mostly lying in manky rooms curtains drawn            the weight of sea-side town choking decomposing shopfronts under midwinter heavens   it’s too easy sometimes to give way to tears   even the lake is fucked            you say rusty shopping trolleys mouldy condoms squawking seagull staring at its own reflection         […]

  I was told, that in days of old, the old ones walked unseen. But Astor, demon king, and all the rest, have endured classification and kept havoc as their pledge. Cain, crushed under stones, and Judas on a tree, Nero choked by strings that betrayed him, his music not in tune with the human […]

  The smells of old cooking fires cling to their clothes and hair. I’ve been warned not to look too closely at their faces. “Let us in,” they beg. They swear for the ten thousandth time that they’re deserving. We like to think we’re like peace-loving Switzerland, just without all those cows and Alps, but […]

  jenny’s gonna right a wrong tonight her mood is somber and her dress is tight the thigh highs are laced and her mind is not right jenny’s gonna right a wrong tonight   jenny’s gonna taste some blood tonight her mind is a frenzy, her vision is black a clean cut is easy if […]

  I had a dream last night. The whole Midwest was a plain parched with thirst, its grasses crying out for rain. Wildfires raged, the buds of the earth too scorched to bloom. A muffled hunger moved through everyone I saw. Their stomachs ached for something other than the bread you once gave. A need […]

  What a rich and grand dinner party here: Look, this jug of wine, brewed with the Human perms and blood, is brought By the Vines; this huge plate of tongues Of the sexiest women, is presented By the Crows; this is a bowl of fried penises Of teenage boys, looking like wishbones Of young […]

  as death—“what’s happened to my son?” the eyes, so tightly closed elvin frail and pale questions she should never ask.   screams and tries to look behind the smile reclining in his midnight coffin pulls apart his lids in hope of finding answers.     Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The […]

  The smell of burning leaves and ripened apples as Fall closes in displaced. Chicago cracked, the blast of pin on cap, while goodhearted tramps sleep atop empty knapsacks. Lay your pen upon the stone, for now, all colors will remain unwritten and every child, lucky enough to have the nutrition of a bowl of […]

  i return             as most do                   to die you see            i am weary of travel a wheel i had to break before this carcass disintegrated into unfamiliar dust death must come for me where my name is known                   where the ground will accept my bones   Paul Robert Mullen is a poet, musician and sociable […]

  Only buzzards fly in these stale skies, only thin shapeless clouds pass over the iron sun. The moon seems little different, perhaps made from tin, and those clouds don’t much care whose light they sop up. Trees once tenderly shielded their daisy cousins, but no leaves stay on the spider-leg branches and bark has […]