A conversation w/ Bruno — EIC of ReSet Zine!

A conversation w/ Bruno — EIC of ReSet Zine!

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“I just want my audience to be anybody who has a desire for, or just wants to learn about some cool shit, wants to fucking geek out on some weird shit, wants to look at something crazy, someone who wants something to talk to their buddies about.”

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Who ARE you, Bruno?

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I had a crazy upbringing. I dealt with a lot of crazy shit. I moved from New York to Tucson when I was in the middle of my teens. I’m ethnically ambiguous. A lot of people don’t think I’m white. I never really felt like any of the systems around me worked for me. The things I was good at weren’t really accepted because I had a different approach to doing them. I was just a punk kid who grew up street adjacent and nothing really worked out for me, so I decided a long time ago that I only really cared about doing my own thing. I was a drug addict for a long time and I still drink too much probably and I thought shit,— the least I could do while I’m walking around this stupid ball is produce something. Also, as I got older I was generally ignored and I just realized that ultimately if you make loud music and scream what’s on your mind at least some people are gonna hear it or if you make some kind of obscene art, somebody’s gonna see it. 

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Tell me about your magazine, how it came to be?

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It started with a practical idea in mind. Artistically practical. I wanted it to be a functional publication. We are really fighting a losing battle so I wanted to encourage people to express themselves this way so they can exchange information. When you present something like a personal project, the human brain is not gonna put any esteem on it. I want it to be bigger than myself because i want it to spread a certain type of message that makes people look at their communities before they look at the internet and also put on these artists that I appreciate. My mentality is to spread positivity. I wanted to create something beautiful and functional and elevate other people in the process. But, believe it or not, there are 2 big factors that went into the magazine. I went to a hardcore show in 2022, after not being to a show since before the pandemic. I saw how big the scene was getting and I was fortunate enough to be friends with some interesting people. This band “Fortuna Malvada,” from Tucson, they were the ones who invited me to that show and I was super stoked about all the kids being there together and realized that they had clearly learned about all this stuff through the internet, and that’s fine but, I feel like the internet corrupts everything so I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to start a publication that can kinda bridge the gap between the newer and the older. 

What is your take on community?

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I think community is necessary. I think community is massively skewed from what it was maybe once upon a time. I highlight things that are, you know, on the street versus existing in the ether or on the internet. I think that communities for better or for worse, even if you don’t fucking like them, which I don’t sometimes, (most of the time), I think are extremely important,  even if you hate the people in your community. You’re among them, and that’s where you’re coming from. I think people need to be more concerned with their community and less concerned with what’s going on online. In the late 90s, early 2000s we would fight, like, going to punk shows and stuff or hanging out around fucking gangsters or whatever. People would fucking get in fights, but it would be a fight over, like, “yo, you broke into my car, you fucked my girl,”— and that was petty, and it was stupid, but it was like, okay, at least that’s a fucking relevant problem. Right now people arguing over fucking, you know, I got my opinions on this shit too, so I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, but, you know, people are arguing over someone getting killed by a cop in fucking LA or, like Israel and that shit’s valid. That shit’s really valid. It’s really important, but it’s like, you know, you’re putting your energy somewhere else. The only community that matters is the one that’s actually fucking around you. 

Where do you want to take this magazine next? 

I would like to bring in some contributors and I would like to, you know, give it a little bit more of a functional aspect. I love making art, but I also want to live, pay the rent. I saw a video once about the Misfits and how Glenn Danzig made these zines that were also catalogs, and he would send them to the fans, and I was like, this is how we’re gonna sell more zines. I kind of want to do a long form personal project that would kind of be related, like, released as a sister thing. And maybe that would be a bi-yearly thing—and then continue with Reset magazine, but moving it more in the you know, I don’t want to say commercial, that maybe isn’t the right word, but more as a community resource. 

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As a journalist, what advice do you have for someone wanting to start

something similar to what you’ve created? 

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You need to fucking find a couple people you admire and just copy them until you don’t suck at. That’s what I do. And always approach everything with authenticity. Like, if you just approach everything with authenticity and you don’t give a fuck, you don’t become too self conscious, you don’t get too caught up in what’s working and what’s not. If you just find a couple people that you really admire and that speak to you and you copy it, you know, you copy it and copy it until you don’t suck at it anymore, you know, after a while, it’s not even going to look like their shit anymore anyway.

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RESET MAGAZINE

RESET MAGAZINE SHOP

GRIM CUTAWAY PRODUCTION

callous slack/slow rotten blessing/drawn on an inhale/ a vilification/ a lionization/lumbering/a load full

w/ indispensable guilt/a filament misfiring/a line nervous/under breath/under done/fruit of labors/ cut from my tongue/turn the tiny edge into the end of the sunset’s sliver/hand down/nasty

little understatements/blistered keepsakes/kept for the night/ impeding invoice of childhood/built/hesitations/ records/ornaments/measured hang/from the wall of eyes/ loose knot/histrionics of red/like sleep was overdue/ flickering open sign/gather a payment/all the deficit/

parade phantoms/find the new haze/ & the repertoire/

of flesh receipts/a chip in the tooth/caters to catastrophe/

caters to hodge-podge futures/—in a grim cutaway production/ call the necktie tightening/a numb road downing a blessing/ our disposition is a new front/loose/in the rust

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CAJOLING BURNOUT

My HEAVY stomach

remains broken—

a CONSTELLATION—

& I will lose it to the blunder of my writing

The truncated lines of my wait aspiring to fit into asequence of hearts

is bad plumbing CAJOLING burnout

This is working

towards some new remote-control obsession for MISERY

like LICKING hydrogen peroxide to make knots on my tongue

If I loosen the grip of NUISANCE & collect neutral tones

the cracked edge of will— of ARROGANCE—

might end as a healthy red corruption

Yawning hello in the sharp ash of autumn

our cravings: THROAT/CHEST/BREATH low to make new commodities

to float in the flood

The fix dwells in the last BONE of a miserable landscape

PAINTED w/ the slanted grind of the HORIZON

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DOUBTHEAD

DOUBT’s gold door/ties to the wheel/of our ever-advancing acid test slog/as a subtle burn of orange dust/& easy-on nervousness/leaves a work tune running overtime/in the atrial valve/doubt couldn’t swing/an apartment & instead chose a dead zone/w/ a brown apple core & termite wallpaper/break open those clingy letters & hang the half-written suicide notes/on the clothesline against the horizons/of blue lips laced w/ admonishments/mythroat feels like it might swallow/any remaining gumption/& the mutiny in my spine/wants to howl in the pillbox/of malfeasance/I am still waiting for a course correction/in the wreck of the downtown midnight echo/a sinister violin of self- importance/becomes a lone shadow/a necktie driving/ towards the blunted scent/of sleeplessness/tightening into a forgiveness—/cut into a call for serenity—/a book of land/seeded with bittersweet divergence/hopes bathed in dirt patches & traffic battles/all I can love in this moment/is ashovel/a disappearing perspective/dropping shoes/through the back country/of my tongue/to put dry fuel/on mega-box architecture/I remain flush w/ rattling teeth/in my HEAD/

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UNHOLY IN THE EGG FIELD

I am a machine eating words to become the scum in the socket enriching someone else’s dawn I try to catch my own eye like an “oh” & look for a saunter or a gait wearing a fascinator

I am model endings levitating like a gnashing love jammed into a fresh plastic seal ring I am the broken tip of the gem nicking the countdown that dropped out of your head

I crawl over the egg field into something like a dread mess resembling a life of fire I am a type of amphibious heavy buzz bringing down romantic dances (a serpent) I am the pocket change of my future cancers wearing heavy unholy armors

I’ve become the bottom of the shoes of a surly apostate of traffic agitation I am a salt painter wielding the brush of sharp words of self-effacement

I become a community of venom praying unintended answers I could be supple over-extended arrangements

I could hold a majesty of grief lines I am the masquerade of a scripture I am a need to survive

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Adam Stutz is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Broken Lens Journal and a neurodivergent poet. He is the author of Transcript (Cooper Dillon Books, 2017), The Scales (White Stag Publishing, 2018), The Sham Tapestry (White Stag Publishing, 2024), and Compunctions + Thefts (White Stag Publishing, 2024). His work was recently shortlisted for the Capilano Review’s 2023 Writing Contest, Writing in the Aftermath, and has appeared in various print and online publications including The Equalizer: Second Series, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Prelude, Be About It, Deluge, Dum Dum Zine, The Pinch, Dodging the Rain, Where is the River, Dream Pop, Cover, Ghost Proposal, Columba Poetry, Only Good Poems, INKSOUNDS, Spectra Poets, Trilobite, and hush: a journal of noise. His work can also be found at https://stutzwrites.com. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. 

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Strange Associations

As teens we had no cable. Few in our small town did. So VHS movies played on a loop. Friends would only have a few tapes. This created strange associations. Freaks, A Clockwork Orange, and The Last Unicorn in a camper trailer. A mirror over the bed. A friend had Drop Dead Fred
as his first make out movie. A creepy Rik Mayall cheering him on.

Every Machine Made Noise

One summer I worked in a factory. Packing medical tubes. It was easy work. But loud. From whirs to clangs. Every machine made noise. Some liked it though. One guy shouted that he’d rather have the machines. Than listen to his own thoughts. Then went back to packing. And never spoke again.

Speaking Ill Of The Dead

A rich man dug up a paupers’ grave. Down on the Dixie coast. Bodies found washed up on the shore were moved inland. And the rich got richer. People talked haunting. They spoke of ghosts. But that man lived a long life. Dedicated to the pursuit of material gain. Then died himself. There was no Divine retribution. No supernatural justice. Just a lot of people
speaking ill of the dead.

A Monument To Bad Times

My Tennessee family had storm shelters. Dug into hillsides before I was born. All unused as I saw them. Just shelters for spiders. A monument to bad times. When fear had people digging. Trying to stay safe.

He Had A Fast Motorcycle

A couple shared a nursing home room. The wife had terminal cancer. Her husband was very confused. He told all visitors the same story. About how he once had a fast motorcycle. That would get you from here to there “before you could hoot.” His wife of 50 years died. But he never noticed. Just talked about his motorcycle. And we could never decide. If this was a blessing. Or a curse.

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Damon Thomas is a spoken word artist, author, and graphic novelist known for his writing on life in Dixie County, Florida and his exploration of the Southern Gothic genre. He’s released numerous albums and books, including a graphic novel called “More Snakes Than People: A Rural Gloom Graphic Novel.”

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Press your brow against mine. Feel my breath upon your open mouth.

I want to know about your life. 

What has it been like?

Did you get that picket fence when you wanted it? Right when you wanted it?

Did it keep your dogs in? Did you paint it in the Summertime?

Did you get drunk and drive your truck through it?

Did you wake up one morning to find

         coyotes on your lawn, morning glory in your gutters,

         moldy covid masks in the driveway? Believe me when I tell you

none of it matters anymore. Hold my hand and feel

the landmarks swirl around us.

I want to know how you like to be talked to

so tell me and teach me with your hands

how you like to be treated. Press your brow against mine.

Feel my forehead finally relax. Wait, let’s take our glasses off.

The details matter but we don’t have to think about them all of the time.

You say you never had fences.

You say you’re sober now.

I say what the fuck is the point 

of a pillow case, anyway?

Do you mind that I’m made of brick and mortar?

Does it bother you when I drink? It doesn’t have to be 

everyday, in fact I like to keep things special

so I try not to wear anything out

except traditions handed to me after their expiry 

or phrases I am working through.

Wait, this would be better if I stopped talking

though I could talk to you for hours.

Hold my hand until it sweats. 

I know your heart is broken

and I wouldn’t have it any other way

than to love someone who practices humanity.

You cry as you scroll through the grief and tragedy

and keep searching for delights anyway.

Did you know this whole time, our heartbeats

are synchronized? Did they not teach you that in school? 

That when a child burns to death anywhere on our planet

We all fall off the metronome 

but when we touch, airs drop like bombs

and we sync up again.

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Rhea Melina is a multi-ethnic poet, parent and Montessori guide who lives in Seattle. She has been writing and putting out poetry since the early 2000’s. Her chapbooks include Fireant (SSO Press, 2005), These are not secrets (XYZ Animal Stars, 2009), and a place to put things (Bottlecap Press, 2023). A full-length collection of her poetry, found confetti, is now available from Carbonation Press.

climbed up the tree of life, kicked out of paradise 

i.

late night in the woods, and i can’t evеn
look at you straight on. i’ll find you in 
another place, consolations plastered
on the leaves. i’ll gather up serenades 
and surrender to the sound — of 
swallowed words and infinite speaking. 
my mind skips the scenes, they’ll escape 
through a hole in the back of my head. 
make a knot, i’m stuck inside. sinking in, 
fingers falling in my sins. i’m skipping sleep 
because i’m fluent in dreams  — about  
mountains, pinnacles, and shrines. hold my 
hand, accept my confession: if i could, i’d 
be your little spoon, ‘cause my heart’s 
stuck that way, and tenderness is all i’ve got. 

ii. 

we’re all our own sun, but not me. i’m 
an ocean wallowing: i play pretend 
while you haunt me in reverse, and i’ll 
drown you out with this legitimate longing. 
spiraling steady, stomach tied, you can 
never erase me off your thighs. thick 
skull, dirty mouth. trying to see your 
bones, while you’re keeping your hands 
to yourself. clawing, coiled up, it breaks 
your skin. and now: a bite, a balled-up fist. 
and then: fear and harm, certain pain,  
everything disappearing, vanishing when it 
bleeds. i think i’ll regret this waiting forever,
for you to make it hurt. but i’ll never 
forget the way reverie leaves me spellbound.

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semantic eventualities 

 “Я понять тебя хочу, 

Темный твой язык учу” 

— pushkin 

your mouth opens and darkness spills out, permeating everything, insomnia eclipsing our time. the past is outdated and the present is obsessed with the past. the nights i spend with you are sleepless, and from the edges of morning, in my delirium, i’m learning to read the space between your words. learning the difference between what’s appealing and what’s appalling. i show you my fingers, twice, thrice. and there, the pause, the unbroken gaze. and sometimes, defeat. seconds of silence pass. our game of hawk–dove intensifies. animals communicate in violence, because violence is survival, and it’s the only currency they have. we communicate about what we are trying to understand, about things we did not know. but we’re animals too, our inside jokes masquerading as hard-won truths. i’ve got google translate on speed dial with ad hoc translations of proverbs. to be barges swarming. to be afraid of wolves. to be a wagon full of noise. you promise to be careful, honest, but you can’t remember what for. 

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the dog days of winter 

 after julien baker’s “heatwave’ 

i spent a sunday behind the wheel, driving circles around the reservoir, because when you no longer believe in god, you don’t have to go to church. drowning my day, i’m a few pints deep when night dawns, and an e minor star cluster appears on the horizon. death by heavenly shepherd, blood dripping, i find myself pleading. strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. i wonder what good prayer and supplication are. i wonder if loving you trivializes their deaths. you were playing god when you ended their lives, their deaths born in your hands, and oh what power you hold over me. can you bind the beauty of the pleiades? can you loosen orion’s belt? it’s february, hunger moon, snow moon. excess winter mortality, liminal space. i do everything to keep from spiraling, my back, a street to be walked on, falling prostrate so that you may walk on me. 

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Natalye Childress (she/her) is a California-born, Berlin-based editor, writer, and translator. She has an MA in creative writing, and her first book, The Aftermath of Forever, was published by Microcosm Publishing.

Take me back to the endless skies. To the golden fields of our youth that were as wide as a dream. To the noise of a raucous evening, where laughter was the ache that transcended touch, where the small hours of the night shivered down the back of my neck like the breath of a dying God. Because even though I knew the child in you was sick, that you’d been wronged in ways that were unimaginable, I had to believe there were days when you felt deserving of good, that there were times when you knew that you were safe, that you were loved. Do you remember how we’d sit ourselves down on the beach and stare into the deep black silence of the night? Wishing, dreaming, planning our future, the world hushed and quiet, our eyes forever drawn to that one far-away line that divided the water from the sky. And yet later on, as we slept, I’d be engulfed by dreams of burning, of tattered rags and cloth turned to ash, of tiny sparks that jumped between my palms, and in that final moment, just before waking, one of those sparks would escape my grasp and it would grow and it would grow until it became the sun and then the whole sky was on fire and our wings were scorched and we were falling. We were always falling. But when I wake I am flooded with emptiness, and I forget the star-battered face of the boy I used to love, and the forgetting is the color of eggshell blue, rising up around me in soft tender waves. Everything is in-between. Everything is fragile. The smell of gasoline and rust. The clouds flaming red against the glaring sky. And yet when I raise my hand in front of my face, the sun that once burned the whole world is now so small I can block it out with one finger. And I think that makes sense, because now that you’re gone, the world feels far too ordinary to be real. Outside, sirens blare down empty streets. The wildfires are drawing closer, febrile in their newly found ferocity—nothing but smoke for miles, a red moon with a stolen glow. Inside, a garbage-can fire on an empty concrete floor, a funeral pyre of teenage memories. And as the drifting ash of our past lives melts on my tongue, all I can do is lie on the floor and feel weird about how bare it is in this room without you. And then at night, my mind reaches out, blindly trying to measure the distance to safety, and even afterwards, even after waking, it takes time to find my way out of the dream, and so I just lie there, watching how the traces of you linger in the air, how they change shape and slip through my fingers, and then I’m lost in the blur of color drifting across the wall, and I think that perhaps here, at the end of all things, that’s all we are, color and light, vibrations, the echo of an echo, the night breathing its last sigh, the morning sun clasping the world in its arms, your name on the edge of my tongue, again and again and again.

Daniel Sheen is a queer artist and writer. He’s been nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Awards, Longlisted for the 2024 Voyage YA Award, and Longlisted for the 2025 Caledonian First Novel award. He’s currently editing a zine, curating a gallery show, and writing his debut trilogy of novels. Find him at: www.danielsheen.net as well as @DanielSheenUK on Twitter and disaffected.youth on Instagram

“Damn it Chuck, are you listening? I need you to stop at Walmart and pick up some Christmas gifts for the kids. Christmas is in three weeks; in case you forgot. Get them each a few toys from the list…And it would be nice if you get me something this year and not from the
damn Walmart. I think I’ve earned it putting up with your shit,” she said.
Chuck stood in the vestibule of the old family house, pulling on his Carhartt field coat.
As his wife chirped at him, he rummaged in the pockets for his gloves. He grabbed his knit watchman cab and pulled it over his ears, muffling her shrill voice.
“Yep. Got it,” he said as he opened the storm door.
A cold burst of wind hit him in the face as he opened the glass storm door and stepped out into the gray, Sandusky afternoon. Fucking hell. He walked over to his F150, took off his wool beanie, used it to brush the fine layer of lake effect snow from the windshield. He opened
the door and climbed in, put the key in the ignition, pumped the gas pedal, and started the truck.
As the heat and defroster went to work warm, he opened the center console, looked at his unopened pack of Camels, but reached for the can of Zyn pouches instead. Fuck I miss it, he thought as he popped two wintergreen flavored Zyn pouches into his mouth, using his tongue to
push them into the space between his gum and upper lip. Damn buzz takes too long.
Chuck pulled out of his driveway onto Columbus Avenue and headed toward the Walmart. I’ll get them kids a good Christmas this year. Her…As he drove, he half listened to the sports talk radio show, uninterested in the myriad reasons for the Brown’s latest loss or the need
for Ohio State to fire their coach. It’s the same old shit every day, every goddamn December.
Never seem to get a win. Halfway to Walmart, he passed Sportsman Taven on Old Station Road.

He recognized most of the trucks parked in the gravel lot—all the people he worked with, grew up, friends, and enemies…old lovers. Fuck it. Just one. He flipped a fast U-turn, the rare end of the truck sliding out just enough to give him a start and splashed through a slush puddle as he
rolled into the lot.
What the hell am I doing? He parked and turned off the truck. Fuck it. Come on man…Don’t do it. He sat silent for a moment, his mind running through the reasons, pro and con.
After a few minutes, as the truck temperature fell to near the fridged outside air, he turned the key and started the engine. Then he saw Sandy and Annie Miller pull into the parking lot. He took a breath and turned shut the engine down. Shit. Chuc sat for a minute, his mind replaying it
all Sandy and Annie… the only two sister’s he’d ever banged. Annie, the one he fucked up by screwing her best friend…his now wife, 35 pounds heavier and a real bitch. He thought about Annie walking in on them at the cottage. The girl fight that ensued.
Fuck my life. Just one quick one, she’ll kill me if I come home drunk again. Chuck turned off his phone, opened the console and tossed it in. He grabbed his Camels and a book of matches
put them into his jacket pocket.
“Fuck it. Can’t drink without a smoke,” he said aloud.

#

The bar was full, the Steel Driver’s Where Rainbows Never Die, added to the din of the town drunks, chattering about their glory days, gossiping about who was fucking who, who was divorced, whose kid was the football star down at Perkins High. The same goddamn people,
never anyone new. These were the people he grew up with, the old timers who went to high school with his parents. He knew his own kids would drink here in the not far off future. It depressed the fuck out him. Chuck had always wanted to get out of Sandusky, never managed.
Nobody did. Alright, time to get the fuck going.
He took the last sip of his second boiler maker, stub out his second grit, and was signaling to Sammy, the barkeep to pay his tab, when he caught Annie’s gaze. Shit, she’s lookin’ at me. She
smiled at him and raised an eyebrow. He checked his wallet—three crisp $100 bills, two twenties, and a few ones sat neatly inside. Shit. That paycheck went goddamn fast. Gonna be a long fucking month. Just one more… He caught Sammy’s eye and spun his finger in a circle.
Sammy grinned and nodded and poured another Miller Lite draft and shot of Canadian Club. As he took the first sip of his fresh whiskey, he felt her hand squeeze his shoulder.
“Been a minute Chuck,” Annie said.
He turned, looked into her blue eyes, her cheeks flush from drink and the warmth of the bar. Goddamn she’s still so fucking beautiful. The same old regret welled up in his gut, traveled on the ethanol stream flowing through him, warming his body and dulling his judgment.
“Life keeps me busy…working a lot, deer season’s winding down…”
“And that wife of yours and your two kids probably keep you running…how is Tracy and the little ones anyway?” Annie asked.
Bitchy thing to say… but I guess I deserve that.
Chuck took a beat before he answered, knowing his response would set whatever trajectory the night held. He took a gulp of his beer and motioned to the barkeep for another
round.
“They are a pain in my ass,” he finally said.
“You want a drink?”
“You know I do,” she said.

He pulled the fresh pack of smokes from his coat pocket and opened it. He offered her a smoke.
“I quit,” she said.
“Yeah, me too. You care if I burn one?”
“Your lungs, not mine,” she said with a wink.
He pulled the book of matches from his pocket, tapped the pack on the bar top and pulled out a fresh smoke. He struck a match and lit the grit, took a deep drag and held it in. He exhaled blowing the smoke up into the thick air. He sighed. Fuck I missed that.
Annie grinned at him, shook her head, reached over and pulled the cigarette from his callused fingers and took a drag. She handed back the grit with red lipstick on the unfiltered butt.
“Well fuck it. I guess we are both ending up on Santa’s naughty list this year,” she said.
She handed the smoke back, her red lipstick imprinted on the butt. She rested her hand on just north of his knee. He felt a shiver run through him and took a sip of whiskey. Trouble. Fuck me. This one is always trouble.

#

Chuck woke just before well before dawn, a panic building in his throbbing head, doing its damn best to break through and shake him from the whiskey fog. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, then he felt her warmth against his back, her breasts pushed into him, her hair on his
neck. Shit. His mind reeled. What happened? Snippets of images came, super-eight fuzzy– them drinking, him buying rounds, her dancing…the disapproving looks. Fuck. Fuck.
She groaned and stirred behind him, her hands moving slowly to his ass beneath the heavy blankets. He sighed. No going back now. He rolled over and pulled her atop him. When they finished, Annie rolled over and went back to sleep.

Chuck got up, his bare feet on the cold wood floor. The streetlight gave him just enough light to see his clothes in a pile on a chair in the corner of her small apartment, a little loft in what was supposed to be downtown, built before the Ford plant closed and developers still had
big hopes and dreams. He pulled through the pile of his clothes in the chill air, found his pants,
and searched his pockets for his phone, knowing what he’d find when he turned it on. Then it hit him. Shit, it’s in the truck. He walked to the window and pulled the shades open. Christmas lights twinkled through the fresh snow on the old brick building across the street, his truck wasn’t out front. She drove us here. Fucking hell. He checked his pants pockets and found his keys. At least I got them. He grabbed his wallet from his pants and looked inside—three twenties and some ones remained. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
He pulled the half-pack of Camels from his coat pocket and lit one. He returned to the window and smoked, looking at the lights, listening to Annie’s soft sleeping breaths.

#

Annie dropped him at his truck sometime after 6:30 a.m. They had said little on the ride from her apartment back to the bar. When she pulled into the Sportsman’s parking lot, she finally
asked him.
“So, now what?” she asked.
Through the wipers pushing a wet snow to the sides of the windshield, he looked at the worn hand painted sign above the door, the light over the door still on and providing illumination in the dismal gray light. He cleared his throat.
“Well, I been wondering that myself all morning. I’m guessing I don’t have a home to go back to at this point…I think word probably already got back to Jenny,” he said.
She sighed, reached over and held his hand.

“We never were good for each other where we?” she said, a statement more than a question.
He didn’t say anything at first. He sat on the thought for a few seconds before he summed the courage to say it.
“Maybe we could learn to be.”
She looked at him, made a snorting sound.
“We sure click in bed. Always did. Other than that…I don’t know. That ship sailed a while ago,” she said.
He winced.
She looked at him and shrugged, a tiny smug smile forming on her lips.
“Good luck Chuck. Tell her you slept one off in the truck.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.
He opened the passenger door, stepped into the fridged morning.
He heard her call out, “Thanks though. I had a good time,” as he shut the door behind him. He walked to his truck.
Somebody had puked next to his driver side door. Is that mine? Maybe…no, I don’t think so. Fuck. He stepped over the pukesicle, opened the door and climbed in the cab. He started the
truck, cranked the heat, opened the center console and grabbed his phone. As it powered up, he lit a smoke, trying to calm himself before the inevitable. He couldn’t bring himself to look and
tossed the phone on the passenger seat, put the truck in drive and wondered, Now what?

---

JD Clapp is a writer based in San Diego, CA. His creative work has appeared in over 70 different literary journals and magazines including Cowboy Jamboree, trampset, and Revolution John. His work has been nominated for several awards including the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. He is the author of two story collections—Poachers and Pills (2025), and A Good Man Goes South (2024).

The Longest Pause. 

‘You ever think about

the time that 

we almost got married?’

she says down the phone. 

Each day that I wake up, 

I think.

‘That was years ago, 

I reply,’ as the longest pause 

falls down upon us 

like the thickest 

blanket of snow.

After the call, 

I brush my teeth 

and slip into bed,

to a silence so strong

that it could call 

her name.

---

Called in Sick Haiku. 

In the bath singing 

you’re not the boss of me now –

I schedule a nap.

---

No Last Laugh in Circus City.   

I spot him as I cut through crack alley – 

he is pissing against a doorway.

A gangly man in a clown suit, 

clutching a can of cider. 

It is hard not to stare as he notices 

me midstream and looks over his shoulder, 

with a face so furious 

that his eyes almost look pupil-less 

and wanting to capture the moment, 

I admittedly reach for my phone –

but his expression tells me 

that he’ll eat my alive 

if our bad days collide any further. 

I walk on into the evening and the rest 

of my life, with no last laugh –  

knowing that nobody will believe what  

I’ve just seen whilst I was still 

sober.

---

19. 03. 2025.

In the woods –

the blue skies and warming air

prod and poke 

between the dark and cold 

shadows 

of skeletal silver birch trees. 

Winter is losing its grip. 

Spring is eager to break through,

as if it were soon to gush out 

like a fresh exit wound 

onto everyone’s tops.

I kick up the withered leaves 

feeling somewhat out of season –

as butterflies traverse 

a crossroads of paths, 

with no devil, or Robert Johnson. 

Today it is hard not to relate 

even to a cliched sense of hope. 

---

Current Set of Wheels.  

It had always 

been the same – 

whether it was 

poker, pool,  

flirting, or gardening, 

I got good 

at something 

and then 

the wheels fell off.

Until I finally found 

something  

so subjective that it  

didn’t matter whether 

you finished it without 

any wheels at all.  

And from then on

I happily clocked the miles,

as a poet on 

the small press 

highway.

Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician from Bristol, England. He lives in his home town of Bristol, England but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. He is the author of seventeen chapbooks of published poetry and three full collections. He is part English, part Welsh and part wolf. IG: @gwiljamesthomas.

Lighting Angels  

When I was six 

I stuck my finger into a cocoon 

and felt the soft walls of a caterpillar, 

what would be 

the wings of a butterfly 

plucked between my nails. 

I think about this butterfly decades later, 

especially when people see 

their death relatives or lovers come to them 

in a butterfly landing on the shoulder, 

the instant tears, 

telephone to the other side, 

and someone was without that butterfly. 

It was around this time my father died, 

a few months before his powerful heart 

was wasted on lung cancer, 

I wonder sometimes, maybe it was him. 

I have wondered about the caterpillar 

sacrificing itself, in light of wasps laying eggs 

into their soft white belly 

and devouring the metamorphosis, 

Saturn chomping the organs 

formed by his genes, 

if my finger felt like the jaws of an insect, 

or a mutated beast they fear 

and do not know why, like 

migration in the blood of birds. 

I am the fire that has informed 

this caterpillar of hell, and I know 

at my time of judgment, God 

will look upon me, 

and the butterfly will be there, 

he will ask why 

and I will say, 

I always thought butterflies 

were too pretty. 

I looked at my finger 

until midnight. 

---

Dummy

It’s sometime in the future, 

and I imagine leaflets

will fly like white and black 

birds across the sky. 

I will listen to my students 

talk about their older siblings 

drafted to fight 

in the world war. 

And it was long before, where 

I joked with a friend that 

we were outside the range 

to be sent overseas. 

I will listen to the old women 

silently stare out their windows, 

feel the guilt of the old men 

who have begun to cry.

And then, they were not leaflets. 

They were something like forever. 

I heard the trumpets in the sky. 

I was so naive. I was so naive. 

---

Hidden Corridors 

I have noticed at night,  

the nurses headed to their shifts,  

the equilibrist racoons at war with a fat possum,  

hearing graveyard neighbors  

open and close their dusty doors,  

strangers that wander the street  

with all the time and right as I.  

I have seen those responsible  

for fireworks and broken glass,  

the owls emerging  

and terrorizing the mice,  

but in particular the beatniks  

who smoke their cigarettes and drink their alcohol, 

sometimes with a book in their hand,  

flashing their brilliance with a muttered expletive  

a labored return to their outlawed poet or novelist,  

maybe their own art  

struggling with a verse or unpacking a memory;  

they are writing  

and I am writing about them.  

There are corridors that run through all of us  

each of us residing behind the flat metallic door  

to the left and right,  

dim subterranean light,  

and independently they have started to glance at me  

and I continue to look at them,   

scribble down words,  

before the sun rises  

we share a quick nod,  

not a dying species 

but one content on being unfound.  

---

Star Spots 

At three in the morning, ladies dance on the street. 

It is cold as all the hours in winter at once, but no-one cares. 

I look at the train tracks, the world moves while it does not, 

and hundreds of people are around me now, they could 

hear me yell. I could ruin all of their days 

be included in all of their stories 

fuel hatred of the human race, 

but I will soon sleep as they are sleeping, 

we are a fractal cocoon from above.  

The ladies are loud, but their happiness is a fire 

and I smile uncontrollably at the thought 

that this is something they will long remember 

as the time they had it, as the time they had it won, 

with no need for dream catchers, 

having pushed the bills and sicknesses 

beyond the horizon. 

I am entirely motionless, sad and alone. 

---

Outhouse Bum

I listened to a man tell me about the universe, 

chipping off each secret one by one, lips ballroom red, 

eyes like the dark pit of a jade broken in half, 

and he smoothly dispelled the great scientists 

of our century and those long ago, 

without their education, accomplishments, complication, 

all the things he was without. 

I heard his words 

like the deep brewing of cicadas underground, 

stirred into the sugary water of language, 

and I ran away, but later found him digging out an alley, 

he was still beautiful, but was now poor,  

I wanted to take his hand, knowing it would take a week 

for him to own all my things. 

I could hardly hear the cars outside, 

and the rain was pouring, him watching a documentary 

on the Soviet Union, some taxi cabs and smoke room instruments, 

and the air was rife with coffee, even though it was eight at night, 

he was mumbling about how we almost had it, 

I, trying to hide his pills, each one white and light as cotton, 

a flock of birds seen from under a tree, 

summer living again in a sunflower, 

I wanted to cradle him in my arms, 

read him a tender psalm 

I had lost faith in.

Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, The Chiron Review, IceFloe Press, Variant Lit,The Argyle Literary Magazine, Sontag Mag, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Ink in Thirds, Dark Winter Lit, among others. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in English.

The weeks spent abandoning your body were like constant striking of flint that suddenly
ignited fire. You observed your reflection in the mirror; each contradiction ran into another until
you heard a knock at the door.
You were only present in your shining armor, which flared with heavy, enveloping wings.
But their protection caused confinement like an alpha sequestered from the wolfpack.
Your body’s a cage that, while made of flesh, abbreviates itself like an iguana dropping
its tail. As a result, you sit in your apartment while reading and eating as much as you are able,
knowing the second shoe would fall.
David was discharged from the psych ward days ago and no one got word from him.
When he was inside, you communicated by the phone installed for patients. His conversational
tone put you at ease, but when he talked about his vision you felt frisson like zephyrs caressed
your face and upper body.
His kin had abandoned him when he got in trouble this time. However, you knew his
nature and how ordinarily coarse-spirited folks were eagerly won over by his humbleness.
You opened the door and his usual tan was absent along with his smile. He stood in the
hallway, eyes downcast, wearing a stained t-shirt from one of his favorite bands. You opened
your arms and stepped forward. There was too much to say that would have broken the silence.

J.L. Moultrie is a Detroiter and multi-genre writer who communicates his craft through words. He hasn’t been the same since encountering Patti Smith, Sylvia Plath & Hart Crane. He considers himself a modern, abstract imagist.