i was able to make a mistake today and still walk back the person i was with all my blessings still accounted for in my back pocket. i was able to peel away an old angry thought that lied to me and turned on a power switch-off from a manual heart surplus fuse. my mechanics refused to buckle under some malware bug and over rid the auto pilot protocol. I breathed, and watched my skin come back thru an old bruise. my lips put their teeth away, and goodness found its home into my words again. beauty patted me on the back, asked where I been. I shrugged the heat off my shoulders, and flexed all my muscles at once 

thru the friend I embraced, like promising to not let go even if I forget what it feels like when they aint there. I reflected until I made myself company, and reminded myself they sometimes won’t be. I nodded and said, im sorry that scared makes my pain loud and sad aint the words I wanna say sometimes. I reached for a cellphone and saw missed calls from people who left this place. they just called to leave me messages they were okay. just in case all my i love yous didnt get through, and last goodbyes got tangled up in old time like a grandfather clock. they say we aint left we just in a different spot 

now with no coverage but all still on the same plan, no plane can ever erase who you are so dont worry about disappearing for awhile. youre holding us both in your brain and body. you breathe for all of us now, tomorrow you’ll live a thousand lives at the same time and we feel every hug, tear, and kiss like a cosmic text message. we feel alright here, you could never know. you still have work to do and we’ll watch laughing at how you outsmart em everytime woopin over hand daps and big noise like “see it! i toldjuu tho, i toldjuu he would. thats dave! thats our david henley. little brother grandson who cut scars into fast 

feet running thru the screen door. theyre still trying to catch him, alright!.”

our time isnt gone, dont avoid your face in the mirror just cause its a little wet. look at us. we aint left.

remember.

you have good friends in case you forget. 

---

2morrow i’ll be on the road. i’ll be with myself for 5 hours singing songs like i’m trying to change my dna. staring at thirsty brush and brown hills. air conditioned cockpit juggling wifi satellites passing thru the middle of old town promises. bakersfield, merced, santa nella, are all names with stories and people’s lives and i’ll blow by it all like a burrito wrapper in the wind, over whats left of flattened and matted creatures in the sun, doing 85,  eyes darting and bouncing off side and rear views, gauging. beating the speed gun to the punch so I can tap break and relaunch into another lane coasting without pause. straight thru no stops except for gas next to the honey stand halfway in and the air.

will be heavy with hot dust. people will be courteous and lost walking in and out of poisonous bathrooms like madmen returning to play a game of death. clutching a bag of chips and soda for the playlist or the voices on the radio. i like these drives. they recalibrate somehow. fix you in. prepare you for phone calls, for goodbyes, for absense, for reintroductions to loved ones youve known all your life, for sad news, and being someplace like youve never mattered more in your life. you rise, you show up, and you know this time was easier for someone because you did. and then you drive back to a place that is more home than home, but less painful to be anything you’d miss. 

i miss home. maybe i keep going back cause i wonder what misses me. 

Maestro Gamin, began developing his poetry sometime in 2009/2010 after attending Vibrations writer’s group. He soon began attending open mics across the southern los angeles and downtown areas, such as Lost Souls Cafe,The Monday Speakeasy, World Stage, DPL, Natural High (flight school), Our Mic, and Freedom of Speech Thursdays.

she leaned through open car windows
for cigarettes in her pre-teen low-rise denim cut-offs
willowy from ritalin 
she said yes to the things I was afraid of
bonfire invitations and cans of warm beer and cloudy liquid sucked up 
through a needle on a cloud of cotton
well that escalated quickly
something in you knew from a young age
you could get whatever you wanted from a girl
if you just picked the right one
an evil entrepreneurialism 
i was envious at first
simplified it to mean I was less pretty
the truth was you could just smell the disease I didn’t inherit
and decided you could own her
before you blame our Dad, he was a good one
and you’re an unoriginal asshole
that’s why it never made sense
why she felt she deserved a violent life
it began by boys my age asking me when she turned 18
like an Olsen twin countdown calendar
fast forward twelve years and her body is a broken home
i’ve seen the smashed eye socket she swore was a mugging
felt the ridges from the razorblade scars
heard stories told slack-jawed and casually about shampoo
poured into dilated pupils
things I couldn’t stop because she 
needed needed needed
fix fix fix
it’s the deadening of her eyes when I ask if she’s okay 
the locked bathroom doors
the time she flung herself from a moving car and the scratches didn’t compare
when she sold Mom’s Christmas CD collection 
when you tried to hug us, act nice, but we knew
how do i share her darkness, my darkness with other people
holding back a Jerry Springer reference to break the tension

to minimize the blood, the tears, the CPS calls
she deserves more
you deserve less
so much less
you keep her stunted 
like when she leaned through those windows
the smell of burnt hair from a bronzer-stained straightener
scorched skin from tanning beds 
stuck in amber of the early ‘00s
decade-old Juicy pants deemed cool again
Red Bulls at 10am
sticky drugstore body sprays 
the track marks tracking years like a tree 
the way you find her on back pages and sides of highways and at gas stations in her flip flops 
send me messages about how bad she’s doing as if
you didn’t boil the water
you like her like this 
prefer her like this 
childlike with an issue with authority
loosies gripped between looser lips
telling me she hates me and
she loves you 
there are just so many of you
dealers and men with records, sure
but the saviors with the beer bellies and 401Ks are the worst
eyes raking up her malnourished body in used car lots
your absolutely drenched liver makes you feel edgy
promising a bed, if…
a job if…
you certainly aren’t reminding her to eat
play the victim when she’s court-ordered to leave you
then pick her up from Day 2 of detox like a damn superhero 
a hatchet in our plan to save her 
when our mom will only give her a ride if it’s to rehab
like all twelve steps tell us to do
like Intervention tells us to do
never Google how many of those people are still alive, by the way

we’ve done everything
said everything
tried everything
then you slip in to make things easy
then so so hard
the email she sent that said 
I need everything to be perfect to look at it
but maybe to me perfect just means okay 
some of you have met well-timed ends
i grin about it closed rooms as to not appear to be a 
bad person
but some people deserve to die
overdose in hallway
car accident that left you paralyzed
overdose in hot tub
overdose in room of rented furniture
stabbed to death in the middle of the day
maybe there is a God
maybe someday I’ll be the one to hunt you down
how do middle class white girls commit murder 
when it’s not against their cheating middle management husbands?
Facebook Marketplace?
I thought maybe she’d someday win
live
stay sober
stay away from all of you
but with tinsel and snow
came her last breath
another one of you left her alone
in a dark room
so now I’ll just stare with honeyed
concrete eyes
saying I know you
I see you
for what you are
and what she didn’t get the chance to be.

---

Lyz Mancini is a writer living in Catskill, NY. She is a beauty copywriter for brands like MAC Cosmetics and Clinique, and her writing has appeared in Slate, Catapult, HerStry, Shortwave Magazine, Huffington Post, Roi Faineant Press, and more. She is a Pitch Wars 2020 and Tin House Winter Workshop 2022 alum and was nominated for a 2022 Pushcart Prize. Diet Dr. Pepper runs through her veins. 

Sitting in front of a bowl of steaming ramen, I’d never felt more alone. While the workers in the kitchen moved back and forth in an orchestrated symphony, the dining room was empty, except for me. I subconsciously picked the middle seat against the wall. The light from the street punched through the shaded glass, highlighting me and displaying how lonesome I was. Every slurp was accented by no other small noises; every chew was a small bomb for one – me. 

Pulling the noodles from their spicy orange broth, the chashu pork floated past. There was no one to tell how perfect the ajitama egg was, that this pepper-infused elixir was giving me a second chance at life after a long night swallowing poison due to my girlfriend and I calling it quits. But one of us not wanting to call it quits. (me.)

I’ve gotten used to being alone but losing your significant other; your best friend, stings worse than losing a kiss when the lights are out. There is a fundamental difference between losing a girlfriend and losing your Best Friend. These two things are not the same. You can love someone, but it requires different skills to like them as a person and to see your best self as a byproduct of their influence. Laughter sounds different when you miss the timbre of a specific set of pipes, just as a meal feels sad when all you want to do is talk about how great it is with the ghost in your heart. I often wonder if somewhere deep within my subconscious if I’d made a deal with the proverbial devil, or through my life experiences within karma, I’m paying for something I did in a past life. Darkness and me, we’re old pals. I love the night when everyone is asleep, when the cars drive just a little faster, hoping a cop doesn’t see them. I live for sad songs and can relate to a lonesome cowboy, a sunny day with the windows down just ain’t my jam. 

There is communion in eating alone. The world is consistently busy, and I have no problem throwing on my AirPods or breaking open a book while I wait for someone to bring me my fish tacos on any other day, but for this moment, my heartbreak was perceptible with every lazy noodle hanging from the chopsticks. I’ve lost girlfriends before. I lost a wife. Losing this one felt like a stab wound that someone kept ladling that fiery concoction into, making me relive the ache with the smallest reminders like an inside joke, a good meme, or a song that absolutely crushes me through her memory. Rooms are quieter without her presence, and the aisles of the grocery store can haunt you because it’s a hard habit to break when you’re looking at the drinks she likes in that special healthy section, knowing that her painted fingernails potentially slid across those bottles as she made a choice of which one to pick, as she did me, if only for just a little while. 

Those intrusive thoughts are what can break a person. 

I’ve gotten good at that place of quiet introspection, where heartbreak lives and my place in the world, trying to grab a moment like a fistful of sand. I expect more as I get older, but what does the world give you? Probably less. I dropped the chopsticks into an empty bowl, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door. Another ghost of influence following me, unlike the one in my heart, this one reminds me of the mistakes that lead to a lonely meal.

I collect ghosts. In Buddhism and throughout Asian culture, there’s something called The Hungry Ghost – the eternal specter constantly searching for satiation, that for all their sins while alive, they’re doomed to constantly seek nourishment, to seek food, drink, lust, whatever their spiritual crimes on earth were, they will search into the afterlife for these moments, still. 

The ghost of my girlfriend is omnipresent. There’s sad and sitting in an empty pool hall crying over a Lone Star sad. The pool hall was massive, and no one was breaking balls, no one was pool sharking, there was just a lone bartender washing her bottles, pretending I wasn’t there as I wiped the tears out of my eyes, begging through text messages to talk in person. The loss of love hurts, especially when that person’s name lives in your bone marrow. I’ve been drinking a lot because I can’t cope with the silence of my phone not going off, excited to chat about nothing or to tell her that she was the love of my life for the fifteenth time that day. Instead, I’m cursed with silence, and she probably even blocked my number, tired of hearing me beg for her time. The past surrounds me. Our mistakes can engulf us, but with the right hands, problems can be fixed with a little super glue and love, maybe some sage since we’re talking about the specters of the dead. 

Dating is hard. Love is hard. There’s an agreement that there are no secrets, but there always are and sometimes, there is no forgiving for sins of the past. You can open the internal casket and give someone your secrets and as painful as they are to let them out from your skeleton, it’s not up to you how that person processes the information. I gave her all of mine. 

Out there in the world, there is unknown and beautiful; there is what we lose in ourselves with every mistake. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but losing the one person you love the most in the world feels worse with every swallow of Jameson or every Benadryl I pop so I can sleep away the pain radiating inside. I can scribble away her memory, and I can’t black out every day for the rest of my life; I have to simply accept my failure as mine. I loved so hard that when she entered the room my body was engulfed in flames. That when she whispered in my ear, that’s the closest to what I think a snake charmer feels in a revival tent. The loss hasn’t gotten easier, if anything the mourning has gotten worse. I wanted to marry her but now have to settle for photos on my phone. Hard luck lives. 

Times are tough right now. I don’t want to keep anything as a road map of my life. There is a tomorrow as I don’t want to experience it many times. I carry her ghost with me. There will be other bowls of ramen. There will be silent moments of her memory. I’ll probably see her out two-stepping with some other man, knowing that my poor choices led to her whispering into someone else’s ear that it’s time to get a drink at the bar and I’ll be silently humming The Dixie Chicks, “tonight, the heartache is on me.” Her ghost will be next to me, never letting me forget she’s forever in my bones.

Robert Dean is a working class writer, raconteur, and enlightened dumbass. You can read his work in places like Austin American-Statesman, MIC, Fatherly, and Consequence of Sound. His first collection of poems, Snakes in the Garden is dropping this fall from Madness Heart Press.

---

CHILD’S POSE

Inhale the distillate of night, 

its sock-fuzz, cat dander & dust mites

among the carpet fibers 

& exhale the walrus, the whale, 

the giraffe & the three pterodactyls 

exiting 

through the door in your back.

Inhale the spores newly moldered 

during this afternoon’s warmth 

now re-icing in the needles 

beneath the Eastern White Pine 

outside the media-room window 

in a shaft of moonlight; 

exhale the alligator 

from the swamp in the Muppet Movie  

stalking Dom DeLuise who’s bantering

with Kermit about making millions 

of people happy in Hollywood 

before exiting  

through the door in your back.

Inhale the essence

of your husband’s baking Irish soda bread  

& exhale Kermit plunking his banjo, 

exhale his song about rainbows, 

the rusty Schwinn he rides to the El Sleezo, 

that giant pair of cartoon frog’s legs erected on the roadside, 

yes, exhale, exhale with your most diligent eight-count 

the freshly steamrolled pavement’s glisten 

exiting now 

through the flung-wide door in the small of your back.

Then, with the final, heavy-lidded inhalation that comes

just after your rump finds that further millimeter of declivity 

no one had imagined,

take in affectatious Miss Piggy 

winning the county fair beauty contest, 

stealing the heart of a certain amphibian 

& being flippant in French under a broad, starry, desert sky, 

along with everything else that’s trying 

to enter 

through the door in your back—    

---

INDIGO BUNTING

innermost     & most    

neophyte-like     are these       

discords 

i still

grieve—          & yet     this  

opalescence dawning    

blue—   

unbridled wings           

nasturtium-blooms     &

topaz skies— 

is my Indiana  

never nigher to   

grace        

---

GATEWAY

they keep it a secret

to stop you 

but when you find it 

you’ll step through… 

one      taste

in this far-away place of

flourless chocolate cake

of no more bran clusters or 

Brussel’s sprouts shoulding you 

no more stale crusts demanding 

who do you think you are?

now     you’ll be forever

enraptured by the devil’s food

in the universe of YOU:

oh yes!     all of you!     

your sweeps & furrows!     

your savors unfurled 

to his reverent tongue

his warmth ushering you

quiver by undulant quiver 

into the deep-delicious

coalescence that is 

The     Chocolate     Cake 

of a woman     unbound 

marveling                    how?

how is it that I’m not yet full? 

how is it that I’m still alive?    

---

(CENTO) ON THE WAY BACK TO DREAMING

It so happens I am sick of managing 

as thin light on water, radiating 

green with my eyes, my shoes, my 

rage, only the right number of legs, 

scowling, holding the world 

of dew, forgetting everything meant 

to wake you: the flash of a hand, 

streak of movement, rustle of pebbles…  

The trees tell of the sun and yet 

I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet,

feel the small song in my chest swell.

The rain proclaims these trees, 

leaves tracks full of warm blood leading 

toward the night.  

---

Credits: Pablo Neruda, Linda Gregg, Diane Seuss, Stanley Plumly, Issa Kobayashi, Czeslaw Milosz, Theodore Roethke, Ross Gay

---

During my pre-school years, my brother and I shared the spare bedroom in our paternal grandparents’ home as our parents fought in court for custody. Being the devoted Lutherans that they were, my grandparents sent me to a Lutheran pre-school down the street from their house. During that time, my favorite playtime activity was role-playing characters in the life-size dollhouse. I was a shy child who stood alongside my classmates but did most of the role-playing in my head. While the other girls dressed up in the donated clothes from the cedar chest and gave themselves pretend names and roles to play, I quietly occupied as little space as possible while still being in the dollhouse. In my imagination, I was always the mom. Living with our paternal grandparents, we saw our father on occasion—despite the court ordering against it. But, for a while, I didn’t have a mother.

While I was secretly the mom, Danielle, one of the meanest girls in the class, always called first dibs on the long cobalt blue summer dress with a motif of tiny faded red flowers. The Mom Dress. Danielle had a very different idea of what a mother would be like because she bossed all the other girls around, even the ones who weren’t her children. The Mom Dress gave her power and she abused the power to stay in command.

            One day, as the teachers freed us for playtime, Danielle decided to go outside to the playground instead of bossing around all the girls in the dollhouse. I watched all the other girls grab their outfits from the cedar chest, praying that no one would claim the Mom Dress. Once the girls were all happy with their roles, I grabbed the dress and pulled it over my head. I buttoned the collar as I felt the power start to take over me. I glided to the kitchen and began piecing together plastic recipes for a dinner that I wanted to cook for everyone in the dollhouse. A few of the girls laughed that Matty was wearing a dress. I laughed with them. But I had never felt as beautiful as I did while wearing the Mom Dress.

Once dinner was cooked, I told all the girls to take a seat at the tiny table and I began serving their plates. During our dinner, Danielle stormed in from the playground and demanded that I give her the Mom Dress. Afraid of Danielle, but more afraid to lose the dress, I began to cry. I told her that I wanted to be the mom that day, just for once. She said no, she was the mom. She threatened to tell the teacher, and I froze. I sat at the kitchen table with tears falling onto my dinner plate, unable to express how badly I wanted to the dress. All the other girls stopped their conversations to see what would happen next. Danielle ran to the teachers, braided pigtails swinging side to side, and told them that I was wearing her dress and pretending to be the mom.

            “Matty,” one teacher said as she approached the doll house, “that dress is for the girls. You need to take that off and give it to Danielle.”

            Danielle stood beside her, with a grin sent directly from the devil himself, hand stretched, awaiting the Mom Dress. I unbuttoned the collar, unable to stop the tears from running down my cheeks. The teacher just stood there and watched as I pulled the dress over my head and handed it to Danielle.

            “Thank you Matty,” the teacher said, “now go play on the playground with the other boys.” I ran to the playground, but I didn’t play with the other boys. I sat in the shadow below the curved slide and hugged my knees as my body shook with silent whimpers.

            The next day, Danielle went outside for playtime again. The Mom Dress was unclaimed, so I took it upon myself to pull it over my head and make dinner for the other girls again. Like déjà vu, Danielle stormed into the dollhouse when she was done outside and demanded the Mom Dress. I said no. She told the teacher.

            “Matty,” the teacher said firmly as she towered over our dinner table, “I told you yesterday that you cannot wear that dress. This is for girls and you are a boy. Take it off.”

            I stood up from the dinner table with my head hung in shame as all the other girls stared in silence. I unbuttoned the collar and pulled the dress over my head before handing it to Danielle again. This time I was unable to look at her devilish smile.

            “You need to come with me to the time out corner,” my teacher said.

            I kept my head down to hide my tears as I followed her off the carpet, across the cold tiled floor, to a metal chair. The teacher sat far behind me and finished her lunch. Beside the time out chair was a large container of uncooked beans for children to stick their hands into when they weren’t being used for arts and crafts. Despite being in timeout, I played in the raw beans. The teacher was busy watching other students as she ate her lunch. After pushing my hands in and letting the cold beans rub against my bare arms, I found a toy buried deep inside the pile. It was a plastic water toy of The Muppet’s character, Miss Piggy. She was wearing a purple bathing suit with matching purple sunglasses and heels while reclining on a purple floaty bed. The Muppets was my favorite movie from the VHS drawer because I loved Miss Piggy. My actual favorites, the tapes with female leads—The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, etc.—were locked in my Grandma’s closet and only allowed to be watched on special occasion, like a birthday or a holiday.

            I was careful to keep Miss Piggy buried deep enough in the raw beans that the teacher couldn’t see what I was playing with if she happened to look over. I didn’t care anymore that I was in timeout because I had Miss Piggy and my imagination. I pushed her and her floaty through the raw beans, imaging it was the wide-open ocean. I made up a story about how she fell of the cruise ship while vacationing with Kermit and the other Muppets.

            After class, my teacher asked my grandparents to stay for a conference about my absurd behavior. Two teachers, Grandma, Grandpa, and I sat in a circle and the teachers explained that they caught me wearing a dress and pretending to be a mom two days in a row. They told my grandparents that because I deliberately disobeyed them, and that I was put in timeout. My grandparents were embarrassed and ashamed, and they lectured me in front of the teachers, making me promise that I would not play with the girls anymore.

            When the teachers announced playtime the next day, Danielle ran straight for the Mom Dress and she made sure to catch my eye contact to stick her tongue out as she pulled the dress over her head. Instead of joining the other girls, I walked across the room to the raw beans and dug around for Miss Piggy. I covered the diva with both hands as I hurried out the back door and ran onto the tanbark ground. I sat in the shadow of the curved slide and lifted Miss Piggy to the sky. I tuned out the preschool and escaped to the open sea with my friend, Miss Piggy.

---

If I look hard enough,
I’m sure to find something.
Even if it’s not peace.
Even if it’s just an old love letter
long buried at the bottom of a trunk.
And if I feel hard enough,
then feelings will get their due.
It could be rain on my face.
Or wind buffeting my hair.
Try taste
and the singular may not come my way.
But there’s comfort in the familiar.
And the journeys that go nowhere
always end up someplace.
I can kick a pebble or a habit.
I can run and errand or a mile.
Life is unexciting most times.
But it’s better if I participate.

---

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

While You Slept

While you slept in that distant room,

I drifted through gauze and warm tides

into the shallows, comforted,

as you battered ice floes all night 

before waking, finally, in angry half-light

to sparrow chatter, knowing

that tomorrow would bring more

bitter hours, more cold coffee 

served with theories 

enmeshed in self-appeasement

and the pride of always being right,

even when you’re not.

---

Surrounded by Myself I Remain 

This body tempers itself in coughing fits

and lust, in nose-blowing and the itch

to caress soft flesh. Water gurgles down 

the gutters. Our cat sits at the window 

watching the rain, fascinated. I can’t 

differentiate the pressures in my chest — 

which urgent tide requires suppression, 

what demands release — and though 

my eyelids keep sliding shut, something 

stronger pries them back open. How 

to explain this state? I will never be young

again. Gravity tugs heavier. Drugs

misbehave. Joints and muscles ache

in perpetuity, reminding me of life  

and choices made badly through inertia 

and fear. But love prospers in the idea,

the knowing, and when I open my hand

on your warm back seasons flow past,

savory bits and icy nodules alike, and 

I answer the call for more. Always 

more, nose and cheek pressed against 

your hair, my voice lost in you, with you.

---

---

Creature Feature #2

Eating popcorn in front

of a black-and-white television,

my fingers drenched in

melted butter and iodized salt. 

The Bride of Dracula 

has made her fatal mistake, 

while Frankenstein’s monster

only wants acceptance

from a crowd intent

on his eradication. 

Next week, the Mummy 

will lumber across my screen, 

mindless as a drugged cow,

and I can stay up as late as I want,

at least until the test pattern

emerges. I watch everything,

the late-late news, the grand finale:

a rendition of the Lord’s Prayer

in sign language. Turning off

the television feels like saying goodbye

to an old friend I’m not sure

I will ever see again–or if I do,

one of us may have changed

into a creature no one can recognize.

I am already different: 

my bathroom mirror shows a face 

that has lived through 

multiple bouts of terror,

and I haven’t even begun.

---

The Other Side of the Bridge

When both of my husbands

were alive, we spent

Thanksgiving together,

our feast culminating with 

an extended walk across

the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

The two of them paused

beside an iron railing

so I could take photos: 

a sort of black-and-white 

study in contrasts, but

captured in technicolor.

My ex had yellow teeth 

and cheeks that hung

like a gaunt bulldog’s.

He smoked a cigarette 

every fifteen minutes—

frail shoulders 

slumped in the rain,

frantic mouth devouring 

smoke, like it was candy.  

My husband perched beside him, 

happy for sailboats

that passed beneath our feet,

and a sunbreak that seemed

to come out of nowhere. 

No one knew both men

were marked—my ex-husband 

would be dead 

in less than a year, 

my current one in three.

And I, the photographer, 

doomed to continue the trek

across the span, alone.

I’m glad no one can predict

the future, or there would 

be no point in going on:

still, I trudge ahead 

anyway, half-believing

I know what awaits me 

on the other side of the bridge.

---

Weird Kid

The bartender in 

my grandmother’s basement

mixed a mean martini.

He stood in the darkness

of her rec room bar, 

pudgy face frozen 

in a grimace, metal

shaker in one hand,

glass stem in the other.

When you flipped 

his “on” switch,

the bartender came to life—

calmly pouring a jigger

of invisible booze into

his glass, then sampling it

for quality. Instantly, his 

face turned crimson. 

His white, worm-like mustache

curled and wrinkled

as he spat into midair, then

repeated the same process

over and over and over.

I stared at his puckered lips,

transfixed. Something about

the spectacle thrilled me 

despite myself. I prayed my

grandmother wouldn’t catch me,

and she never did. 

It would have been

hard for me to explain that

I had a crush on an alcoholic toy.

---

professional gastropod

the slug won 

the half-marathon

by a hair’s breadth. 

his muscles pumped

like pistons, as

he escaped each

hoe and boot heel.

nearing the finish line

amidst a cacophony

of cheering, he slid

the final mile on a 

trail of his own slime,

finally landing

on a large, fully ripe

tomato. everyone

loves a winner, but

the slug is smart enough

to remain modest.

and the best part

is that he gets 

to do it all again, 

tomorrow.

---

Dream of an Ex-Friend

Your face beneath my eyelids,

contorted. I try to remember

your words: sideways mouth,

rage erupting in whirlpools.

In the morning, all that remains

are your eyes and an empty coffeepot.

Familiar sizzle: hiss of water,

steady drip towards wakefulness.

I wonder where you are now,

two time zones ahead, stirring

in your own small bed. That photo

of you and your lover, hands

protecting your shoulders. The book

of poems you sent me. My final

glimpse of you, face half-covered

in a surgical mask, pushing it aside

between sips of beer. Why have we

allowed forty years to be trampled

underfoot? It wasn’t me, 

or even you. Though I tried to listen,

my dreams offer nothing,

and consciousness only brings spite.

---

---

so much of the day

spent

  rotating

    between

       desk and 

          bed and

cigarettes

  tears and

    smiles and i

       overslept

          tears, again,

and rivers run

          over my cheeks

while streams run

           through my veins

   and ideas

run and run and run

      all the same,

and i

   scream,

i

   smile,

i spin twirl around,

   sing, dance,

      laugh,

spin, fall,

          on the ground

cry, scream,

      laughing,

           on the ground

cry, hug

      myself

            on the ground,

and i say, “i love you”

       out loud,

just to hear the sound,

“i love you. . .”

just to

        hear the sound.

---

---

^{_{Gaspé Peninsula}} 

            “Dans les grandes cites, dans les bois, sur les grêves,

            Ton image flottera dans mes rêves,

                        O mon Canada, bien aimé.”

—Louis Honoré Fréchette

---

Roadside ovens 

with warm, crusty baguette. 

Wine for the adults, 

grape juice for the children. 

Open expanse, 

from Chic-Choc highlands 

of caribou and Jacques-Cartier, 

to rolling grasses.

Over to those steep cliffs 

before falling to

The Gulf and Newfoundland, 

to Cardiff and Cork. 

Wading to Rocher Percé 

before the tide came in. 

Like a beacon, 

the phantom rock floats 

on the waves warning 

freighters of rough waters ahead. 

We heed the signal, 

rolling up our jeans 

before climbing, 

falling, splashing 

back to humanity,

back to the mainland. 

And the highway hugs 

the coastline between 

limestone wall 

and expansive deep. 

There, out the window, 

you could reach and rub  

the sounding humpbacks. 

Laughing in the waves, 

they too splashed back 

to safety before their 

great migration 

to tropical 

playgrounds.

---

---

^{_{Wind Me Up}}

There’s a jar in the kitchen 

holding our keys, 

old, forgotten ones 

side by side with the ones 

we use every day. 

A key from an old job; 

it’s been years, 

but it remains, a totem 

of remembrance. 

The key to the liquor cabinet: 

vodka, rum, gin, vermouth, 

a couple bottles of Scotch. 

They gather dust, forgotten 

but for a holiday party 

or a family game night. 

There’s a key to 

my great-grandmother’s 

mantel clock. 

I’ve never wound it; 

I keep it just in case. 

Then there is the key 

that fits the hole in 

my back. 

Wind me up

and watch me waddle. 

Wind me up, and I go 

to the supermarket, the deli, 

Starbucks or Target. 

Wind me up and I 

cook and clean,

cook and clean. 

As I wind down slowly 

in the evening, 

as I wind down after another day 

of errands and naps, 

I wonder who will insert 

that key tomorrow

and wind me up 

again.

---