Roaring out of Hell by Melanie Browne

I seek out your writing like
an insatiated sugar-cereal junkie,
a tired gambler at the last
Las Vegas flophouse,
sitting down with
whiskey I
read your poems
and I wonder about
your parents and your
siblings and, especially
the worthless X
did she bury your
heart in Siberia?
here, I'll take my
gold plated shovel,
we'll dig it
up for the bent
of it,
it's probably still
pumping underneath
all that frozen snow,
I'm sure it just needs
a slight dusting,
a nice toddy
and a shave,
a kick in the
O'l nucleus

Two Poems by Michael Ashley

Mortal

is the way I am nervous
around sharp points
and bare edges
the line of your form
the tips of your fingers
the rim of your tongue

it is the fact I know
the damage that can be done
by just the slightest slip

this shit isn't learnt
or taught

it's instinct.



This Abstinence

makes me
want to scrape
the base
of my bowel
tear out
that turning wheel
crush it
to the tightest
ball--
I see
your eyes
and want them
pressed against
my pubic bone
again
again
again
I eat
my finger ends
the nicotine
around my nails
to skin
to cuticle
to bloody mess
I need
a drink
a cig
an orifice

in any order.

I’d Make As Good a Teacher As Time by Linda M. Crate

They all ask me what I’ll do with my degree
as if English-Literature Bachelor is a title worthy
of shame; they almost cringe when they say it —
when I announce that I want to be a novelist they
smile and say ‘that’s nice’ as if they don’t think
I’m good enough to follow my dreams or they’re
worth following to begin with; I’m constantly
coddled and told that you should be a teacher —
they clearly don’t know that I do not like children;
or that I have a wit that rears it’s ugly head at the
first sign of a snarky retort; no, I’d make as good
a teacher as time, I’d end up maiming if not killing
all the pupils that had the nerve to cross me, I think
I’ll leave the teaching to people that love kids, I’ll
stick to griping and grumbling about how most
of them act as if they walked straight of Digrassi,
and expect us to not want to punish their bratty little
butts in the process, I’m of the opinion that writing
is a better day of spending my day than being two
degrees separated from raging at children under my
care, expecting me to remember them something
of greatness; I’d teach them the art of bitterness or
being lonely or cat lady 101, nothing much worth
noting after that, they’d be asleep before algebra.

FOOD FOR A FAILED ROMANCE by Richard Quigley

That night the screeching telephone was some slack-lip

Siren, luring you into her brackish grip, thirsting to gush

Over the birthmark you called your trademark. A fruit

So swollen, juices almost run from it. You got up

From the table, the way you were hunched over like a child

On a throne of tied sticks. Soppy tyrant. Those days you

Exhausted on fearing the one who could take the mirrored

Slab from your mouth, the one with grime-slick handprints

Who could dirty your work shirt. You’ve been waiting too long

For your ride to come. Swallow your pride like I’ve swallowed

Your load. A bone surfaces in a butter cookie: hard-bitten,

Sweeter than you could have ever imagined.

Tribes Revisited by David S. Pointer

In Tribes, Jan Michael Vincent’s
Marine recruit character told his
drill instructor that he didn’t equate
militarism with patriotism, and in
the decades since, I’ve come to
equate patriotism with a quest for
sustainable economic/environmental
justice, your left, your left right left…

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About Me

Black-Listed Magazine is an online literary magazine. We publish on a rolling basis: weekly, daily, sometimes hourly. Send submissions here: blacklistedmagazine@hotmail.com