Two Poems by Paul Hostovsky

The Debate at Duffy's                                                                                             

She said that sex was a yearning of the soul.
He said it was a very compelling argument
of the body, a compulsion. She said it was
a spiritual compulsion. He said it was nothing
if not carnal, carni, meat. This conversation
took place in a bar. The background music was
so loud it was in the foreground. The bodies
on the dance floor were moving in ways that
would interest even the dead if they could only
remember how to live. There was a baseball game
playing on television. On the table were two
empty glasses, and the bottle's green phallus
which she took in her hand and pulled toward her,
pulling him toward her as she poured them both
another drink. He drank deeply, felt the spirit
filling his cup. Then he looked into her eyes and saw
that she was beautiful, sexy, and at the bottom
of the 9th, suddenly, surprisingly, irrevocably, right.



To a Landscaper                                                                                                  

You smell like a lawnmower, love.
Come sit your grassy ass down
on the bed. I want to taste the green
sweat spreading like wealth all over
your body, the lawns of the rich and
gasoline commingling on your skin and
bones. I want to feel the suburbs
rub off on us like the laughing poor
streaking through the formal gardens
of the scowling rich, the fine gold pollen
sticking to our nakedness like sex on sex,
our own bed filthy and rich beneath
the well-oiled machine of our lovemaking.

The Man Who Lives in the Gym by Donal Mahoney

   St. Procopius College
Lisle, Illinois
after World War II

The man who lives in the gym
sleeps in a nook up the stairs
to the rear. Since Poland
he's slept there, his tools
bright in a box locked
under his bed. At noon bells
call him down to the stones
that weave under oaks
to the abbey where he

at long table takes
meals with the others
the monks have let in
for a week, or a month,
or a year or forever,
whatever the need.
The others all know
that in Poland his wife
had been skewered,

his children partitioned,
that he had escaped
in a freight car of hams.
So when Brother brings in,
on a gun metal tray,
orange sherbet for all
in little green dishes,
they blink at his smile,
they join in his laughter.

sleeping settee rough poem by Ross Leese

the dog barking at nothing gone midnight
a kid with sunflowers for eyes walks my mind says hi then dies
an attitude the devil-may-care-for fucks away the corpse of my heart
a hurricane inside my veins pumps every surge of evil from my pores
whistle involuntarily through my nose and pick it clear
the girls in their beds with feet tucked away from closet devils and demons
the dog barking at fuck-all
                                         at just gone nothing past midnight.

Two Poems by Karl Koweski

open secret

everyone is conspiring against you
even now they plot
beware those who would tell you
paranoid delusions breed
within this mentality
they are the most
insidious conspirators
who wish to inflict
the greatest amount of harm

you've always suspected this
in the supermarket aisles
behind closed office doors
in the bedroom of your home
forces are aligning against you
the faces of friends and strangers
with clenched jaws or loose smiles
they are all scheming
archetects of your collapse

even I...
as I write this
I am working toward
your utter depletion
while you...
as you read this
program my destruction



a three stanza affair

I wooed you with poetry
now your love
has revealed the folly
of the written word

I wowed you with pornography
now your sexuality
has obscured the fantasy
in scribbled erotica

I scorned you with fiction
now your anger
has cemented the betrayal
of ill-disguised prose

Two Poems by Justin Hyde

tell us about yourself

says my girlfriend's female cousin
as we sit around the kitchen table
after christmas dinner.

they're all drunk on wine

fog

and dirty jokes

while the men
watch football
in the den.

i'm a bit of an introvert
takes me a while to calibrate,
i tell her
going back to reading the instructions
for the fancy coffee-bean grinder
my girlfriend's mother gave me.

come on
give us something

tell us a secret

bet you've got a-lot of secrets,
says one of the older aunts

as my girlfriend blows me a kiss
from the den
where she's taking pictures
of the kids
playing with their presents.

ok

well

i think women

are beautiful terrible creatures

i used to chew on their hearts

like laffy-taffy

most nights of the week
i would go to a bar

shot of whiskey
bud-light

i would alternate
like that

and wait

maybe a woman
would sit down next to me

maybe she wouldn't

i never chased them

but if she did
i was straight for the heart
like an indian tracker

i wanted it in my hands

for a minute

a week

a month

just long enough
to know she had
given it to me

and even though
i don't drink anymore

it's probably the reason

things won't work out

with your cousin and i.



subject to change

heart distilled

in the ocean of her eyes

locked in each others arms

after making love

it could all be gone
in an instant

a thousand
different ways

snow

rain

betrayal

sun
between clouds
through a window
onto your hand

grim reaper
plays bag-pipe
on a hill

it's good reason
to count your blessings
and love without shame
or remorse
in each moment

but it's
just as good of reason
to wrap your heart in tinfoil

hide out in a truck-stop booth

and write poems

while the world
passes you by.

EVERYDAY by Suzy Devere

may you never have a body that betrays you
wake up and feel like you never went to sleep
hold a coffee cup instead of a lover's hand

may you never touch your neck and feel a lump
look in the mirror and no longer recognize your face
cry tears only because your eyes don't work

i never felt invincible
unlike the rest of them
i always knew i would die someday
but i never thought i'd die everyday
every breath another loss of freedom

may you never understand this poem
never need air you can't have
or a man whose dead

Two Poems by Holly Day

The Other Woman

(dim the lights a little more, gather your belongings
leave. Fling a crimson rag on top of the bare bulb
next to the divan—wheel in the post-holocaust gag city mock-up
and permit the vermin to commence loping through the maze.)
I’m walking in your ideas, in  a colorless seaside scene, naked feet
leaving no footprints in the sand. This chunk of ass

is the single solitary genuine human being here tonight. Wings
of seraph hammer against the glass windows of the inn, insensitive
to everything excluding our blind sins. (pour a couple additional
pails of murder on the coastline, wrap up the distended cadavers,
destroy the rats). I nearly telephoned you yet again last night,
imagining that the phone was right by your head, but I knew

that disgusting thing would be staying over for the weekend
and would pick up the phone, stockpiling your calls—I
enfolded the pink, synthetic die-cast receiver between my sodden thighs
and imagined I was hoarding sections of you through these hallucinations.
(the Armageddon recreation will go back to the beginning by itself
tomorrow. Let’s call it a day. The conclusion of any epoch signifies

something has to die.)



Loose Change

he chuckles, “you’ll never have to fret
about becoming one of them”
and it’s funny to him since he is insinuating that I
will never discover how to be similar to them, to
maintain an organized house, have a genuine
work plan, be a high quality wife and

soccer mom. I don’t desire to be like
them at all, but I could be, I know I could
be taught to do all that, without difficulty, transform
into some easily-annoyed valium
housewife, scowling at imperceptible
grime, dust motes, could even

run the vacuum now and then. he mocks
me once more, talks about my mother, pronounces
how fortunate I am to have married
him when I did since the way I am now,
at this moment in time,
only miserable, solitary elderly
men, only genuine trash
would want to be with me.