This is Poetry

3:38am at the truck stop

he sat down at the little u-shaped counter up front

tried lighting a cigarette but kept dropping the matches.

his skin was the color of skim milk.

you alright? waitress asked.

having a heart attack, his voice came like a skeleton

sweat dripping off his chin.

waitress ran to the phone for an ambulance.

want me to help you onto the floor? i asked him.

just light my cigarette will you, he said body stiff as a bent nail.

he took off an old silver watch with a white face slid it towards me along with his cellphone and wallet.

you tell her i remember that night under the stars at lake red rock, he said

made me write it on a napkin along with his wife's phone number down in joplin missouri.

©Justin Hyde currently lives in Iowa, USA.

FEATURED PERFORMERS: Ron Whitehead, Ryder Collins, Craig Cady, Bill Gainer, A. Razor, T. A. Noonan, Carleen Tibbetts, Russell Jaffe, Ryan Snellman, Michele McDannold and Brian W. Fugett. AND music by the band Flamingo and an after-party in the Legacy Lounge. Suitable for ages 18+. Cash bar 21+.  VIP Pre-show 6-7pm $15 (Volume 1 of This is Poetry book series included with admission to VIP Pre-show). After-party to follow performances. 

Part 1

Thru blind birth luck I live in Indiana Frozen crossroads of the American conundrum Under the legalized gusts Of steel mill exhausts Where the mercury-laced waters Of Lake Michigan lap in the north Where vinyl nightmare houses replace Crops in fields Where boys spend summers pissing from trees In Dinosaur Ditch Where grandma’s iron kitchen skillet First received its golden commandment from heaven Where daddy walked the brief brawling streets Of youth Where Mrs. Burton offered phantom treats From Halloween tray of neighborhood lore Where Mr. Berkley sat with coke plant Emphysema cough Where Red Cunningham lost his arm to the Alligator machinery of industry Where summer lasts for two hours in July Then returns to comforting gray chilled skies Where Tina was snuffed out at 19 Stabbed and discarded like a sack of trash Still no suspects in sight Where teens crack garage doors to vent Afternoon bong coughs Where there is a church and a bar on Every corner espousing liquid heaven escape Where I often think of myself blessed and trapped Third generation familiar with the sounds of these bleeding Streets its inhabitants visions dreams changes Bursting with a tragic Fragile and hopeful rebirth

©Tim Murray is a lifelong resident of Northwest Indiana. He hosted the Red Fez blogtalk radio show from 2010-2012 and The Tim Murray Variety Show on Project U Radio Network. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by NightBallet Press for his poem “Certified Outlaw”. His e-chap What I Did Monday is available for free download from Ten Pages Press. His chapbook Dinosaur Ditch was published by Citizens for Decent Literature Press. He is currently an editor for Blotterature Literary Magazine.

John Muir Forest Of Love  he tells me love takes up space ‘’there’s not a thimble of it where you live’’ he insists infinite emptiness i want to measure love now to know how big my house must be to share it with him for whom my lust is voluminous he doesn’t understand love hides here in a way it can’t be found maybe in storage space packed suitcase from past trips new orleans, santa fe, san francisco i admit to walking through home halls as cold as meat freezers i admit to phone calls sizzling as barbeque pits & just as filling torn between hungers that can & cannot be filled i lick my fingers one hand cold & dry as empty grape stem one hand sweet & wet as plump red cherries i need two hands to function & yet here i sit typing with confused stumps like oversized thimbles

©Lynne Savitt took studied workshops with Diane Wakoski in the early seventies and subsequently taught writing workshops at various colleges, community centers and prisons. Her first poem was published in Playgirl magazine in 1974. Over the years her poems have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including 13th Moon, Second Coming, Home Planet News, & Poetry Now. She has been a featured poet online from Desolation Angels & Rusty Truck. She was the recipient of the Madeline Sadin Poetry Award from The New York Quarterly. She co-founded & edited Gravida & co-edited Caprice and was also a contributing editor to Redstart & StonyHills. Savitt has thirteen published poetry collections. Her latest book is Relics Of Lust: New & Selected Poems, NYQ books, 2014. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1947, she is a single parent of two children & grandmother of seven. She resides on Eastern Long Island.

Status

Through this manmade fog squint to see display only liquid matters drowning thought in apathy, whose status is this screaming across the night; is this popularity or notoriety . . .?

Irrevocably entangled like beat lovers in a public john, you’ll get nothing out of touching me but a messy static discharge.

©Teri Louise Kelly is somewhat of an enigma in the world of autodidactic behaviour and holds several degrees in gender and genre swapping. Originally from Brighton (UK) she is the author of one previous poetry collection Girls like Me, and the memoirs Sex, Knives & Bouillabaisse, Last Bed on Earth, American Blow Job and the recently released BENT. A renowned collector of beer coasters and Facebook friends she dabbles with bass guitar and serial killer art. Never one to flinch from the challenges pseudo-normality and liver enzyme malfunctions regularly throw her way she lives in Adelaide, South Australia with her lover, two cats and their own in-house bar and grrrl.