inspired by Robert Wood Lynn
The problem with riding shotgun is
the thought you're driving & then thoughts sinking—
soon it is better blinded, ears hollowed out
& did I tell you my bird Frankie died
last night? She stiffened by the water trough every claw angled up
& I knew there were no guarantees when we started.
Today there is the feeling
whatever I've gotten close to has turned up dead inside,
far from me—& all I ever wanted was to direct traffic.
From where I hang in the trees above the jungle,
I can see the beaches, & the cruise ships unloading on the docks—
& their thoughts. Maybe every turn & how they will breathe.
Tonight, a building on 67th street, the climb is sleek mirrored,
the people grow smaller beneath, & I step
out the window.
The Earth is covered in flies.
--
Manny Grimaldi is a writer, actor, and editor from Louisville, Kentucky. He is managing editor at Yearling Poetry Journal, in Lexington, Kentucky. His publications and future pubs include The Rye Whiskey Review, Moss Puppy, Pegasus, The Crossroads Literary Magazine, Drinkers Only, LexPoMo anthologies, and Club Plum.
I am the ugliest person in the world and in demand. Highly paid and sought after because, in this world obsessed by beauty, I make everyone else look better.
And in this world fashioned in vanity that quality is priceless.
My looks are now interesting, exotic, different and a talking point.
Ugliness is now a valuable commodity.
Oh, I know my looks are just an object. They’re not interested in me as a person of what lies beyond this covering.
It's all so superficial.
But I can't complain. I am well paid and live in a fabulous property. A mansion with grounds, called Corvus Hall.
At least I don’t have to slave away like my parents did. My mum cleaned dirty rank spit filled floors, destroying her skin with harsh chemicals for a pittance.
Or my dad, who had to leave the house at 5 am and work in all weathers, coming home in darkness soaked and chilled to the bone.
Both of them are old before their time.
At least my work is not exhausting, though perhaps just as humiliating and belittling. But doesn’t everybody sell a small piece of their soul when exchanging their labour for cash?
At school, there was not much down for me. I was stupid, clumsy and from a poor family. Added to that, I was very ugly.
I had a dream that like the tale of the ugly duckling, I too would one day awaken a graceful and serene handsome swan.
But it was just a dream that never came true.
Each morning, I’d awake and look in the mirror and see the same face staring back at me.
One day, someone shouted in the playground, “He’s ugly, ugly as a crow!”
“He’s Crow Face,” replied someone.
I became Crow Face.
The nickname stuck and followed me throughout. Nobody, except my close family, used my other name after that.
To the world, I was Crow Face.
I learnt early on that what matters in this world is who your family are, “who you know,” and what skills you have, “what you know.”
In both areas, I was at a disadvantage.
I looked set for a life of struggle and squalor.
But as luck would have it, there were changes occurring in the world. Everybody was becoming more obsessed with beauty. In all its outward forms, everyone strove for physical perfection. Even those of average looks could now, with money and effort, improve their looks to be good-looking.
The more the people around me became beautiful the more I stood out. A contrast with my ugliness.
In the land of graceful swans the crow sticks out.
And I was an ugly crow at that.
That's when I started being in demand. Those who had mocked me, disdained and ignored me for my “Crow face” as a teenager now courted me. Not because they liked me. I never deluded myself on that front, nor was it any innate quality like my personality or wit. I had none.
No, they prized and valued me for my ugliness, my “Crow Face.”
I would be paid to escort beautiful people and be photographed in their company. Paid to appear with them. Paid to do adverts. All this just to make the others in the photo or the programme look better looking. Compared to me, even the most average-looking person could look stunning.
I felt degraded at times. Like I was selling my body. But I was selling my face rather than my body.
Whatever name you choose to call me, I don’t care. Just pay the fee and I’ll be ugly for you.
And then move on. I’ll quickly forget your face as it fades away.
In this world, unless you’ve been given privilege at birth, you’ve got to use whatever you have been given. We all have to make our own deals with the devil and hope we can live with the terms.
Play with the cards you are dealt with and now I found that my deuces had been changed into Aces.
Life now highly valued my innate ugliness. So I made sure to use it to my material advantage.
The alternatives were not very appealing. A life of precarious low-paid drudgery.
So they can now think what they like of me. I will be rolling in riches and live in a fancy place in peace and quiet.
I made sure that my mum no longer had to wear out her hands and knees and have her skin reddened by burning cleaning chemicals.
My dad no longer had to get up at dawn to get soaked and frozen or burnt.
When I close the door behind me I am my own being. I have filled my place with objects that interest me. I have collected everything that is considered ugly and broken to surround myself.
Outside all I see is non ending beautiful perfection which holds no interest for me and sometimes sets feelings of revulsion.
Someday, when I’ve earned enough, I’ll lock the doors and never again set foot in a world I don’t feel I belong in. Nor will I ever look upon the empty beauty that exists everywhere.
In my world ugliness shall be its own beauty.
I can be comfortable being myself.
Here I can be Christopher and not “Crow Face.”
--
Simon is a writer from England. He seeks solitude and shadow.
I see the blue sea
in the tears from your
eyes. In disorder,
a miracle is
in order. Arrows
from white clouds had hit
their mark, eyesight marred,
a broken mirror,
with light extinguished.
The blue sea is in
need of calm. So much
suspense, what will
bring the light back, there
is too much foam, in an
instant your blue eyes
overflowed, a flood…
--
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Crossroads, Fearless, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories.
i watched an octopus walk down
the street smoking a cigarette
lost souls never batted an eye
the beeping of a stolen car
the rhythms of a city being
torn apart
two packs of marlboro lights
some shitty bar, tucked away
down an alley and a few stairs
need the password to get in
or some cash
two white russians and a
glass of sparkling water
the bartender raises his third eye
and notices a fool a mile away
the octopus walks in the bar
with a gun
looking for you know who
i sat down and started to drink
it was like a scene out of star
wars though i doubt anyone
here remembers
--
J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is trapped in suburbia, plotting his escape. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Synchronized Chaos, Horror Sleaze Trash, Mad Swirl, The Beatnik Cowboy and The Rye Whiskey Review. His most recent chapbook, with Casey Renee Kiser, Altered States of The Unflinching Souls, is now out in the world. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
A frustrating necessity, through the pursuit of which 99% of us are obliged to spend an unfortunate amount of our lives dedicated, and essentially waste and fritter half or more of waking hours in the best good years away towards should we care to entertain notions of having our own place or starting a family, possibilities which even through diligent effort might be thwarted by circumstance and ill fortune. All to benefit a tiny portion of the population who through no effort or deserving of their own were born into possession of copious quantities of it, and use like a bayonet to force the rest of us to march to the beat of their drums, prostrate ourselves and wait hand and foot upon them for vast majority of our primes, to make them more which we are entitled to no share of their profits resulting from, but rather are broken off tiniest crumbs they are legally and demandedly able to. The root of all treachery, dark god to which bloated rapacious industrialist and devilish tycoon dedicate every conscious moment hour and care, at the altar of which untold quantities of blood has been and continues to be spilt throughout the ages, at the heart of why every war has been waged, each genocide rationalized. What has made prostitutes, johns, janes, pimps or madams of every man and woman since time immemorial, that horrid blasphemous abhorrent necessity on which every facet of our modern society seems to pivot. I curse it.
feet first –
takes the bourbon
straight
wolf tunnel
more shootin’
less tyin’
camellias blooming
overturned lamp is still
illuminated
gun smoke
chews
the toothpick
--
Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. His most recent collection of poetry "Eleusinian Solutions" was just released by Mōtus Audāx press!
Affection or lust,
We call it love and
Guard against infection.
We concede attraction
But In contradiction
We espouse capitalism,
Play for seduction,
Embrace free love
However, make illegal
Fee love.
So the moral is
That it is okay
To get some action
So long as it is
Not a transaction.
--
Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of two poetry collections: Planet Mort (2024) and Simple Arithmetic & Other Artifices (2014). His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.
The number eight is
a pair of farm-fresh eggs,
prepared on the griddle,
over-easy,
whereas I exist
in two paltry dimensions,
rendered effortlessly
on the page,
though not within space.
No doubt, there is a flaw
in my construction,
akin to your perception
of consciousness,
tethered, as they say,
to the manicured
hands of time.
--
Kelly Moyer is an accomplished poet, photographer and fiber artist, who pursues her muse through the cobbled streets of New Orleans’s French Quarter as well as the mountains of North Carolina. Hushpuppy, her collection of short-form poetry, was released last year by Nun Prophet Press. Notecards containing a few of her most popular images are available at www.etsy.com/shop/theunfazedmoon.