the great puritan migration suddenly reoccurs
by Travis Catsull
i lean back into a misting fan
and upgrade to leather
into my own thoughts
into root
the arrival of the pilgrims
the war of independence
then ghostly apparitions from another realm
arrive
or at least
it …

you’re so beautiful, even the people you disrespect love you anyway.
by Meghan Tennison
oh dear
my jaw is acting up, it’s so excited to
speak with you
i love burrowing to the heart of your matter
you’re sanctifying, like a …

Living Unitarian Universalist
by Beth Cortez-Neavel
This is how it begins, every time: whether I am at a potluck, a club, a bar, or with extended family. Someone ultimately asks me “So, what do you do?” I …

Movie
by Pat A Physics
When you have gone to the movie almost every day for a year, and the concessions girl
knows your first name, that’s when it’s time to consider your career. Ask her on a …

Coryphaeus
by Jim Benz
I. A fiery wheel or a dove
I was puzzling. Heroic.
And a barstool.
I was not a throne.
You were both tide and landfall.
A splash of brine.
We were an olive
swallowed, inarticulate
wildly mundane
and not too laconic.
You were …

Spiritual Hush
by Gene Defcon
Jealousy congeals within the stable
Swifter, surer-footed, and more worthy
Specimens paw the brittle earth
Pointed huffs and neighs zing
Like daggers towards the favorite
Donner menaces
Leers in his direction
Cowed
Rudolph unsuccessfully strains
To conceal the ridiculous glow
Blitzen rears …

Cramped Uptown
by Amy Temple Harper
34 ppg, Hard Cover, bound by Spork Press
Review by Travis Catsull
Cramped Uptown is the first book from Amy Temple Harper and it’s a thing of beauty and imagination. A very strange …

Hollow and Solid Chocolate Santas
By Quasimofo and Halifax
For Haggard and Halloo Readers
(Merry X-mas!)
Sometimes i chomp into a Santa
head thinking it’s solid chocolate
but forget to read the package
which says “hollow” and i bite
my tongue spurting a …

Once upon a time
by Halifax
she’d called up Grandma living in the woods
to tell her she sent out the brat-skis
and expected back some sweet children
punched down by the crone who raised her
to be the smart cookie …

NEXT-DOOR LIPSTICK VIDEOGAME GIRLFRIEND.
by Shannon Baker
at the sixteenth birthday party
there was
lacrosse, cheesecake
treehouse, beach-hat
and lots of board game rhetoric
nothing conversational
had yet been type-set.
implanted
was more like it.
then
fourteen in the restaurant
a bad word choice surfaced
in the icecream dish
first-time …

horchata in the shade
by Oscar Smiles
pile it on was the proposition
just a mile from a pop. 2 town
way up north near canada
2nd time ever in a blizzard
the other was in tx., believe
it or not, neutral …

some horoscopes
by Cerebella

portraits of inverted colors-
x-rays.     they          face each
other-
one calls itself lazy/  the other is type a.

try to figure things out
with ourselves, apart  as

red eyes versus dialated  pupils
set wide apart across the latitude
of a   compass

nownow.    let’s  take …

Dirty Drink
by Pat A Physics
Everyone was shouting for me to ride the pony, but I was too
busy with my new found elixir. I had handed all of my money
to this small Asian princess and had …

At Tea Time
by DIY Danna
Gilded stilettos pace the American prison floor,
acupuncturing hardwood planks, between
bodies captured on YouTube also waiting
for tea to be served promptly at five,
fists full of Lincolns, awaiting new fall flavors.
 
Long gloved hands …

The Sad Sad Cows
by Shawn Misener
I’ve decided that the perfect post-apocalyptic food is cereal
slathered in creamy, slow-motion milk,
rice and sugars and grains
-shit you can package up and store forever
we’ll just make billions of pounds of …

Fluxed
by Matt Ronquillo
Sounds of the young and upset:
Twang-rang-pot-bang (tornado dance in the kitchen),
like roof shingles sky-flipping in the wake of my orange sneakers
I’m an amphetamine-snot-rocketing-
counter-clock-wise-ass,
redhead hair-whipping
spiraling
alone
Aiming for purgatory,
yet perpetually older,
a flesh-bordered, fluxed enclosure,
speeding through myself, …

Thoughts mused in a jalopy of a porta-potty
outside a Gentleman’s cabaret serviced by the ‘Mobile Throne Co.’
by Fictional Self-Occupy
i like to go window shopping
for those who put their pain on display
…for those who break the …

Prude Danish
by DIY Danna
My last boyfriend in college wasn’t American, he was Danish.
Funny how I remembered him when eating prunes in bed,
editing manuscripts on a Sunday afternoon.
We were undercovers for a few months. I met …

The Show
by Halifax
teething on tethers
It occurred again
in a rerun of a previous episode
seen once in “Scarsdale P.I.”
The plot was thin
the characters flat
the laugh track out of synch
with lurching dialogue
supported by the familiar
It occurred to me
how …

Sex Like Space
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I am floating in a constant orgasm
I am come, and
I am going insane.
I am on the edge of every seat and
am the hand shifting every throttle and
am full speed ahead and
I …

Ame Noire – Modified Sonnenizio on a line from Leo Marks
by Brandon S. Roy
Yet death will be but a pause.
I locked myself in a cardboard box.
This is natural. I was focused on a
glass eye and …

Oil Change
by Dirk Michener
The way I got rich is not that important.  The thing that is important is that my wealth allows me to get an oil change for my car every day.  The kind …

White Vest
by Pat A Physics
The vest felt tight on my back.  I wanted to take it off, but for some reason, I knew
that my guts would fall out if I took it off at this …

giddiness handcuffs my willpower.
by Meghan Tennison
i’m your stumbling sidewalk litter
on the wrong side of the road
tripping over dead lawns
crashing through frozen mud
fooled by glazed eyes
beautiful distraction
ravenous burden
coveting forgotten insight
overfeeding limitations
assuming the next possible outcome
hunting down …

Witness (The Creeping Anxiety of Babies and Dogs)
by Shawn Misener
I stand before you today
as a witness to both my dreams and yours
witnessing, as I slink
with a trail of slime and debt behind,
the methodical yet completely …

Honoring Our Pets
by Gene Defcon
If cats had tombstones
You could easily trip
And crunch your ribs
On the next grave
So long ago
Our forefathers
Decided against
Honoring our pets

Metalstar
by Matt Ronquillo
Terror Creak is the name I took from a bunch of friends
off six different dimensions.
None of which had pens or the will to invent them.
Hence this theft. I ripped them off.
I sold our …

Flying T-shirt
by Pat A Physics
Thrust pack bent up stair castle without limitation for pond scum
you are adding up your tolls in a vat of preserved air particles.
Labels are peeling off by themselves in your underwear …

the sky is an explosion
by Softserve
the sky is an explosion of blue atoms that were
hurled out during the boom and
cemented there like a
wet bloom to infinity, and nobody knows it but they droop
down, like saggy …

To Have and To Hold
By Beth Cortez-Neavel
I want to be there
in the past
to hold your hand
like you have held mine, father.
I want to be there that day
to tell you
you will not be like him
you will …