Two Poems by John Grey

THUMPING
 
Noise won’t leave me alone.
I step outside and I’m suddenly
in the belly of a drum.
Sounds thump and deafen
and I’m a small boy again
at some rock and roll concert.
Or I walk into a bar
where there’s this band playing.
I order a drink
but the bartender can’t hear me
over the cacophony.
I go thirsty until the set ends.
It doesn’t end.
I’m out on the street
and every passing car
is booming whatever it takes
to burst my ear drum.
Some gang defends their turf
with a knee to my groin
and a mix-tape implanted
in my head.
I stumble home
just as storm rolls in,
no thunder,
just a Ginger Baker solo
from somewhere in the heavens.
I crawl under the blankets
with my hands pressed hard
against the sides of my head.
But my temples are pigskin.
My fingers don’t miss a beat.

ONE GOOD PRESENCE DESERVES ANOTHER
 
His face is marble.
You peer in his eyes.
They're marble too.
There's no way to waken
the hermit in his cave of a head.
He can't recognize you
let alone
laugh at your jokes,
or praise you
for all you've done in life.
 
But he does eat
what they put before him.
A nibble here.
a nibble there.
Like a sparrow
rather than a vulture.
So, apparently,
he's invested in
prolonging his existence.
His expressions just haven't
caught up in that emotion.
They're still back there
in that "nobody cares
if I live or die" routine.
 
You sit beside him,
hand resting on his withered arm.
You feel like one more
of those tubes
delivering fuel
to his laggard bloodstream.
You're not ashamed of his
being in this state.
But there's nothing
to celebrate either.
His body has discharged
all that you remember.
You have to love
what's left.
Or you don't know
what you're doing here.
Just like him.

13 Poems by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Suck my death

an unborn kitten is knocking at the church of a torn belly

the future flows like sperm from the wall of the gateway

my dead lover gets stuck in my throat where his cock used to hide during 

   blowjob

I dream of having my throat fucked by a nuclear bomb

I dream in my dreams that instead of a strap-on a hydrogen bomb will stick out 

   of my ass

I know that god will not pour anything into my balls during a handjob

mosquitoes and military pilots meanwhile fly towards the scent of blood

not a single military man gave me flowers

only somewhere in the dark a muscular sergeant said: hey fag suck my dick 

   like before death

what if the ammunition depot where I'm already being fucked by a group 

   of soldiers will explode from the fact that I'm so hot and sexy

suddenly I will destroy the army and piss all the military factories 

   with my blood

suddenly I really will be fucked in a minute by the last soldier in the history 

   of mankind

in the meantime they fuck me in all the cracks and call me a fag

I wonder if the soldiers have wives

I wonder how many lovers smeared the mouths of soldiers' wives with sperm

I wonder how many soldiers kissed their wives on the lips after that

I wonder how many nuclear bombs are produced in secrecy

I would like to grow longer hair and dye it blonde

the truth is hidden in the details of my anus

god fuck us all with your voice

we are tired of the silence of the red buttons

after which a nuclear explosion will follow

after fucking a new nuclear bomb will be born in me [?]

Brown town

In the heart of earthy hues,

Brown town,

A needle threads life's tapestry,

Brown town,

A need, a yearning palpable.

People encircle, form clay figures,

Silent echoes of existence,

Seated, molded by time's unseen hands.

Within, dwell stories untold,

Brown town,

Clay figures poised in quiet contemplation,

Sculpted reflections of shared moments.

Basement

Human is the basement of the toilet room

Tenement maze of history and stories

No animal in the world has ever died for its cage before

No animal has invented aerial bombs

my lover asked

my lover asked me when i first saw porn

it would be better if he asked something simpler, like how many times 

   we quarrel with my husband

(sometimes it seems to me that love is too abstract a word for our painfully 

   non-abstract world)

my lover finally pissed me off when he started talking about the non-binary 

   nature of human nature

- I call you bitch to suck and not destroy our homosexual intimacy 

   with the philosophy, fag, - I said to my lover while he turned into a statue

my lover is a beautiful antique statue but alas the statues don't have blood

my professional skills as a bloodsucker are now in question

my lover its: not reacted to my bites and slaps for a day

it seems to me that he sailed away into the cast-iron tunnel of the night

it seems to me that my lover dreams of flowers in ball gowns 

   and without graves

death knocked on the back of the room and asked: whose house is this?

and this ruined house is now a ruin

the anti-missile installation of the heart has failed

the night in the eyes of my dead dead man will no longer dissolve

even explosions won't wake my lover

red sky like a bud revealed death

god's assistant pressed the wrong button again

аll in vain

We

Free

Freends

Friends

French fries

With self burger

We distance

We running

Running away from each other

vegetable garden

my body is a vegetable garden in which nothing grows

we're all hungry without the smell of fresh meat and cum

generals fuck tomorrow's dead for free saving on prostitutes

sun umbrellas and winter sleighs are in vain

warning

a storm warning

the butterflies in my stomach

announced the summer plan to intercept

continuous distance

hair fell on hair

the sky turns red as if it knows

everything in advance

my hair fell for

the first time on your comb

which you will never use again

sho(r)t (hi)story

I want the last nuclear bomb to explode inside my ass

the sun warms the cold body of my lover shot by dawn

the trenches are screaming but no historian

will tell about our buried feelings in the future

the stones are screaming but only the wind drowning in the river

will tell about our buried lovers

No title

the station of tears breaks out and thirst falls from the inside of the heart

let's go to my house, drink my blood, burst my capillaries, tear my ass, 

   tear out my tonsils

meanwhile god's deputy keeps pushing the wrong buttons

onlyfa

the steak burned inside my stomach

the gun kills me but nothing will come out of my vagina

we drink only sperm

my eggs and balls strive for your grape nipple

still life of the world during the continuous noise of a siren

we drink only tears

one cocku

you drink the silence of my moan

and I feel uneasy about spring

which hasn’t come either

part-time

part-time job

being naked in the pristine ruins of houses

Two Poems by Vern Fein

OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE

Our leaders sword fight with nuclear bombs,
sling arrows laden with bio poison.
We have progressed to lethal injections
from stone axes. The pendulum
swings in one direction,
higher and higher till all dead.

Some dress well, reside in mansions,
scoot around in fancy cars, dine gourmet,
wine themselves, but infantile,

wah wah, greedy babies still in caves.

ODE TO MABEL'S BLACK LABEL

You are gone, my brew,
along with whistling at waitresses
by dungareed men
in their favorite bar.

Gone with the others--
Falstaff, Pete's Wicked Ale,
Brown Derby, Red, White and Blue,
to name a few.

But you were my favorite,
braced me through teen years.
I snuck you behind the barn,
when you were not allowed.

As the jingle went:
The premium beer,
at a popular price,
enjoy the best!

I drank you with delight
before you failed me
one hot Florida night,
on that Ft. Lauderdale beach.

Drunk as skunks
and broke as punks,
we staggered into
the store's garish lights.

But not blinded enough,
able to count our change,
gather the $1.30
to buy you Mabel.

Hug your sweaty sides,
as we began to quaff
by the rusty garbage can
on that starlit beach.

Blech! I will never forget.
You tasted like gas.
I retched and coughed
Threw the six pack into the can.

Now older, richer and wiser,
I sip my fancy brews,
remember you as the girl
I left behind so long ago.

Oh, Mabel, such a different time,
an America now gone,
cheap beer the boon and doggle
of all those thirsty men.

Four Poems by Mark Young

Count Zero
 
On a palm
frond — which
though
fallen
still hangs
 
suspended
between the
branches of
another tree —
a magpie
 
waits for
the world to
end. This
assumption of
catastrophe
 
through the
misinterpretation
of chance
events
is a condition
 
common to
many black
& white birds
as well as
to ourselves.
 
 
Amnesiac
 
He kept his balance in a
small corner of his inner
ear for days like this.
The fishing-poles are
hung with ribbons. Some
 
sort of festival, though
the catch & the crowd
are small. The faithful
wait for a miracle; but
plenty is in poor supply
 
this year due to the pesti-
cide runoff from the sugar-
cane farms that cover the
countryside. He paused to
let an ambulance go past.
 
 
Rover
 
In most of the snap-
shots brought back
with him from his
 
time on Mars, he is
seen posed against
a landscape full of
 
rock formations. He
laughs when asked if
he saw faces in them.
 
 
A line from Hans Magnus Enzensberger
 
The dialogue has broken down.
Rumors have begun to spread, be-
coming culture war fodder. A math-
ematical model tells what happens
 
when they are endlessly passed to
someone not yet made aware of them.
Now rioting crowds clamor at the
gates. How exhausting everything has
 
become, a state that will continue
while there are still a few asphodels
left or we run out of shoelaces to tie
together in order to hang ourselves.

Three Essays by Howie Good

On Becoming a Writer

Doreen, our across-the-parking-lot neighbor, is lavishly watering the pots of zinnias that decorate her stoop. I count the colors: red, pink, yellow, purple, orange. My own plants are drooping in the oven-like heat. Is there something to be gained from loss? I once locked eyes with celebrated novelist Philip Roth on Tinker Street in Woodstock, at the time the world capital of hippiedom. He was standing on the sidewalk outside a store that sold newspapers and sundries. I was too awed to speak or even nod to him. To this day, I wonder if I made a mistake by just walking past. Maybe he would have given me priceless advice on becoming a writer. The sun has climbed up the sky. I am all the ages I have been. Doreen notices me and waves. All her flowers are alight.


Gabapentin

Let me tell you something of what happens when the medication, an anticonvulsive also prescribed for persistent pain, breaches the blood-brain barrier. My head fills with mist. Suddenly face-chomping zombies aren’t the only ones in need of behavioral therapy. Rain hisses like an acetylene torch. I have unwelcome encounters in basements and back streets with women who torture their own bodies. One or another of them saws off my head under the cover of helping. Just prior, the future passed in an instant. Now flowers keep throwing themselves into the sea to get there.

In the Company of the Dead

Yesterday I returned to the cemetery for the first time since dad died. Thankfully, the rain held off. At graveside the ultra-orthodox rabbi, a short, feisty, bearded man in black, spoke with annoying confidence about God’s plan. “This would make a great ‘Twilight Zone’ episode,” I said when, back in the car, I realized we were lost inside the vast grounds of the cemetery. “An older, married couple drives round and round a cemetery for the rest of eternity, searching for an exit that doesn’t exist.” The cemetery roads, narrow and in disrepair, weren’t designed to accommodate humongous SUVs. I feared clipping a headstone as I turned onto one crumbling unmarked road after another, never sure which might lead out. Wherever I looked, I saw the same dismal view, a confusing sprawl of headstones of varied shapes and sizes stretching away into the distance. There wasn’t a single car or person in sight, only the dead and their monuments under a threatening sky. Barbara, who was initially her usual calm self, was breathing noisily now, but I don’t think either of us ever actually thought we would remain trapped inside the cemetery for all time – this time.

My Swedish Butter Knife, by Pravasan Pillay

In the summer of 2020, I bought myself a new butter knife. I purchased it at a popular household, garden and office supply store here in Sweden.

I was browsing the kitchen utensils section of the store for a new potato peeler – and that's where the butter knife, or smörknivet, caught my eye. It was utilitarian looking: a chunky plastic handle that fit comfortably in my palm, and a broad, thin metal blade, with a shallow serrated edge.

It felt light in my hand. The handle, imprinted "Made in Sweden", had a large hole at the top to hang off a hook.

I didn't need a new butter knife. I owned several traditional Swedish wooden butter knives, all of which worked fine. Wooden smörknivar are ubiquitous throughout the country. I have grown to appreciate their simple design in the more than decade that I have lived here. They're affordable but beautiful-looking, natural, unpretentious and practical – a distillation of Swedish design.

Along with knäckebröd, a flat, hard crispy bread, wooden smörknivar are one of my favourite gifts to give when I visit South Africa every few years – Swedes in general make great value-for-money knives, such as the cult Morakniv, the brand of choice of many knife enthusiasts around the world.

I mostly use my wooden smörknivar to spread margarine, but also various spreads-in-tubes such as Kalles Kaviar, the iconic Swedish fish roe sandwich paste. I, additionally, use them as makeshift spatulas when scrambling or frying eggs – their dull edges don't damage non-stick pans.

Still, despite being satisfied with my wooden knives, I decided to buy this plastic and metal variant. I reasoned that it was cheap and, besides, one more butter knife in the drawer couldn’t hurt.

At home, I was impressed by the flexibility of the blade, which was something you didn't get with the wooden knives. This flexibility, which made spreading easier, combined with the width of the blade, turned my new, bought-on-a-whim, butter knife into the star of my kitchen within days.

I began using it for all manner of tasks – its intended uses of buttering bread and spreading spreads, of course – but I also used it as a spatula, palette knife, a ruthlessly efficient scrapper of the bottom of nearly-empty peanut butter, mayonnaise and sambal jars, and for cutting sandwiches. I even used it to scoop up masala from my spice dabba when I was too lazy to grab a teaspoon.

It was, in short, a kitchen-counter workhorse – much like my tomato knife.

If I had to put it plainly I would say that using this very basic object has made me happy in a tiny way. It has made humdrum tasks seem less humdrum.

After asking around I found out that this type of butter knife is sometimes known in Sweden as a "lilleman" or "little guy". So, I thought I would write these 500 words for you, little guy, in return for the pleasure you have brought me.