jason “juice” hardung

if you find god, keep him in your pocket

My old man saves quarters
with Wyoming's bucking bronco
on the back.

Only Wyoming

never New Jersey or Vermont.
Like they will be worth twenty-six cents someday.

People never find God
unless things are going
horribly wrong.
Prison cancer addiction
being lost in the Amazon rainforest
with cutter ants gnawing
on your broken leg
while an airplane writes
Will you marry me?
With its exhaust.

The pilot never sees you.

God sees everything and laughs.
Michael Vick found God
so did Tonya Harding.

Yesterday I found a quarter
with God's face
on the back
a stern profile chiseled in silver
a handsome white man
with his hair parted to the left
a cocky grin
and it said
"In me I trust"

nurtured like a cactus in a single man’s apartment

I never learned how to make a bed properly
do the dishes
mow the yard in diagonal lines
vacuum
comb my hair
make cereal
feed the dog

My dad just said
do it
it better be done before I get home
grabbed his black lunch box
silver thermos
and slammed the door

His rail yard bibs would walk out
into yellow mornings
come home in blue evenings
and I was dirtier
than I was before

I didn't figure out that the shower curtain goes
on the inside of the tub
until I lived on my own
The floor was always wetter than me
and I was a newborn calf
doing splits
every time I tried to stand on my own

Now I just take baths
I never learned what dinnertime talk meant
parent teacher conferences
sack lunches with half cut sandwiches
like that red-haired kid Roy Edge flaunted
just before I took it from him

When I was a child I dreamed
of being a single father
in a house painted two shades of brown
because I started something I couldn't finish

I never planned that I'd be the age
I am now

Women were like
family trips to Disneyland
Other people's families
I never learned to decode ancient Mayan hieroglyphics
or read the nutritional values on bread
I never learned that when a woman says
I'm fine nothing’s wrong
she really means
we need to talk
and when she says
we need to talk
well
it's usually over by then.

i watched the stoplight change in your eyes

We drove to a sex shop.
I said I'd by you that purple waterproof dildo
that curves to the left.
Just like me.
But sex couldn't wait.
You took my swollen ego into your mouth.

As I drove, the shadows of branches
brushed your back through
stained glass cathedrals.
Me I played with your hair,
tried not to crash,
used turn signals
and drove the speed limit.

Streetlights in rain ran
the length of the blacktop.
Obsidian in the throes
of city heat, cars
pulling up next to us,
honking with Barney Fife smiles
and a hemp necklace I wish
was a noose.
instead, raising thumbs up
like dumb simians do.

We didn't care
and suddenly the price of gas
didn't seem that bad.
Four dollars is nothing
compared to the warmth
of your mouth.

The place where I came from,
your smile will make
you a star kid.
So we drove
into tomorrow, our future
windshield wipers
pushed yesterday
off into the street
and I watched it
fall on its face in the rear view.

I finished off and pulled
your head up for a kiss.
The reflection of the stoplight
turned green
in your eyes.

dan provost

blue collar, white heat

She told me that “If I didn’t
know you personally, I would
never approach you…you’re very blue
collar and always have a sneer on your face.”

Well baby, I wear that persona like
a battle scar…never wanting to
wear my poetic side on my sleeve.

Ronnie Van Zant once told me
that all the pencil-pushers better
get out of his way.

I took that to heart and never allowed
phoniness to creep into my grill.

Abilities should always speak for
themselves, if the personality is bigger
than the talent—than it’s time to try
a new game with a another set of rules.

I do not carry bullets out the door, or drive
a steak through the heart of malcontents
Who call themselves disillusioned.

And people more talented than I sang songs
about hiding behind blue eyes and asking
if anybody’s in there.

Uh, uh…There’s a true challenge inside my
being that exposes itself everyday. But I will
not let it fuck with me because I have a
right to survive.

It is then I walk out the doorway and
spit on the sidewalk to remind myself
who I really am…

witnessing a man dying who wants to live

To watch a man dying that
wants to live.

You look inside yourself and feel ashamed
and embarrassed of your own pain.

To see him struggle to say a word.

To see his face grimace with pain in some hospice, where the scent of death lingers in each saddened room.

This is the end of the spree.

A later eulogy.

A tear left in some alleyway.
The night steers its course.

No end…
No end…

melanie browne

your Zapruder film frame DNA

I apologize. I tried to read your poem
With the arbitrary roman numerals
Some of your stanzas were
Not in a numeric order as one
Would have expected nevertheless
I tried to stay on track and I almost made
It through the first stanza
But the numbering made things smaller
And smaller till your words disappeared and then I saw
Nothing but white and the white became the pixels
And then I saw clearly what it was you
Were trying to say to me
You wanted me to see your tiny erector set
I see it!
I see your bread crumb Jesus!
The DNA in your Zapruder film frame!
But I'm still not exactly sure
what your poem was about

heaven is a giant pawn shop

Heaven is
a giant pawn shop
with no 90 day interest
pawn tickets

You can trade
a bladder skin
for a
Lord of the
Flies Ballet!

I think about this
as I'm listening to
Rush
in the car,

trying to calm myself
down, having a
panic attack
in the parking lot

outside of Starbucks,
worrying about
whether I would be
cool or cast out,

and I'm still thinking
about heaven
and that pawn shop
built of gold
in a rainbow filled sky

darryl salach

death is a breakfast cereal

war
will not
change
nations.

Lennon
said it
best,
only
peace
and
love
stand a
chance.

pack up
your
version
of
the truth
America
and
listen
to a
bomb
strapped
child
dying
for
change.

a shot

no poetry today
only a hangover
with my tongue feeling numb
my eyes swollen
and burning a dry red color
the smell of garbage
and cat piss is everywhere.
my apartment needs a powder puff
and I need to bite that dog in the ass.

simon philbrook

fly posters will be prosecuted

Muslim students with rucksacks
will not be sat next to on trains,

young blacks will be stopped
and searched,

children will be driven to school
in four-by-fours,

gays will be beaten
and jews will be spat at,

men will fuck whomever they can
and lie to their wives,

politicians will smile
and kiss babies,

the homeless will die on the streets
when the weather turns,

prostitutes will take crack
and executives will take cocaine,

targets on CO2 emissions
will be talked about,

footballers will get away with rape
and drunk driving,

McDonalds will sell burgers
and Starbucks will sell coffee,

fly posters
will be prosecuted,

this is england
have a nice day.

amanda boschetto

she

she gazes upon the world,
the same she created
with orgasms of smiles

and her legs are always open,
for every man who wants to
visit some cheap cunt

one day she shall paint her
walls with brain and bones,
maybe already tomorrow,
in her soft cell of dust

she is night during day and
never sees any children
alive under her hands,
they turn to naked trees,
they turn as she does,

into words and air,
forever here

the mirror reflects

my face in the mirror
is void of truth,
that trembles along
with the trees outside,

the ugly ghosts of summer
swim in a puddle
of death or a sweet suicide,
a haze of unawareness,

chasing me back to childhood
where i grew up
and ran to catch the rain
clouds were higher than
heaven then
and the pale sky was full
of mourning,
a lonely beauty that
left a mark on my skin,

all this within

mike carson

happy days?

Happy daze, floating on the beach
Happy in No-Fuck, Vagina
That’s quite a task for the sailor boys
Sent by their kindly Uncle Sam
To Hell for a year, Hell incarnate
Aboard the Devil’s own fireboat
The U.S.S. Zippo, I mean Forrestfire, er, excuse me, Forrestal
4,000 strong, unless you count the 500 ghosts
~
Happy daze, purple haze
Angel dust at dawn’s fresh meat
An opium lover’s delight -
Remind me again, please? Duty, Country, Honor
What about my God? Oh, please help me find my God
What the Hell is happening to me?
Please tell me - am I having fun yet?
~
Tell me about your Vietnam
I’ll tell you that the military doesn’t need a war
To mess one’s mind, they do a fine job of that all the time
Peacetime vets let me hear your voice
How many Hells must you endure?
Happy daze, floating
Find a vein to pump the drugs in
Was ‘Nam like this? Did we learn well?
Return to where? The Forrestal? To burn?
Go ahead - Fry us all, great gray God of sailor’s fears
Floating - I dream of floating in the black burning
Waters of the dark aftermath -
But ships don’t sink anymore, do they?
They simply vaporize, what a comforting thought
Happy days turn to happy nights
Floating on the beach
In Ocean City
Give me some kind of reason

To break my happy daze
Of purple haze
Born in the crazy days
Of yesterday
What happened to the Beatles?
Where are the Rolling Stones?
Open the door, Jim - open the fucking doors!
Speak to me of a fine and happy day
When the words war and army mean nothing anymore
And I can stop dreaming
In my solitary opium den of a mind

benjamin nardolilli

hot summer night

Uptown is Downtown,
And the tenements
And the skyscrapers
Have all gone dancing
With each other, as
I run trying to get to you.

The park is melting
And its lights are filled
With incandescent cobwebs,
The rumbling under me
Threatens the whole infrastructure.

Your window is broken,
So I howl with the rats
And you’ve become the moon,
The cream oval is looking away,
Trying to set and leave me alone.

In the flatlands, I walk,
Until I find friendly monkeys
Holed up in a brick cage.
We drink cheap imports
And when they turn their backs
I run, trying to get to the mailbox

Hoping to stop the money from getting through.

waiting for the night train

Burnt or buried,
Death will take me as I am.
I will not worry
About what to wear:
Death comes even to the naked,
Or who I am with, for
No crowd can fight an enemy
That makes no sound and is swift,
With the twist of the heartstrings,
And the crashing of all memories.

The dark curtains are drawn.
I must approach, to enter
The cave behind them,
Not with too much sadness,

Or with fear,
I must be willing to leave
It all behind, yet
I must not be happy,
Or come running,
To look eager to leave is wrong for me,
What would it make my life seem?
A painful affair, a drawn out race
That I am quitting in disgust and exhaustion?

Death will not come to me,
I will come to it, and come
With a cryptic smile on my face,
A jagged line across my lips,
To keep the reaper guessing,
If its game is just a joke,
And I am the straight man
Setting death up for the punch line.

howard good

how it is

The pretty young receptionist
reaches up for a file,

and the tops of her breasts swell
like luminous snow clouds,

and I savor the glimpse,
though a husband and father.

It’s just how it is,

the heart hobos around,
dirty, unshaven, living on handouts.

paul perez

to the owner of a shoe: rupert's tale

*based on a true story*

To whom it may concern,

I have stolen your shoe.

It is a black Adidas skating shoe,
with write stripes.

I apologize.

Wear and tear shows me
what fun you must have had together.

Skating down the street,
getting into fights with the preppy kids

The time you were caught
kissing a girl on your bed one night.

The state fair, running in the rain,
hackey sack, soccer,

Your right shoe
must be rather lonely,

being only one
in a pair of two shoes.

For that I apologize,
but you can't have the shoe back.