In Dallas, Dreaming of Dublin by David Clear

Ah, another anniversary has come and gone Johnny me boy.

I’ve stopped keeping track.

Wise. Pass me another ale, would ya?

So different 61 years on, grandpa. So, he shouted out, “I am not resisting arrest.” Today they would have just shot him right there in the theatre.

They were both waiting. Yes, 61 years ago they couldn’t dispatch a team as quickly as they do today, so the cops had to wait. Do we kill him right away or find out if he’s hidden anything? Poor Lee, not really poor because he signed on willingly. Ooh, we have to stop the communist menace blah blah.

Anyway, he was hoping “someone will come forward.” Someone came forward alright, that very next Sunday morning. Lee hadn’t hidden any documents; he trusted his handlers would. And they did, for decades. Easily.

You’re sounding a little cynical gramps, he smiled, cracking open two more ales.

Johnny me boy, try to remember what you remembered.

“Mr. President, it’s time to deplane.”

“So, this is it. But it’s not too late. Nobody is going to make me get off the plane and get in that limo. I could just order that we turn around and go back to Washington. And then I see them, the faces behind the faces that will betray me this day. I’m an undercover agent in enemy territory. And I’ve neglected to maintain secure backup. I am a marked man now, have been since Cuba surely. This is a war with no front lines no uniforms no way of telling good from evil. 58,000 boys, many still children this morning, are also marked.

“Jack, c’mon, let’s go.”

Jackie looking so beautiful in her pink suit. I’ve been so awful to her; she’s put up with so much. She’s strong, she’ll go on. I can see in her eyes now that she knows, and that she knows we have to go through with this even though neither one of us knows why. Like me, part of her is saying, close the goddamn plane doors and get us the hell out of here! I do not want to have to stand next to that murdering bastard while he winks at his buddy standing off to the side.

But then, we’re outside walking on the tarmac. Jesus, we’re running out of time. But the people, the normal, good, decent people look so happy. Does it have to be today? Such a nice sunny day?

Then we’re in the car. There’s one of my agents holding his hands up, dumbfounded as to why he’s being called back to not run alongside. They weren’t all in on it, only the ones that had important roles to play in getting it accomplished. Remember guys, we get the body out of Texas as soon as possible, we don’t let anybody stop us! Shoot them if you have to, we’ll call it national security. Jesus, that’s all we need is a legitimate honest autopsy! Oh, and don’t forget that bucket of water to splash on the back seat.

When Cornwallis surrendered to Washington the band played the world turned upside down. How could the mightiest empire on earth have lost to these rabble rousers? How could the mightiest military empire on earth be unable to defeat a country the size of Maryland without an air force?

Well, one because victory was never the goal, the goal was making fat cats fat and happy. Yeah, and some of them actually believed the anticommunist mind game. Beware foreign entanglements said GW. No matter how much money and self-righteousness there is to be had.

How would we know what was possible if the impossible didn’t happen periodically? The end of the selling of indulgences, the inquisitions, the witch and other dissident burnings at the stake.

Birthing of a new consciousness; painful and bloody. The old guard never wants to go, always fights off the new to hold on to its power. Check in at the campus in Ohio soon.

So now not just the 58,000 but cities will burn, literal and figurative bombs will go off inside the country, the bodies will pile up. Nothing will be the same. Not necessarily always better but never the same. A group consciousness the depth and breadth of which no one really understands but nevertheless cannot and will not be stopped.

Making the turn on Elm, Christ, I’ve waited too long. I know it will be quick at least. I could be sailing off Cape Cod, I could be reading a spy novel, I could be with Mary. Dear Mary, I’m sorry, I know they will get you too. Is this my punishment for all that? Is it too late to just come clean and resign? Wait it out several years and then become the talk show circuit darling like that future guy who did far worse? Jackie will divorce me, she has principles. But I’ll get to visit the kids, collect my pension, retreat somewhere to Greece to write my memoirs. Or just stay beloved, however flawed, for a few more minutes. I did some good things. But I guess I did more that were worse. I know I did. I’ll have to come back.

Did it happen already? Have I left this body? Everything is moving so very slowly; a single strand of Jackie’s hair moves on the breeze like the laziest ripple of water from a stone’s throw.

And then, finally, and God Damit, don’t you know they miss! Again, and again! Hey, maybe I can get out of this. Guess they hired some amateurs. Save money for the CEOs, as is and will be the custom. Or maybe the shooters are having second thoughts, wouldn’t that be a hoot? I read somewhere Joan of Arc’s executioner was quite upset with himself afterwards.

Hey driver, how many shots will it take for you to friggin’ speed up and get us out of here? Other guy up front, the governor is howling in pain, think maybe you’d jump over the seat and shield me? Or just keeping looking ahead? Slowing down now? Why the hell are we slowing down?

Hey driver, what the hell are you looking at? The getaway road is in front! Oh, right. Then the brakes go on! The brakes, yes. Driver was told, if our guys are too inept to hit a moving target, go ahead and make it easy for them. Make it child’s play, for that is what we are, children of the devil.

You shouldn’t have to stop too long. Got it? Okay, now, speed up! Good job. But what’s so unusual about it all, really? Et tu Brutus? Our mob buddies are always getting whacked by their close associates, follow the money. Even now Ruby is being told his job is take out Lee or else.

Why did Jackie crawl on the back and try to get away? Because she knew she was sitting in the bull’s eye. The car was stopped, dead! Yes, and except for trustworthy secret service agents, likely all the other passengers would be too, soon. Fewer talking witnesses. She knew I was gone; she knew she had to try and save herself for the kid’s sake.

Ok now, enter the secret service heroics- push her back and take off at 90 mph.

And so there we are at Parkland finally. Not much more to say, not much more to do. Getting sleepy, peaceful. Will miss holding John and Caroline. But we’re right here dad. John, Caroline, you’re all grown up, you’re beautiful.

Traipsing thru a field in sweet Ireland with great-great grandfather Patrick.

That’s what I remember, gramps. Since then, I’ve just been wandering around here, kind of lost. And drunk. I gave it the old Harvard try, I thought. What good did it do?

Well, Johnny, it birthed a new consciousness. Like you said, raw and bloody. But a stone in a pond the ripples of which are still going. You’ve visited the plaza with me from time to time. So many people are absorbing those ripples each in their own way, and ….

Don’t mean to pee on your parade gramps, but Buddha, Jesus, etc., yeah, they all raised the collective consciousness. Then the tsunami of evil bastards wiped it out and we had to start again.

Let me ask you this, what if an alien ship landed on the White House lawn with an HD video of how the whole thing happened- (you know they have a copy) from the secret early planning stages at the Texas ranch through to the actual shooting, all the suspicious deaths afterwards, and they said, there it is earthlings, now what are you gonna do about it?

He chuckled, good one gramps. Thing is, that video would also show the pot, the acid, the starlets, the painkillers, and all the rest. Yeah, I could have done a little more with the time I had. Just take some sensible precautions, but no, truth be told I thought I was Caligula, maybe again, rich and powerful and invincible. I’ll likely be happier reincarnating next time as a potato farmer.

Now they both smiled and laughed and drank in the sunshine but neither was drunk, just happy.

Oh Christy, is he here already?

Afternoon, gentlemen, I’ve got some paperwork here for a reincarnation. Do I have the right man?

You do, he said, I know it’s time for me to go, just like I knew then. I’m hoping this time though not for martyr but potato farmer?

Hmm, the man said,

“I show something different.”

“See ya later Johnny boy.”

--

David Clear is a child of the 50's, nurtured by the 60's, inebriated by the 70's and 80's, married in the 90's, and since the 00's writing while keeping a day job. Originally from New England, he has one online work published at amazon for .99. What a deal!

Yup, I'm Fine by Richard LeDue

My nervous twitch has started
to want the rest of me to calm down,
while cockroach sized dreams
sneak about in the dark
living on crumbs and dust,
only to scurry away in the morning,
leaving me a screeching alarm clock
to steady myself with,
as if waking up at the same time
everyday could mean more
than getting dressed, coffee,
and a job that fuels inflation
instead of a passion that used to be
bigger than car payments and rent.

--

Richard LeDue (he/him) lives in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada. He has been published both online and in print. He is the author of eleven books of poetry. His latest full-length book, “Sometimes, It Isn't Much,” was released from Alien Buddha Press in February 2024, and his latest chapbook, “Mourning for the Petals,” was self-published online for Kindle in November 2024.

URGENY by DS Maolalai

I call all the plumbers.
call electricians.
there’s a meeting at 2
for a high-level statement
from management.
turns out, apparently,
that this month we’re down
7k and it’s hitting the wage
bill. somebody hasn't
receipted their purchase orders.
the quoted works process
has several gaps
and hasn't in any case
been followed correctly
so even without those
we would still have been short.
I call all the plumbers.
I call electricians. send
calendar invites
and texts. get sent
a new spreadsheet
marked URGENY
with typos
and highlighted lines
in my name.

--

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

The Sickness, The City by Taryn Allan

An animal sound

Run through a vocoder

A cry of pain

Synthesised into ambivalence

The sound of extinction

As elevator music

It haunts the streets and alleys

The tops of the tower-blocks

And the metastasis of corridors

The sound of night

In a world gone mad

Time and space and memory

In dementia

The wailing flutter of the vulture’s wings of angels

Who can no longer carry you home

--

Taryn Allan scribbles things into notebooks. Occasionally, those scribblings coalesce and have been known to appear in such places as the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase, Horror Sleaze Trash, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, and The Beatnik Cowboy, amongst others.

Bloated Earth by Michael Roque

Earth is bloated,
bursting its belt,
neglecting all knowledge of gut-brain axis
for cheap fills, fast food,
caramel, candy coating the mind
till mentally ill.

Consume—
gorge,
crave.

Addict planet
enslaved to sweet sugars,
bitter salts,
dodges all faults
for the fatty prison
it won’t burn off.

Indulge—
chew,
gulp.

World weighing down
on buckling knees,
sees in toothpaste-stained mirrors,
the monster it’s morphed into.
Says to itself—
“Lookin’ good.”

--

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Michael Roque discovered his love for poetry and prose amid friends on the bleachers of Pasadena City College. Now he currently lives in the Middle East and is being inspired by the world around him. His poems have been published by literary magazines like North Dakota Quarterly, Cholla Needles, The Literary Hatchet and others.

Stressful Music by James Croal Jackson

The repetitive techno at Trace
squelches and invades my ears
I am just trying to drink
coffee and move on with
my life in an aesthetically-
pleasing way with green
plaid and rough jeans
but flies swirl
around my head and
I can’t stop thinking
of you starting your
new job at the hospital
and all I want is to hold
your hand again with
the fingers currently
pressing up against
the dust of keyboard
and the history of
my heart plugged
into the wall where
ghosts walk through
all hours and stay
in the dark until
the mud begins
to dry at the crust
of my shoes
in the warm
mornings

--

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring, and The Indianapolis Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Determinism by Ian C Smith

Every moment spent apart, and some together, were lacerating. She was balanced, upper middle-class, hope’s child. Me? The dark side of the moon to her, scarred by working-class collisions. My old car’s adjustable seats cranked back up, we often fondled between breathless silences following my bursts of outdated ideas about fidelity. I even secretly fantasised over which body part I would sacrifice by surgical amputation if it could ensure waking beside her each morning for the rest of my days as in…he would give his right arm for… I can’t remember where we parked; a grey trance of sky, a wasteland unlocatable now, the abandoned railway, iron stitched to weeds, the last train’s haunting whistle gone, gone.

Both carrying Norton anthologies like earnest Christians toting bibles we met in our first Thomas Hardy tutorial, then clicked in the student union café. Discovering we were both born in the same overseas district where Pope once lived, we showed off, wisecracking about grottoes. The messy ambience, overlapping dialogue, the bonhomie, in that sweet smoky slightly illegal atmosphere was a buzz yet I sensed disappointment ahead. Hardy was the first of our Seven Authors so I suspected destiny lurking like a starving wolf despite her telling me later I was great at kissing.

Movie fans, we also took Cinema Studies. According to some scripts discussed, our scenes agonising over her commitment might have died on the cutting-room floor. So, zero chance of lasting happiness. Feeling like a supporting act in her busy radiant life, my pre-determined adoration was more profound than her fondness for me. During lingering blandishments, the ragged breath of sexual urgency and various other moments of bliss, she never once gasped that she loved me. Trying for movie hero stoicism but weighted by infatuation’s non-reciprocal raw ache I dragged a wedge anchor of forever yearning fate.

Years come, go. I deliberately arrive in the semester break, tepid rain, wind gusts, a sky overcast with spasms of light, appropriate. The downtrodden escalator, its smell still musty familiar in the echoing Arts wing, grinds into action for a visiting ghost. I pause at the English faculty staff board, beyond it, those long corridors, office doors behind which poets presided, teachers I grew to know, heroic, their names replaced now, some dead. We both loved Wuthering Heights, and we could both write. I constructed credits, she burnished distinctions, her sentences always that bit better.

Where we last spoke, a spot on campus where she would wait for me, my dialogue hastily rehearsed, her face framed by a concert poster of a rising performer long since famous, I stop. Seeking more olfactory transportation I want another Proust phenomena, the waft of her patchouli oil, and to take back my bitter words. On long walks lulled by nature secluded clearings a car could reach quicken my heart. Much of my forever now up, her prophesy that we would both write about our relationship one day consoles eerily. Perhaps I should have brought flowers, taped them here where I blinded myself to the writing on the wall, keep people guessing before hiking my miserable sack of doomed bones the hell out of here.

--

Ian C Smith's work has been widely published. He writes in the Gippsland Lakes region and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.