Cold Rambler

A temptation to press my foot harder down on the accelerator. The street’s dark. No traffic lights. My breath held back like a hungry lion at its cage’s door. Just before daylight. No other cars. No people out. But who needs an audience anyhow. One drag would take years off my life. Give me back my late teens when I knew every road around here  like my heart keeps track of its arteries. Didn’t I use to race. And before a crowd. Hit that pedal like a hammer and all I had to do was steer. Once, I went so fast there was a whole two weeks between starting my engine and being discharged from hospital. But just knowing that people were watching – that was my healing long before any bones were broken. Maybe that’s why I hold back on my instincts now. I’d be the only witness. I could tell myself, I’ve still got it. But I wouldn’t know what I’ve got.   John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “S...

Sleeping bags and skinned diamonds for all those lights, calling coyotes with bullet train muzzles, a Van Gogh sky for this groom lake fingerbang, -- no tiny green men, the army has its standards. Did so many sit-ups, I made a washboard from my middle. The launch codes will be proud, the base commander with his company man pension. All those reverse engineers we know are fiddling away under the tightly packed earth. I brought my night vision goggles. We are in for one hell of a night, Kemosabe! Can you hear how the mesas moan under the spell of a well-feathered shaman?   Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, Cold Rambler, Zygote in My Coffee, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Rusty Truck and The Oklahoma Review. 

We mirror the clear air, light horses burn white on the island of sand, you empty prism robes and drink water from transparent glass, I draw lines in the well, we sound voices in the hollow, we cup tears of myrrh, the sun passes with ink you blue calligraph a firmament on the lens. John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France.  His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by the Origami Poetry Project.

They’re piling up or splayed out on streets body after body civilians unarmed or ill advisedly armed  in haste and heroism their meat is needed to feed the hunger. It’s piling up the rubble of lives in flames fed  by weapons and more weapons the tears of the displaced  are not enough to douse them so they leave, when they can, a low priority as there’s no meat on them  the women, children and elderly. But the meaty men must stay to fight like soldiers to the death and be spat out with screaming shells and fear. And their screams die with them  as victory comes closer it is said day after day it is said as the leaders scream “no surrender” victory will be theirs when the hunger is sated. More weapons more bodies more lives in flames  to feed the insatiable hunger of war.   Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring ...