C. Renee Kiser

Exit Strategy

Fade the maze-daze blues
Paid my rat race dues

Impulses i’ve calmed
late,
and collected-
mixed bag of nuts
from the men who dared
test 
my crazy

Toss it down
the highest staircase
my short legs can climb
Feel the burn
Have a laugh
Take a bow
Tumble away, my darlings

Snap out of it
Pager buzzing in your pocket
Table is ready-
the new you is waiting
Your memory must be erased
again and your wig is crooked
A tequila sunrise will set you straight

Now, 
take the elevator back down,
you dumb bitch

John Yohe

While He’s A Woman

While he’s a woman he wants to be sexy, admiring himself in the mirror, wearing clothes that highlight his assets—pantyhose + a bra which makes his tits look bigger, which makes him feel sexy, maybe look sexy—or ridiculous, because while he’s a woman he cares about what he looks like to other people—even especially to other women, because while he’s a woman he looks at other women and compare himself, and mostly thinks he’s not as attractive, but sometimes while he’s a woman he thinks, Well, at least I’m more attractive than her.

But mostly while he’s a woman he doesn’t feel confident at all, craving attention from women, or men, or certain men anyways, but those men he would do anything for, like get on his knees, or all fours, or send pics of himself, which he knows they might share with their friends, because while he’s a woman he understands that men would want more attractive women, so he’s grateful to get anything, because while he’s a woman he wants to lose control and feel a man’s weight on top of him so he cant breathe or say no though he would tell them anything—even tho in reality he’s scared of men and their danger.

And anyway while he’s a woman he doesn’t do things that really fulfill him, losing time talking to crazies, spending too much on clothes and make up and time and even if he does feel like he looks decent he’s scared to go out in public, so while he’s a woman, alone in his apartment, with no one to look good for, is when he feels most lonely.

HSTQ: Winter 2022

horror, adj. inspiring or creating loathing, aversion, etc.

sleaze, adj. contemptibly low, mean, or disreputable

trash, n. literary or artistic material of poor or inferior quality

Welcome to HSTQ: Winter 2022, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by J.J. Campbell, Joseph Farley, G. Arthur Brown, Kristin Garth, Willie Smith, Noel Negele, Dustin King, Dave Cullern, Donna Dallas, John Knoll, Nadja Moore, Rob Plath, Michael Lee Johnson, Daniel S. Irwin, John D Robinson, Arthur Graham, C. Renee Kiser, and Bogdan Dragos.

Get your FREE ebook here!

J.J. Campbell

this fruitless journey

squeezing water out 
of the rocks again

this fruitless journey 
to the bottom of 
my mind

i will die penniless 
and insane

some little cabin 
a thousand miles
away from anything

some think it is tragic

i like to think of it 
as fitting

being popular was 
never my thing

being prolific was 
just insanity taking
the wheel and bleeding 
on the page

it gets a little messy

but anything worth 
your time is supposed 
to be that way

Joseph Farley

Ideas of Order in Camden West

Let the bullets sort out the truth
of the dreams in your veins.

You are king of the alley where you lay
until someone else come to join you.

Then you’ll shift your flattened box bed
to accommodate the newcomer,

share a leftover half-sandwich
provided by a social worker

and wait out the day,
as you always do,

so you can walk the night
and blend with the shadows,

becoming one of the procession
that lives in darkness,

or otherwise out of sight,
tolerated more if unseen,

your hunger and needs
offending no one who cannot see you.

Eric Lawson

What the Woman in the Porn Video Was Actually Thinking About

She promised herself otherwise.
But here she was yet again.
Riding his cock, daydreaming.

She keeps a calm, steady rhythm.
It just has to last longer tonight.
Body heat fades fast in February.

She kept her ‘librarian’ glasses on.
Lost in the animal groping
and the hungry licking of sex.

Why was she still with this clown?
How did he stay hard for so long?
As always, the swirling questions
came much sooner than she did.
He always had whiskey somehow.
What the hell did he do for money?

In the sweet surrender motion,
her breasts felt weightless.
Her worries, forgotten.

She was tired of endlessly shopping.
Shopping for cock, for arm candy.
She pined for quilted blankets, heat,
a good mystery book, and whiskey.

As he spasmed beneath her,
panting a lackluster “oh my god,”
she soon realized that religion
had failed her completely.
As she never evolved from
being a Pavlovian whore
for a devil-may-care smile
and whomever spoke poetic
whiskey soaked words at her
across the bar parking lot
in the frigid February night.

This was love’s lukewarm leftovers.
And she would clutch them closely.
No matter how bleak the forecast.
She promised herself otherwise.

Charles Rammelkamp

The Sex Nerve

After a series of cat-cows,
followed by downward dogs and cobra pose,
Kevin instructed us to do long deep breathing 
while we clutched our ankles,
bent over in butterfly pose.

“It’ll help loosen your lower back,
opens your hips, 
and works on what the yogis call
the sex nerve,” he informed us.

The sex nerve? He made it sound mysterious,
an ancient Vedic rite only for the initiated.
The Land of Lingam and Yoni.

“Interlace your hands under your pinky toes,”
he went on, “Elongate and straighten your spine.”
But I was still stuck on “the sex nerve.”
What the hell was it?
What did it do?
I thought of the Kama sutra,
those acrobatic sex poses,
the promise of endless orgasms.
I looked over at Melanie, pulling herself down
so her head nestled on her knees.
What exactly was her sex nerve up to now?

But then Kevin had us back on our feet,
arms aimed front and back in a T, 
front knee bent in Warrior II, 
followed by Triangle pose.

Later I’d look it up, 
but all I got was scientific jive
about the pudendal nerve, the pelvic nerves,
the hypogastric nerve (thoracolumbar sympathetic),
components of the autonomic system.

Willie Smith

Closet Entrance

Best pep rally I never went to,
I stood the nearly-nude 
editor of the lit mag against the wall; 
falling one silly millimeter shy 
of broaching her vulva; 
before an abrupt knock at the door 
ended the festivities. The editor 
flipped on the light; hustled into her dress. 
I snatched pants up from ankles; buckled, zipped. 
We tossed the editor’s slip and panties 
into a sack intended for uncollated pages 
to the spring issue. She opened the door 
on Mrs. Forget-Who, a social studies teacher 
in search of scratch, knew the kingsize 
walk-in closet that did for the lit mag office 
often stored misprinted pages 
teachers were welcome to take for scratch. 
I let the editor do the talking; and fast she talked, 
explaining, above the odors of live teenage sex, 
we were in the midst of an argument
about a poem when came the knock, 
and we hurriedly tidied the mess created 
when she had earlier thrown a pile of issues at me 
to, uh, demonstrate the correctness of her opinion. 
She was, after all, the editor; me? Oh, 
a potential contributor. Pep rally? 
Oh, yes, the rally for the big game tonight, 
of course; honestly, just slipped our minds. Poetry 
demands inordinate amounts of unmitigated focus. 
She got off with the English teacher sponsor of the lit mag 
admonishing her to pay closer attention to school-approved 
non-literary activities. I got off invisibly; 
as a potential contributor, someone obviously 
insignificant and not going anywhere in life, 
I failed to be worth wasting hot air on. 
I date – astonished at the editor’s creativity under fire – 
from that bang on the door forward,  
my fascination with poetry and the literary arts. 
My subsequent anonymous contribution 
(loath to cloud the editor’s eye 
with an affair of the heart) was, 
of course, rejected.  

J.J. Campbell

that must be the gin talking

and here comes the spanish princess

she kisses you on the cheek and 
whispers how you have become
the world’s biggest asshole

you laugh and think that must
be the gin talking

you never remember that the story 
books of your childhood never 
had a happy ending

there was no royal ride into some 
beautiful sunset with the love 
of your life

there was always a bottle of scotch

a pretty lady you have mistaken as 
a hooker and some beauty in the 
corner with eyes that will haunt 
you until well after your death

she is nothing but trouble so, 
of course, she has to be yours

heartbreak is the dull side of the knife

eventually the scars become so damn 
numb to the pain that you no longer 
understand what pain actually is

and eventually

that sociopath gets to come out 
and be comfortable

unaware of any damage or any 
amount of hurt that persists

endless

just like love

Nadja Moore

Today

I hated today.
Today was a gnawing cloud
spreading its legs on the table
with its shoes on.
A dull headache.
A burning sensation in the eyeballs
when exposed to the light.
An angry outburst when the tampon
isn’t expelled from the tube.
It was the Hulk if the Hulk
was on his period.

Still.

Everybody else does it.

I can too.

Just not before damning the happy couple
tonguing each other on the park bench first.