Cold Rambler

Simple restraint shining. A warmth that penetrates my skin. Relaxed conversation. Easy speech yet so much flavor in your choice of words. Heady yet tasteful like a fine wine I long to drink in. When my thoughts begin to stabilize, I look back upon our life, unhurried, breathing contentment in slow, welcome breaths. It was always good to have you near. I need to feel those comforting moments hovering over me once again. Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry, prose, reviews and collages published around the world. He has edited his own poetry journal, FEARLESS for the past thirty years. He has authored sixteen chapbooks, including Incessant Shining (2011, Alternating Current Press).His latest books: Cease To Destroy, Just Another Small Town Story , The Mirror Masks Nothing, and Lost Within The Garden Of Heathens both co-authored books with John Patrick Robbins published by Whiskey City Press, are now available on AMAZON.

Sugary sweet, without a hint of substance. A taste divine, she is everything you want and nothing you are permitted to sample. As you excuse yourself, a lie is best told under the guise of want and unbridled desire. Temptation is but a momentary restraint. Meet me alone; a full moon’s promise, a cold winter's truth. Entangled within these confines, only the demons bear witness to her exquisite perfection. The rapture of release, the confession of guilt. To push the boundaries is ever so easy as so is to cross that razor's thin edge. So very sweet was the taste, so cold is the soon-to-be corpse. Empty windows reflect a broken trust. Tragedy of an all too eager lost soul’s forced departure. So sweet was the taste of a blue-tinged kiss. All monsters are human, as in nature, there is only one purpose, where within man lingers insanity. Alone is the beauty sleeping eternally, as only the stars bear witness. Goodnight.   John Patrick Robbins, is a Southern Gothic writer his work has ...

patron saint of the unhinged rant, poison pen of the revolution, who wrote his theses in blood, give sparks to my words that i may light a fire to burn the very concept of money. the bastille is rebuilt in america. they laugh at our suffering. they scoff at our power. they will know we are better without them. Marty Shambled is a Pushcart nominated author. Poet laureate of railroad tracks and greasy spoons. He’s been published in a lot of places you’ve never heard of. He lives in Texas and has a GED.

She tells men keep your hands to yourselves and some hike theirs into their sleeves Ah, she says amputation is an answer Then she taps, says dancing alone is just fine but don’t let chorus line thoughts slip into your minds No ballrooms either, swine Fret not I love you all -- Rainbow trout have no arms to handle a bicycle Spot the link? Catch a need? I have no fins to fan and soothe your fragile egos Peddle your bikes No trophies for navigating one hand two or none to my mountain retreat where I’ll turret tap to the rattle of the useless oysters fouling your wicker baskets   Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA, formerly CT & RI. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Dam Neck Virginia Beach, VA and at sea aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE / FF-1091). His poetry has ecently appeared in Rat's Ass Review.

Late November New England. Deep freeze, 4:45 PM, sun already set as we walked back to the locker room. Heads down, bodies ached, minds numb from thirty mile per hour wind gusts, our helmets locked on frigid heads, shoulder pads stiff and stifled, refusing to leave our bodies. A self-indulged path to ammonia for sophomores, who have the inevitable task of picking up all the blocking dummies and equipment and throwing them into the rusted shed…God forbid they forget anything, for it will be laps tomorrow. Channel 4 is predicting snow. Another year of being crushed on Friday nights…being the poor stepchild of the Tri-Valley League, beaten week after week by our big brothers. 45-7, 32-0, 52-6. Preparing to play Westwood on Friday.  Another fast exit to a weekend of doldrums.  Where Saturday morning we watch film of ourselves getting our ass kicked. Then spending Saturday night hoping to get someone to buy beer for our team of thirty players. Sunday…spent in bed, dreaming of my Alg...

In the street from the trees the extraordinary birds sing a common song if you pay attention. They make the mundane something to look forward to. I see many things through the trees, the sun shining, the singing birds, the moon and stars at night, people traveling in the sky, a door to space, and if you believe - a miniature horse. Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field. He is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press, 2004), Make the Light Mine (Kendra Steiner Editions, 2016), and Make the Water Laugh (Rogue Wolf Press, 2021). His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Mad Swirl, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Unlikely Stories).

I watched the man crossing the path underneath the cascade of the waterfall. It had been part of the route wine was carried from the high lands, to be sold on the coast. Back in the old days, that was. But the old days weren’t very long ago. He seemed confident as he placed a foot carefully in each of the footholds hacked into the precipitous rock face. He gripped the thick metal hawser attached to the rock with strong metal rings. Gripped it firmly and proceeded slowly one step at a time. I had a camera and I thought that it was a picture he would like to have when he was dry and safe back on terra firma. Then I thought, suppose he falls, falls into the waves, to be smashed against the rocks far below. I didn’t want to have such a picture, a picture of someone’s last moments and I thought, to take it may jinx his journey and even cause him to fall. So I never took the picture. But it made no difference. The man fell anyway.   Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced...

This town is lousy with writer men. They used to worship Bukowski. Now they want to be Bourdain, stumbling out of bars, tongues twisting over lines of dead prose. Imaginary camera crew broadcasting straight to an adoring audience. Onwards and upwards boys. Take your hyperbole and bushy eyebrows elsewhere. Pack up and leave town with your stubby, flaccid sentences trailing behind you unimpressively. Don’t forget to write ‘Wish you were here’ on water-stained post cards and send them to your aunties in St. Paul, so that the city mail boxes overflow with your lifeless vows. But, before you go, drop your stories on my doorstep. I’ll take them in, feed them milk and whiskey. They will grow up hairy and strong. One day, they will march out my front door with your picture clasped in their hands. They’ll karaoke in midnight streets until their sing-song drowns out jet planes flying overhead. They’ll take selfies in the every dark alley and run their palms across every bus bench, lamp post, and...

The frog hops away when I come near but the toad remains still, burrowed down in mud, its brown scales camouflaged, and only the arch of its eyes visible. The frog understands that the price of living close to human habitation is the occasional interruption of its sunning, swimming about, fly-catching existence. But the toad is all defiance. A huge difference in size is made up for by the power of unredeemed ugliness. Kids leap over fiberglass frogs in the nearby park. They sketch their cute likenesses in notepads. But no kid plays leap-toad, for toads are only ever real. And if a kid draws a toad, you worry for that kid.   John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review  and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”, ”Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

The Christmas card that arrived for me at work had no return address. Curious to see who sent it, I tore open the envelope while still in the office mailroom. Chubby Checker was singing “The Twist.” I wasn’t yet aware of the infection in tooth number nineteen. A floury white powder spilled out. I felt a jolt of terror. Anthrax! The cops were called to the scene. They looked at me with skepticism, if not suspicion. Anyone with my face naturally has hecklers. I was King of the Jews, a paper crown on my head and on my back the weight of a special cross of my own supposed making. Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his book, Akimbo, in 2025.

a lonely man, cigarette, rain and music in a strange wind blowing moving, not knowing, a caravan whose journey doesn't expect to go back and explain why everyone's ruts have the same blood and vein. the head in his fedora hat bows to no one's grip brim tilted inwards concealing his vineyards of lyrical prose in a chaos composed to be exposed, go, git awed and jawed perfect and flawed, songs from the borderless plain where no one has domain and his outlaw wit must confess to remain a storyteller that hobo fella a listening barfly for a while, the word-winged butterfly whose style they can't close the shutters on or stop talking about when he walks out and is gone. whiskey and tequila with a woman who can feel ya inside her, and know she's not Ophelia as ya move as one, to a closer and simplistic, unmaterialistic tribal Babylon, becomes so, when she stands, spread all arms and legs in her Eskimo Galadriel glow, sharing mithril breath, no more suburban settlements and ...

Remember that time when Jethro Tull was named hardest rocking metal band in the universe, and all the Klingon death metal bands lost their shit? The Romulans and the Greys arranged a battle of the bands that very next week. Even the Reptilians managed to slime out of their pet store tanks and make an appearance. The judges from the Galactic Federation were on the take, but who isn't these days?   Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, In Between Hangovers, Zygote in My Coffee, Rusty Truck and The Oklahoma Review.  

The final Saturday of August 2020:   In the mid-60's, dark, cloudy skies, occasional rumblings.   I pulled into the parking lot of Haserot Beach—a small, supposedly private beach on Traverse City's Old Mission Peninsula that some rich owner was kind enough to make public. As my car engine hums, and the podcast I'm listening to continues rambling on, I look out across the bay, and scan the area—from the docks to the playground—and I mutter, “Fuck...YEAH!”   *** I used to constantly go to Oval Beach in Saugatuck. I then came across a page on Facebook called “Saugatuck. Pure Michigan? Not Exactly”, where the creator would post pics and drone vids of crap coming out of the Kalamazoo River into Lake Michigan, spreading across the shores, even as far as Holland. This all spooked me enough—even when it came out that the page creator is this weird, cop-loving Boomer who was eventually banned from Oval Beach for constantly harassing the high school- college staff f...