Cold Rambler

That was the year  when politicians played  on the stage of the New Theatre of the Absurd where empathy  was dead as Roszencrantz and Gildestern and the victims  of Schrodinger’s genocide both lived and died where Palestine was once and now it had no territory though it was a state, where Israel had a territory for Jews of families not born there in this millennium or the last when their lies became truth and truth became lies that no one truly believed and pretence was real and death was life and things could only get better and things only got worse before the curtain came down to end it all. 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 the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality.  She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award.   https:// lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com  and  http...

He’s just turned 40, more life behind him, he figures than ahead. And it’s not as if he’s achieved anything in his days on Earth. What he was at 30 is no different  from the one who  stares in the mirror on this miserable day. Except, of course, for the fleck of gray hair. And the beginnings of a line under both eyes. No promotions at work, no relationships worth a fresh dollop of after-shave, even his golf game has given up on him. All turning 40 does is to clear the way for eventually turning 50. And then 60. And then 70. The phone rings. It’s a good friend wishing him well. “40 huh,” says the guy. Then another. No more 30’s, kiddo.” And another and another.   It seems like  everyone he knows is a numbers guy.   John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, Trampoline and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Wil...

For weeks now Nicholas Velvetstone  Had made it known to  Anyone who would listen He’d was going to  prove the rumors  Of the long abandoned  Carverex mansion Being haunted Were absolutely true Monstrous in size The mansion gave new meaning  To the word Gothic He received humiliation  left and right by  His peers of Misercraven Academy No ghost inhabits it They’d taunt him needlessly  Now with the full moon  hanging overhead he’d prove  Each and everyone of those  doubters wrong  Aboard his black pickup truck  He crept slowly along the  lonely long stretch of road  Leading up to the mansion Making an arrival in front of it The mansion’s appearance  Sinister and uninviting He climbed out Dominated by excitement Over the possibility Of laying his eyes on An actual apparition For the first time ever Glancing upward  To an upper window For a brief moment He swore he caught  Sight of a girl Who mat...

I stare at my face in the mirror closing my eyes to the poison testing the razor's edge of suicide drinking from the cesspool of regret reveling in the stink of my own despair I can't look away but I can't see anymore I told you the truth I told you a lie I tried to tell you Dan Holt is a singer/songwriter/recording artist, poet and fiction author from a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. He has produced 11 albums of original music along with various singles and eps. His poetry has been published widely in the online and print small press and he is the author of "Blank Canvas On Bloody Pavement" and "Motel" (both from Alien Buddha press and available on Amazon). He was a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2021.

i realized justice was a sham when in fifth grade a boy threatened to shoot me and my friend, his mother called me a liar with her blue eyes and dye job blonde hair looking like every mean girl  from the movies; he only got out of school suspension where he got to play and have time off of school, when his siblings got off the bus: he and his mom waved sarcastically at  me and i loathed them both even more— i still think about that decades later, wondering if me speaking up even made a difference; if i saved anyone's life— sometimes it makes me wish that i was part of a different universe where was actually justice for anyone instead of this one where everyone tells me that this is the way things have always been, don't any of them still dream? do any of them know what dreams are? i don't want to be  a part of this simulation any longer—i know we can have a better world.   Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and r...

The match flares like a prophet’s tongue. Smoke stitches torn banners into the night. A horse falls out of a poem, limps through the pasture of my skull. I name him Hunger. I name him Father. I name him every man I’ve lost. The cigarette burns down like a century. I do not inhale— it inhales me. I become a cathedral of ash, my ribs chiming like pews in a storm. World, are you watching? This is the cost: to sing while the page burns in my hands, while fire refuses to choose between prayer and pyre.   Joshua Walker is an independent poet from Oklahoma City, exploring the intersections of memory, desire, and the everyday strange.