Black-Listed Magazine

An Ax For The Frozen Sea

Society attempted to fold me in square creases into the mold of all other scraps of paper shaped into origami swans, but like all of ...

The many teenagers out front the corner convenience want me to buy them smokes. They appeal to my vanity make me feel young again an...

All fall the entire horse hair moving its blue bone prayer the blur in your voice is a borrowed thing not even five dollars will moth...

ENJOY OBLIVION

THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE BRIDGE the crowd can’t get enough of that female corpse being dragged from the river – if you slapped that...

Fog covered, and cool day starts stay up late, eyes gummy, still tired. Just as some News copter passes overhead more annoying than mor...

She Poems

the flies come and go buzzing around it's a virtue the bastards can't tear up — patience & eventually the bin lid will li...

mall formerly in the District of Columbia now a makeshift ersatz thing powered by electrons from the son of a bitch gird your loins befo...

Grunge Kindly SHUT UP about the grunge under my fingernails That’s one way I express myself tell the world who I am Self-same my gri...

Last night I talked Too much To a girl In my Bed There was a Point when I knew I should just Shut Up And kiss Her Which Le...

Sweet Sexy Mythology It starts as a little white spot on the inside of the cheek barely reachable by the tongue but enough to know...

sleep legs are slick scissoring sin and bedsheet and skin talon grips pillow slips cotton tethers the night is made for ease ...

hold your breath for a minute or so Complacency sets in Squandering the savage jaw "Drive", he said "Steve Taylor...

She’s Gone She’s gone to Milan and left her perfume in the closet sweet cheek and neck hanging with the coats Her hoodie lies crumpled...

These are the days When all I want to Do is lay the needle Down on Bitches Brew, Side two, And throw open every Window so that the So...

You write about as well as I did when I was six– with your use of animals and your need to make every goddamn thing you write in the s...

and another thing, you’re just dressed in a t-shirt. but I’m home alone in my couch. but it’s shameful. God will condemn you, God does...

other people don't understand our window, washing machine the trick to the shower how to force open the broken cellar door, cabinet,...

Vegan Lollipop  she wants to be approached she doesn't want the trim hipster beards she wants trouble with her blue hair vegan loll...

Cock-Blocked by Robert Stack and the Pillsbury Doughboy twelve years old and lying flat on the pink fuzzy bath mat of the only bathroom...

Extended Metaphor I’ve heard of these shamanic “power animals.” Power animals are supposed to represent a person's connection to all ...

Chains I’d been walking along in the afternoon sun when his fist hit my sternum ripped my shirt open. Reaching up I feel my chain still...

Leaves of bonsai Bodhi droop     Over computer screen. Buddha         Of bronze under Norfolk pine. Christmas cactus un-bloomed.     De...

She hated the way I made the bed I had put the sheet Over the pillow Like they do in hotels "I hate it"she said The Egypt...

saturday night london basement escaped mothers dance like strippers with staring fakesters and me i’m moody drunk and high staring down ...

I walk into the convenience store.  I have a book of poems by Todd Moore and a snub-nose 38’ in the pockets of my pea-coat.  I can either se...

LOST IN YR OWN ROOM you can feel lost in yr own room don’t let the four walls fool you & what good’s the lamplight? it might as ...

i am quite drunk the sounds of my elders swirl around my ears as i sit on my fire escape just another girl from brooklyn their span...

Mark Rothko’s used razor Etched a Prozac smile On life’s concluding face As It Stared Back At Him. Allan waits for his Lolita Insi...

SOUL HELLO SOUL you are my 5:15 sunset you are my 5:30 burning lungs you are my 5:45 face buried in the sand seeing what chicken ostri...

She comes into The room And sees all the Empty wine Bottles Spread all over the Floor On the fridge In the Trash can She asks, Wh...

The birds fly in formation on military parade. Past my tenth floor condo in the Florida panhandle. Over hash and eggs and freshl...

Rising Demons they are not red and muscular but translucent and piss-thin, they don't howl or scream but sigh softly in my inner e...

Lad, this stuff has got to stop, this standing in the washroom wiping till the tissue comes back free of any fleck of what some forty...

day by day we wait for what by strident daylight monotony or some moon demanding anticlimax sick and wasting hours between servitude ...

Before her there was fire And it was so bright and hot, Painfully hot and it never let up; Always burning and keeping that Orange blaze ...

i don’t do them any favors i’m only there on the weekdays when it’s light and anyone with half a chance is still at work. but I have a w...

death and art had it not been such an unproductive non creative time, the blank pages would have been filled with shaky sketches of dis...

Bug no bigger than a comma scales the wall next to my recliner. He's climbing his Mount Everest and headed for the ceiling, a s...

Rolling Antoinette Heads like Hub Caps in the Street Just wait until they start chopping off heads again dying breaths like bags or plas...

DEAR BUDDHA i agree it’s all a fucking illusion but a big whiff of shit makes you think otherwise DEAR ABYSS gaze at me all yo...

I smoke a cigarette In a room where It's not allowed. I put up a sign On a wall where it's Not permitted. I write a poem In...

If I Knew I'd have taken the noise placed it in a bottle forced the cork in her orgasm was raspy her voice a little too deep ...

Untimely death acceptable, but only with a large side of raw, edgy poetry. Medium thin-crust pizza delivered too fast, garlic and veggie...

In another moment it will all be over. On this winter night her breast will slip from her blouse like a fawn, in spring, from the fore...

You couldn’t get back to sleep. After about a thousand years, it was dawn, napalm on wildflowers, the flames wavering in a lost kind of w...

The used bookstore tended to fuck over anyone wanting to trade old books in for something new to them I found a John Fante & a Stein...

at a red light young girls say nineteen or twenty don't tell me you've ever seen teeth so white pixie genies in a wheeled...

i was already dead inside when i considered committing suicide for the first time until a do-good samaritan up to no good found me weig...

Be Good when I was a small child, my mother came home from a yard sale carrying a doll that looked exactly like me “It looks just l...

THERE’S NOTHING WORSE THAN TOO LATE quit counting yr fucking demons refrain from fingering yr scars instead go gaze at yr ...

AT 38 i am a stranger to myself tired and drawn and stubbly and old- my age ENORMOUS like i landed suddenly in my future enormous al...

DRINKING EARLY I started drinking early. I gave up on the day. I sought oblivion in a bottle and a few more. I didn’t answer my phone....

the secrets of motherhood elude me, even now, after years of practice, of learning to deal with late-night temper tantrums too little ...

The man visits the cafe almost every day and enjoys the girls who work there and know his name and what he drinks and smile seemingly sinc...

Wednesday afternoon dreaming of beautiful women in short skirts though Beethoven and a day off from work seem good enough: if we all j...

It's a 50th anniversary dinner for Bernie and Blanche at the Elk's Hall. After dessert Blanche grabs the mike and primes the crow...

big dreams burst from small minds and blow holes thru artificial realities that we shake like straight jackets to stretch our pecu...

HOW THE CONVERSATION ENDS he thinks he's tough, a real self-taught poet of the streets he wants some feedback & possibly advice ...

putting a new battery in my car "yea bring it to me baby!" comes a gravely voice behind me followed by catcalls. i turn ar...

I am confused about the worship of relationships. I think we should start worshiping solitude: find a holiday to celebrate the man...

i’ve handed each of my demons a paintbrush i’ve offered my suicide a bouquet of bok choy i’ve poured cups of chamomile for bad memories ...

i dream of a table in the middle of a wooded road & natalie portman runs up to a bush, crouches down & pulls out a binder marked ‘...

stepping into the shower and remembering all the women the hungover mornings their eyes gentle as they scrubbed my cock and back ...

Listen, mister, you're a guest at the Night Owl Club so you can sit here all night long, tip me after every song, buy me scotch ti...

ONLY A WRITER a girl, Italian, big hips, tattooed legs, comes in my store every week to buy groceries. I’ve been meaning to talk to ...

PATTI SMITH WOULDN'T WRITE ME A POEM ABOUT SHIT i asked patti smith to write me a poem about taking a healthy shit "i have no ...

ANOTHER JOB LOST   shin splints and a pimple inside my nostril way inside where it’s dark and hard to reach impossible to pop I just k...

The Kid The kid is maybe thirteen years old, raking the leaves and dirt of a small lawn adjacent to the bus stop I’m sitting at H...

One day after Valentine's Day I surf the net for conspiracy theories like any good American. I read about Illuminati handshakes s...

Mutinous Me I’m going to explode one day, I just know it. Not an angry exploding with limbs flailing at the nearestperson, due to som...

Eulogy for a Modernist They say he hung it all out to dry, The old forms, his women, The publishers in New York Even himself. He said: ...

[i] Juan kept   his eye on the target through dirt & dust dos Chilangos taking a stroll   down San Pablo   dressed in black ...

The Debate at Duffy's                                                                                               She said that sex ...

    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 re...

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-fo...

open secret everyone is conspiring against you even now they plot beware those who would tell you paranoid delusions breed within this...

tell us about yourself says my girlfriend's female cousin as we sit around the kitchen table after christmas dinner. they're a...

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 ...

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 div...

I never turned in my jury summons form, they say I had my psychiatrist decorate it with his strange symbolism masquerading as a note th...

A Sweet Treat impish prick flick red velvet battenburg sandwich vanilla drizzle double dip mucilaginious fondant finger head   ...

SOMETIMES PEOPLE FEEL BAD Sometimes people feel bad when they don’t have much and they know others have much more than they could ever ...

was eight years-old when she died. it was the middle of January and the ground was too frozen to bury her so her father put her in...

How many times have I said I’m through teasing myself, through pretending I don’t enjoy the wreath of a woman warm around me. How many...

As it slowly approaches 10:00pm, our hands are still just as empty as the eyes that serve behind that bar, that refuses to play music, or...

I laced you to the ships foremast, passing rope between your ribs and tying a binding knot. You never realised we were at sea until this mo...

The Bookcase The bookcase has been replaced with another bookcase The new thing is made in Sweden and assembled in the wet dreams of...

she looks like one of those cinematic raven haired italian chicks created to stop the heart but she’s speaking pigeon english to the boy ...