scarlet. My first nosebleed. I panicked and abandoned my playmates for our flat. The spare trees and statuesque sky betrayed the fabric of time.

 

***

 

My grandfather was a slight, dark, foul-mouthed man who passed before I was born. He was also a hard drinking auto plant worker. For years, following shift, he’d get sauced at the bar before coming home to curse out my grandma in front of my father and his siblings.

 

Because of this, my father rejected convention, attempting to escape the genetic shadow cast by his father. As an adult he became addicted to crack and heroin, but refrained from ever touching alcohol. He was firm, taught me right from wrong and began to understand me early on.

 

We’ve steadily grown closer over the years.

 

The trajectory of my adolescence mirrored that of my father and his father before him. I was young when I first tasted alcohol, but it never did much for me. I can pick it up and put it down without issue.

 

Weed is a different story. I began smoking at thirteen and tasted liquor for the first time the same summer. The weed stuck and alcohol remains an intermittent shadow waiting for the right conditions. I recently decided to pursue sobriety; coming up on my first month.

 

***

 

I was twenty-one, rushing to trade dollars for coins to use a payphone. It was my sole means of keeping in touch. The gas station lights blushed against fleeting twilight.

 

A carousel of mental wards, psychiatrists and adverse med reactions rendered me disoriented and afraid. An unhoused man sometimes stood near the gas station entrance; I offered him whatever I could spare. Once, I asked him for advice and details about his plight. He had no one. I told him I was scared and had no solid plan.

 

He said, “Just keep on living.”

 

There was a highway beside us and I felt like walking in it.

 

But his eyes told me, “We all pretend.”

 

*** 

 

Last spring, I quit my auto plant job. The wages were fine, but the ten-hour shifts and two-hour commute guaranteed no work-life balance. I was also not taking care of myself – I gained weight, developed sleep deprivation and was generally not a happy person.

 

I also began to realize that my financial goals were clashing with creative and moral ones. A few times a week I’d stop and talk with the Socialist, anti-capitalists demonstrating in front of the plant. They were knowledgeable and opposed to the exploitation of workers and the unchecked authority of centralized power.

 

My mom told me that that my father once had a job in an auto plant but quit after a brief while. As a teenager, I felt that if he’d done me a disservice; if he’d stayed in the plant, I wouldn’t have had to suffer such hardships. I silently scorned him for quitting, believing that my condemnation safeguarded me from making the same choice.

 

I failed to consider that being indoors for long periods of time was torture for my father. He loves being outside, even during bitter winters in Michigan. In my frustration, I was selfishly projecting how I thought his life should’ve gone. I was trying to supplant his autonomy with my own illegitimate contempt.

 

I wouldn’t accept any hypothetical that involved my father undermining his own free will, even if it meant a more advantageous upbringing for me. Him living an honest and authentic life is all that matters.

 

*** 

 

We were thirteen and had just met. She thought I wore eyeliner, but my lashes were just thick. We kissed in the hallway of her friend’s apartment. She moved my hands from her hips to her rearend. Her lips were soft, but I didn’t understand anything. Later that night, we spoke on the phone and she told me her boyfriend was visiting the next day.

 

My father came to see me soon after and we got Chinese take-out. Before he left; he asked why I sounded so sad. I didn’t have the language to fill the gulf between us.

 

***

 

Frozen oceans in front of me, serpents lurking in stiffened leaves. A coral mosaic crystallized the anguish. Plundered my conscience for solace only to find doves. Who did not speak but knew who I was.

 

***

 

A few days after Mink got loose, my sister’s ex-husband introduced us to one another. I learned that Mink’s vision was poor, and because of this, he relied on his sense of smell more than anything. He became animated as I timidly approached him. He then pressed his wet nose against my outstretched hands, wrists, then my clothes. His tail began wagging energetically when I fed him treats.

J.L. Moultrie

Four Poems by Steve Armstrong

Rationalism

 

A spell of ten is a complete form

Of option means through a turn

In the caveat express. You perhaps

Because perhaps you protest, get

Dosed on the hillside by colors

Running and spindly for the means

 

To land upon your look, kid.

Take me out to the hallway and

Rate the cash setting; the reason

For that is this, that you are

Seized by grit and up-post hazing 

Such that zeroes collect on the


Sandy surfaces. The work book

Setting down for a solitary week

Leaves few rights or figures. Even

Talk rooms board the story change.

That spirit upon my avenue passes,

Tickles all over and tacks back up.

Peeling

The keepers rest on the brother

At the food of the hill. They are

Ledges with toes on their mark.

Spots visit toward the record

 

Months of animals, and send 

Ropes to prep the banana. Fleets

Of doors turn toward the comfort,

Mounting each center in the size.

 

One thing is sure of the wreck and

Pauses in the game, a sour thing to

Connect out of flocks. The glass

Stands guard through, so I remove

 

The chairs, frame the table to order

Some of the new silver and consult

Fees of entry. The cones pull each

Needle to the old chap, all ringing.

Loop De-Loop

 

We pin a three-week high

Almost at the void. The move

In the show press is gold, folds

The sun into a review of the

Fort obtaining. Revival rapping

 

Calls the year and paints it clean.

Put downs in near panic are left

To go at such times, open to

Knots and twenty leapers in the

Updraft. Keys copy tapes at least

 

One time, to at least one routine.

The fade we all know ends a year

Before the bond, and falls into

A million in the morning. I can

Shrink the dryness if three in the

 

Wind loop the samples. To fit,

We want you by the instrument,

To deduce and replace the whole

Brood since spines do not fiddle

Over the station during roll out. 

Hoops

 

You are crowded with drums for

Believing prices can be solved.

So many rooms near the horn

Recline in support and gild

Composure when they clear.

 

Cartoons dismiss that you like

Tools in your world. Left and right

Say team when associations trade

Fronds under the music. See that

What leans into the growth has

 

Nowhere to hide, biting pints along

Main lines. The colors seem to like

Parking the fun, but don’t forget

The seconds are holding forth and

Off to a great start. You make some

 

Fair effects of the brief as if you

Returned a few times this year.

At the show there are stripes

Hiking up to your trust, and wales

Display their gains at the booth.

Four Poems by Mark Young

Lotka-Volterra

 

The silent animals converge.

Count the eyes at night. Divide

 

by two. Measure the distance.

A phrase away? Perhaps a paragraph.

 

Predator & prey is a classic

mathematical model. It is a balance.

 

Is there an answer? Is this

a riddle? A rebus of fear? There

 

is a space between predator &

prey, a mathematical construct.

 

Reduce the prey & the predators

diminish also. They die. One

 

family left. The prairie empty.

Is this what they are waiting for?

 

No prey, no predators. The sun

grows hotter. Oceans encroach

 

upon what was once grazing land.

Count the eyes by day. Desolation.

 

 

Retail Identity Poetics

 

Published in a hardcover format,

312 pages, a book on identity poetics,

& how queer theory doesn’t necessarily

have to exclude lesbianism. Retailed

for $110.00. That was over twenty

years ago. Think how big it would

be now, & what it would cost, with

so many more shades of gender to

be cognizant of, in a world adrift,

as an uncertain identity, & nothing

that now suits in the fashion arcades.

Two-Step

 

Each night she

would put him

in an air-

tight jar & they

would dance

 

a little

 

before he went

to bed. They’d

take it in

turns as to who

would lead.

 

 

A line from Marjorie Taylor Greene

 

Unsure if it's the Pope or the Presi-

dent who lives in The White House,

this person then says something

stupid like I'm sorry you're having a

 

hard time. But excessive apologizing

might also be associated with a men-

tal health condition; & there are some

other actions that can be taken, not so

 

partisan in their fearmongering. Send

a get well card with an elephant em-

bossed on the plain white envelope. Add

the message: We don't let criminals serve.