200th St. By Isaac Boone Davis
Anorexic Shadows By Howie Good
As Crickets Dance outside our window By jacob erin-cilberto
Dry By Jeffrey Graessley
Edward Scissor-hands Doesn’t Smoke on the Subway By Mila Anhielo
El Monte Yellow Jackets By Cruz Medina
The Explosions Sound Like Gunshots By Sean M. Poole
Mexican Heritage By Candace Cortez
Out of Hate By Denise R. Weuve
Overdue By Jerry Guarino
Poem for Noah By Paul Kareem Tayyar
Your Tears By John McKernan
My Mother’s Curtains
– Michael Ashley
have hung almost as long
as I have been married,
tattered around the edges
stained by her forty a day habit
I tell her that they are worn
& she should replace them,
she brushes it off
retorting that there’s plenty wear
left in them yet,
they keep the warmth in
& it’s hard to get a well fitting
pair just off the shelf,
predictably
after the second bottle of Chablis
our conversation turns
to my marriage,
she tells me
in that condescending tone,
how my spouse is no good for me
how she’ll never have grandchildren
how it is never too late to turn
I brush it off,
knowing that when I next visit
her curtains will still be hanging
dirty
familiar
& almost impossible to replace.
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On a Day Off
– John F. Buckley
I like eating lunch over the sink, over the side
with the garbage disposal. About ten feet past
the kitchen window is a thick green leafy curtain
thoroughly screening me from seeing or being seen
by the many vehicles rushing down the freeway
that runs just above and beyond the beige carport,
under a drizzling off-white Orange County sky.
Amidst a life of intricately-woven marriage and
sleek domesticity sit pockets of beloved disorder:
overstuffed sandwiches dripping into the drain,
a dining-room table covered with loose papers
and cases of provisions from Costco, and a dark
puzzling stain on the carpet from unknown causes,
but surely not from the cat or my muddy shoes.
If the family in the apartment downstairs slam
the front door and drive off in their car, I can lean
forward to stare down at their cluttered back patio,
at the trunks of the evergreens before me. I’ll splash
a little water around the sink to clean it, grab my keys,
and then take off in my birdshitty green Civic to run
errands keeping our own lives moving smoothly.
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Derelict Mumbled Riddle
– Scott T. Starbuck
Now the queen told her henchmen
“You’ve got to let that rocker drown.”
but word arrived on a stolen boat
drifting through the clouds.
I met the octopus in the Seattle Aquarium
and he told me what to say.
He said, “The queen is a blasted furnace
rusting beneath the wharf.”
Nice tits though, but
I tore up her phone number
since love, and not sex,
is what I wanted.
My guitar can love me
if she can’t.
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Eat at Sam’s
– Kevin Ridgeway
Neon lights embrace us as we pass through the glass portal
into the world of flaming grills and bosomy waitresses
order slips waving underneath the fans caked in grease
and sweat from the brows of short order cooks melting
inside their toasted paper hats
Burgers are a primary specialty, but an abundance of
hard to pronounce Mexican meat platters are universally met
with glee by saucer eyes that water from steam permeating
the open kitchen and the entire dining hall, pyres of
feasts glowing in foil fortresses on table tops lining nearly every
weathered duct tape foam booth housing families gathered around
octogenarian saints
We are not adventurous; we order hamburgers and fries in
oily white bags that drip from the wattage of Sam’s in the
night all the way to our doorstep and to our own table, our
saints long dead and our bodies feverish from that dive diner’s
hothouse of manic personalities and simmering splendors
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Attraction
– Daniel Romo
I say rain. You say pyro. I say Spain. You say Cairo. I say The Mexican-American War was actually started over a woman. You say tell me more. I say her name was Lupita Conchita de la Macarena. She batted her eyes and spread her thighs one too many times for a certain Anglo general. Her novio, Hilario the Hothead, took offense and killed the general’s mother. Saddled up his stallion and raided her place at dawn. Woke her from her dreams and doused her frail body in kerosene. Lit the fuse of her limbs until the blaze took apex in her stomach—her burning flesh the voice of her son’s transgressions. I say what a painful way to go. You kiss my cheek, run your hands down my chest, and whisper in my ear. Sizzle. Sizzle.
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