And I didn’t want to be a writer, anyway by Melanie Browne

And I don’t have a dick

And I have a husband and kids,

And I’m from the south

And I don’t hate Jesus

And I don’t care about gay marriage,

Because, frankly,

It isn’t that interesting,

And I like grits,

And I have a tattoo

On my shoulder that

Says Rebel Yell

And I put it out on the

Internet,

For no good reason,

I think I just wanted some

Attention,

Which is the same reason

I am writing this poem

if the spirit moves you by Mat Gould

huddled away from a soft rain

waiting out its drifting hour

giving ourselves back to another day

spring was long over and somehow the summer was in the middle of ending

yet still full of long nights having an affair with the dallying sun

lovers that must part but are holding on

as they too are waiting out the drifting hour

I speak of such easily

all of this

waiting it out

waiting for what?

I am only certain of nothing so much as the drunken later-

Three Poems by Justin Hyde

sociology

see the twenty-two year olds

huddled around the pool table

burgeoning dictators

cock-strong

ignorant like

bullets.

see the forty-five year olds

leaning over their beers in silence

smoke

mortar

the impotence of defeat

ringing in their ears.

see the thirty year olds

paranoid

caught on both sides

like deer

hung up

in barbed wire.

watch closely

the leopard eyed women

scattered amongst them

like leeches.

the old red barn

they'd bus in

blacks

from cedar rapids

to play horns

farmer was the sheriff's brother

no trouble there

back pasture full of cars

ames des-moines huxley bondurant

even see plates

from kossuth and wapsecon county

blacks would start

playin the horns

farmer selling milk pails

full of beer

for a quarter

ladies of the night

with blankets

working overtime

out in the pastures

we all got our

pickles popped

at the old red barn

then saturday night

sitting with our girlfriends

watching lawrence welk

in their parent's living room

heads still spinning

from cigarettes

the long hair

in sandals sold us

lawrence playing bubbles

or something else square

we'd be holding their hands

cause that's as far as

they'd let us go

one of us would start laughing

then we'd all fall in

what's funny? the girls would ask

what's so

all gone funny?

they'd get angry

stomping their feet

old dad

yelling down

from the top of the stairs

pipe down

or he'd

toss us out

with the cat.

cattle call

the people

are lonely

but their loneliness

is not sacred

not learned

or aged.

it's banal

like the inside

of a styrofoam

cup.

their love

is faceless

nameless

a blind

stupid force

two magnets

in a

clutch.

Three Poems by Leeroy Berlin

the devil you know

there's a devil in the corner

in a dark, well-tailored suit

watching me. wears a fedora and

smokes a Dominican Upmann

eyes and ember glowing

he's not so fond of Zevon as I am

he follows me around

and likes to leap from the

dark places of the world,

grip me by the throat, and

make me listen.

there's a devil in the corner

he keeps telling stories

to no one in particular.

it’s just me, him, and the empty room

punctuated by a clacking keyboard

and a soft electric glow

that makes the folding chairs

and empty floor seem lonelier.

there’s a devil in the corner

he followed me last night and

snuck into the back seat of my car and waited

until I was whipping around the bend

he reached forward fingers tight

around my neck and screamed

because even the devil wants

to see an end to all of this.

there's a devil in the corner

and for now we drink together

and each beer wraps him in

a little more darkness

we're used to each other

and to the smoldering hate

familiarity breeds attachment

so I lift my beer and smile

Not tonight old friend, not tonight.

dead trees and ink

I'm sitting on the floor

surrounded by loosed sheets

printed with words I wrote

once

and remember

the tears

sweat

piss

jizz

and blood.

Writing one once

I tossed my laptop out a second-story window

furious that syllables refused to bend with me.

Another fell out, like some small thing lost in a suitcase,

from a week-long vicodin binge

self-prescribed for acute cardiac fracture.

I pick one up that's laying next to me and remember

how it stumbled from my fingertips

fifty-three hours after the last time I'd slept.

There in the corner I see the bastard

child of a bottle and a half of gin

and the realization that she wasn't coming back.

I poured into all of them

everything I knew de los cojones

but now I read them and

I don't feel what I used to feel

I see dead trees and ink.

It's like meeting a woman

you used to fuck

and when you told her you loved her

she left

meeting her years later and

you don't feel what you used to feel

you see this stranger who reminds you

that you can't get those feelings back.

miles of asphalt and heart-break

as I roll past Skirball

crane my neck to look

she lives down that road

half a mile, then a right

the house is just out of view from the 405

and it's not the smog

that stops my breath

or the shattering glass

crunch of steel

that stops my heart

but those things don't help.