No Regrets

By Ben Naga

Laptop is an anagram of Apoptl
The Toltec God whose name means “Eater of Days”

Spin free from trite contextual reference
Warp ten through breathless subtextual vortex
Feeling one another up digitally

Laptop is an anagram of Apoptl
The Toltec God whose name means “Eater of Days”

The velvet suit, the evening gown, the orchid
A second glass of wine and a second glance
Maybe a second chance, a slow Spanish dance

A nod, a wink, the key is under the mat
It’s all on line, so we shall have no regrets

Laptop is an anagram of Apoptl
The Toltec God whose name means “Eater of Days”

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The Beekeeper’s Daughter

By Alicia A. Curtis

Daddy robbed the bees, and we
had honey coming out our ears.
Too early in the season to do
more than shout, run mad limbed
through the kitchen, fall to ground.
Biscuits came out screaming
from the oven. The neighborhood
hounds swarmed. Mama walked
down to the river, came home late
weary as a skep set for harvest.
Long limbs paddling through the comb,
Daddy oiled up to smoke.

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untitled

By Ivan Peledov

she came out of the room with a crumpled check
and saw all the newlywed thoroughly shaved
amenoud they chanted amenoud where is your fucking harappa
you left babylon and haven’t arrived in zion
enslaved in athens raped in sparta crucified in rome
you fled to the source of the nile only to discover
your own void you roamed bubastis
full of feline crap you killed the buddha before his first sermon
at the benares stadium and the crowds of hungry ghosts
plants brahmins and animals on choppers roared in agreement
amenoud they chanted amenoud
where are all your children with deformed skulls singing aum
singing shit about pentagon savants and shamans
for centuries mangling molecules of water and distant constellations
all the infants born between a gas station and safeway
with rattlesnake tongues and cadaverous limbs
your bridegrooms your knaves your knights
amenoud they chanted amenoud
where is your tainted melange of clubs and coins
your saber-toothed caterpillars and pony-eating cunts
the smell of suburbia penetrates your aliterate head
just wait till you see a crater in this place
full of waste sludge and stalls selling junk food

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The Inevitable Surprise

By Nathan Graziano

“Good God, he has a baseball bat between his legs,” my wife says and covers her mouth, trying to blot the grin that slipped on her lips as the pizza boy flipped the lid of a pepperoni pie and presented a wide-eyed bombshell with what Edgar Allan Poe called “the inevitable surprise.”

“No, no,” I say, the air siphoned from my Friday night, “the camera adds six inches.”

I sigh. But my wife knows. And I know. And anyone who has watched Pizza Bone 6 and seen the look of sheer fear in the bombshell’s eyes when that lid was flipped—yes, you know, too. So I turn to my wife and suggest some popcorn and a new movie, one where the hero dies at the end.

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Radio Waves from Mexico

By Jay Levon

Is any language more beautiful
than spanish spoken by a feminine tounge?
I’ve clenched my teeth for so long
that my fillings have corroded together
and I am receiving radio waves from Mexico
Mariachi music filtered through
the reverberations of my lonely skull
the music fades and is replaced
by a sultry voice seducing me
to do what?
Find her and love her?
Leave dirty messages on her phone?
or something less personal
like buying her brand of shampoo
or some weird mexican candy
I’ll never know, until I learn
to speak spanish

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Carp

By Jeff Santosuosso

Oh no, the carp have shed their scales again,
which float to the clouds like wrongway confetti.
They prism the sunlight in their dervish rotations,
while the fish shiver in scalelessness.
They should know better.
Piscine rebellion is an awkward moment
despite the glorious light show.

The earth’s rotation slows by the weight of the scales
strangling the wind.
The drag is measurable, and the carp ascend
floating in a cloud of their own scales,
which flutter them like barbwire eyelashes
and tear their skinless flesh
until their blood runs down,
deflecting off the slower scales, which arose in sloth,
now carmine like mosaic tiles,
even the inner surface that touched only its host
like a placenta.

Fish emerge from eggs with shells like albumen.
And before he is born, man floats in that sacred sac.
We shoulder our mothers from the inside.
We flutter there like wrongway confetti
gathering skin that layers lighter than lashes,
floating in an amniotic cloud.
Blood rushes by us, into us
like carmine mosaic tiles
before we emerge in rupture
and shed our maternal scales.

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