A Big Success by Wayne F. Burke

The fortune teller’s tent
was next to the tent
that had a pickled
3-legged baby in a jar.
The fortune teller was middle-aged
and swarthy
and wore an extravagance of color
like a Gypsy.
She held my paw.
I was in seventh grade and
had yet to grow hands.
“You will be a big success,”
she said
after a too quick
I thought
look at my palm.
“But late in life.”

--

Wayne F. Burke's poetry and prose has been widely published in print and online (including in DISTURB THE UNIVERSE). His eight published collections of poetry include the highly praised A LARK UP THE NOSE OF TIME, 2017. He lives in Vermont (USA).

Sanitation Rag by James Croal Jackson

What wrings into drain
never goes away.

I scrub orange-brown walls,
my fingernails scrunched

with other people’s food.
This memory collecting–

another dip
in a murky red bucket.

--

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)

Jeanne: An Ode to Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962) by Michael Anthony Ingram

I dreamed of my plan to see Jeanne.*
We are below the cerulean sky,
high above the indigo beaches of the Cote D'azur.
She was in the passenger seat.
Besotted like wine in our love.
The delightfulness of Candide still floating in the air.

An unexpected knock on the door.
Charcoal memories had decided to visit me again.
Depressed and lonely, they rubbed against me like mating guinea birds. I struggled to understand.
I cursed in the lazuline daylight.
I moaned in the sable-covered moonlight.
exasperation escaping through my throat.
A feeling of dread crawled over my body.
Becket peacefully slept while I waited for Godot.
Gasping anticipation of a non-existent character in a play.

Perhaps the past will repeat itself.
I breathed in and out of this thought.
I had wrestled obsidian nights before.
Tenderly held my own bloodied defeat.
The deafening silence of an unfulfilled life.
Victory is unattainable in the one-sided skirmish.
The war drum is suddenly silent.
Murkiness moved on and knocked on a new door.
The strains of Lili Marlene in the distance.

I dreamed of my plan to see Jeanne.
We are below the cerulean sky,
high above the indigo beaches of the Cote D'azur.
She was in the passenger seat.
Besotted like wine in our love.
The playfulness of Candide still floating in the air
We turn left onto rue de Temple.

--

Dr. Michael Anthony Ingram, host and producer of the globally acclaimed poetry podcast Quintessential Poetry: Online Radio, YouTube, and Zoom. He is a retired university professor who champions the arts, especially poetry, to highlight issues at the intersection of power, privilege, and oppression. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, he is also celebrated internationally as a spoken word artist. His eagerly anticipated second book of poetry, Metaphorically Screaming, will soon be released. For further details about the podcast, please visit www.qporytz.com.

Two by David Sydney

“Harry, do you see two flies there?”
“Where?”
“In my oatmeal.”
They were at the counter of AL'S DINER that Thursday morning for breakfast. Otto pointed with his spoon – Otto, who disliked flies so much. Harry stared at the oatmeal.
“No… No, that's only half a fly.”
“Half?”
“Look over there. That's its head floating
over there in the bowl, Otto.”
The fly's body squirmed. Its legs moved. Decapitated flies can do that since they have decentralized nervous systems.
Without a head, a fly can live for several days, moving about aimlessly and even having sex, if it can be called living. While grooming itself, a fly may occasionally knock its own head off. Of course, a spoon inadvertently coming down at the junction of a fly's head and thorax will have the same effect.
“Thanks, Harry.”
He dipped his spoon into the lukewarm cereal with relief, removing first the active body, then the bulbous head.
“You know, for a moment there, I thought there were at least two of ‘em in there.”

--

David Sydney is a physician. He has had pieces in Little Old Lady Comedy, 101 Words, Microfiction Monday, 50 Give or Take, Friday Flash Fiction, Grey Sparrow Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, Disturb the Universe, Pocket Fiction, R U Joking, Every Writer Magazine, Literary Revelations Journal, Sip Cup, Mad Swirl, Hotch Potch Magazine, A Story In 100 Words, and Rue Scribe.

Frankenstein’s Creature is Welcomed by Manny Grimaldi

Adrift, I sniffed around
the rain-sopped road,
arrived in Van Lear at a blind woman’s welcome.
She offered chow-chow relish on her porch, mixed
well with a meal of potatoes with biscuit gravy.

Silent. Then her arm snapped
out to touch, so sudden
I could hear the folds of her sleeve crisping
in the stillness.
She studied me.

It’s chilly with the skin off your bones.

Blind woman called me “brother-brother,” trembling,
pulling back,
then a lie about my clothes. Her uncle “back in Portsmouth
could make better rags than these.” Her lame hand shaking
as loose tobacco, handled by a drunk smoker, fumble-
fingering the roll of some Golden Virginia, her shoulders sobbed.
I asked why she cried. She was smiling.

“When I wake up in the morning, come
out to feel the sun, I see
no rainbows in the rain, & live with it everyday.
I only feel the storm—everyone dead, or moved away.”

--

Manny Grimaldi is a Kentucky writer and editor. He is editor at Yearling Poetry Journal, in Lexington, Kentucky. He authored a self-published poetry collection, Riding Shotgun with the Mothman, and a chapbook, Ex Libris Ioannes Cerva (by anonymus scriptus). Manny looks toward a nearing book release with Whiskey City Press. He can be reached at http://mannygrimaldi.mypixieset.com.

my friend esteban by Gerard Manogue

he was first to notice
the ants coming through the front door
“so many so many so many”

i listen to mac miller’s faces
the album we first bonded over
when i want to remember him

at the club, he once said
“she looks like she wants to dance”
pointing to the girl next to me

and he taught me to notice
the bass line of a steely dan song
the sugar of mexican coke
the white flowers on the trees
“so many so many so many”
how to say pain in spanish: dolor

in the back seat of the taxi
he said about making money
“you can either work hard now or later”
with a beautiful woman sitting next to him

he taught me to notice
the yellow flowers on the trees
“so many so many so many”

he said about meritocracy
“what kind of car do you want to drive?”
when he first pointed out
the ants coming through the back door
“so many so many so many”

the old folks on the subway
laughed as they watched him
down a bottle of yogurt-flavored soju

--

Gerard Manogue is a poet from Southern California. He is sending out poems to little magazines again after a long hiatus. He loves the English language. See his other work at gerardmanogue.wordpress.com

Anything by Philip Athans

It comes down to faith, to belief, and
centuries of a single repeated message
reinforced by parents, teachers, politicians, clergymen,
                hucksters.

The power of,
a leap of, and ultimately
taking comfort in
                faith.

And that to doubt is cynicism, arrogance,
a transgression
against our most cherished
                belief,

that Keith Raniere is the Smartest Man in the World™
that David Koresh is Jesus Himself (Isaiah, 41.13)
that L. Ron Hubbard discovered the Bridge to Total Freedom®

All the rest of them,
all the same,
building on one proven
                fact.

If you can get them to believe in God,
it shows
they’ll believe in
                anything.

--

Editor and author Philip Athans has been a driving force behind varied media including Alternative fiction & poetry magazine and Wizards of the Coast. He lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.