Tony Dawson

The Medieval Mind

Medieval man, enshrouded in a pall
of gloom, blamed Woman for Man’s vice.
Her burning lust provoked Man’s fall,
Eve’s vulva opening up another Paradise.
Henceforth, all life began in pain and shame.
Grotesque depictions then appeared,
Sheela-na-gigs, the medieval name
for twelfth-century carvings to be feared,
above doors and windows, entries
to European cathedrals and churches
as if they were horrific sentries
looking down from lofty perches,
with gaping vulvas of enormous size.
Some think of it as magical protection,
though it was hard to visualise.
The aim: to avoid Eve’s dread ‘infection’,
to ward off the contagion of Woman’s sin
(as reflected in Corbeau’s ‘Origin
of the World’ in the Musée d’Orsay)
to ensure no man would go astray.

John Tustin

Three Way

I had a dream –
I was in a three way with Sylvia Plath
and Anne Sexton.
Nirvana played on the radio.
Ernest Hemingway stood in the darkest corner
of the room.
He was holding a camera
but he was filming himself and not us.
The camera was shaped like a shotgun.

Sylvia fondled me
as Anne stroked the hair
on my head and on my chest.
I sat there on the bed with my hands at my sides,
too afraid to touch them.
I closed my eyes as Sylvia blew into my left ear,
Anne my right.
I was as hard as a rock.
My body was tensely still.

Then,
in unison, their four lovely lips whispered to me,
“What are you waiting for?”

Casey Renee Kiser

The Only Daddy I Wanna Know

I remember when I called him Daddy
Smiled pretty all day so he’d spank me
I just gave in to the joke of authority
Ha! Forgot truth: No limits invade ME

Get out of my lighthouse;
the noisy-nitpick louse
Don’t need orders or opinions to Shine
Pack your gas-lighting dragging behind

What you’re putting out is putting You out
Cosmic cord-cutting for your piss n’ pout
Tried to transfer to me your gutless doubt
What you’re putting out is putting You out

Gimme that High for my Low; hearts aglow
Balance the beat, turn off the shit-show
That’s the only Daddy I ever wanna blow
a kiss. The only Daddy I wanna know…

Corey Mesler

Poetry vs.

She wanted to talk about my poem,
whether it worked with symbols
or something subtler. I mouthed
some inanity about what metaphor
means to me. How could I say,
instead, that I wanted to see her
naked, her blond limbs, her glossy
thighs. We talked a little bit more
about the poem. “It’s not often I
get to ask the actual author,” she
gushed. I didn’t feel actual. I felt
like a shitheel. But, reader, listen.
Her eyes were like the blue the sky
unveils only in early morning. And,
up close, she seemed to be made of
cake. I went home and she went home.
I tried to write new poems. She found
herself thinking about fucking and 
called to her husband in the next room.

M.P. Powers

Lobster Bob 

I was sitting at the bar listening to mark 
telling 
me about his roommate, lobster bob. 
“he brings home a different 
whore
three or four times a week.
“bartrolls. nothing but bartrolls.” 

“still,” I said, “three or four times
a week? it’s not easy to pick up 
anything three or four times
a week.”  

“yeah it is,” said mark. “you find the grossest 
chick in the place… 
at 2.a.m. I mean the grossest… 
that’s what he
looks for, and gets…”

as he was saying this, lobster bob came sidling out 
of the bathroom. 
he was about 45, with a loose-hanging
aloha shirt and a limp mop 
of lord Fauntleroy hair framing his bloated
pink face. He looked a bit like a lobster, 
but that’s not
how he got the name. 

we watched as he nuzzled up to some lady 
at least ten years 
his senior, her broad beam spilling over
the barstool.

“and look at him now,” mark went on. 
“he’s at it again… 
the disgusting
fuck… and i’m gonna have to listen 
to it through the wall.”

we both 
shook our heads. I was 
laughing… lobster bob 
was more 
of a man
than either of us
could ever be.

Noel Negele

Sertraline

It’s bad and it will get worse—
this is the certainty.

Then
it will get better—
this the assumption,
the hope, the gamble.

On salary day
I spend the night 
drinking at a sports pub
in Newcastle.

I’m here for work.
It’s freezing up here
and working as a cladder
has never sucked harder.

I bet almost all my salary
2.350£ on Leicester to win
after they are already winning 
1-0 and with 1.95 odds
I’m looking at doubling
my money.

It ends with them losing
3-4 and getting back to my travel
lodge a homeless man asks me for money
and nodding him away from me
I think if I’d only won that bet
I’d probably take him by the hand 
to an ATM and really make his night.

Looking at people walk around life 
with seamless easiness 
has always been a source 
of great envy in me.

Always have felt that I’ve walked
in a quicksand the whole time
and the more I tried to keep up
the more I sunk.

The more they kept getting ahead.

Autopilot doesn’t work.
Stirring through every second 
of life manually is laborious work.

An unforgiving loneliness
monolithic in size and grandiose.

It’s like you’re that astronaut 
standing on the moon 
looking back at the earth 
getting hit by a meteor 
like an AK bullet going 
through someone’s chest

Nobody else but you left

And only for a short while longer.

Brian J. Smith

Instant Connection

THEIR love is a different kind. 

She eases him onto the edge of the bed and takes two steps back. She bites down playfully on her left thumb, greets him with a sensual expression and slides her hands down her left thigh. The front of her strapless red dress accentuates her breasts and displays the network of bright blue veins streaking across the tops. 

He shrugs out of his camel-colored work shirt and tosses it onto the back of a nearby chair. He grins as the bedside lamp traces the contours of his white pear-shaped body with soft brass fingers. Sweat breaks out across his forehead in a sheen of bright lucid acne and glistens off of his big hairy chest. 

From the second they saw each other from across the bar, they know it was meant to be. The magnetism, heat and attraction that’d pulled them together had been too strong for them to resist. They’d left the bar together, oblivious to the mystified expressions on the faces of the other customers they’d passed on their way out. 

She slides her dress down her slender frame, exposing milky white skin stretching taut over her ribs. She grins at the silky smooth fabric of her dress sliding down her hips and caressing her ankles on its way toward the floor. He fumbles with his belt and jeans, drops them into a heap around his ankles and kick them across the room. 

“Oh, babe.” She says. “You’re so fucking hot.” 

He draws his tongue across his upper lip and sighs. Her chest rises and falls. Her skin bristles as the wave of widespread passion washes over her. 

“I want you.” He says. 

Without hesitating, she leaps off of her feet and clamps onto him like a koala. Their lips pressing together in a passionate kiss, their tongues writhe inside the caverns of their mouths. She pushes him onto the bed, slides down the length of his naked plump body and glides her tongue across his huge sack. 

He sighs, his body writhing under the aura of the euphoric pleasure wafting off of her skin. He raises his head from the mattress and peers down to watch her work his stiff pale cock in her left hand. Her saliva glistens off of the hairless patch of skin above his cock as she runs the light pink nails on her right hand across his stomach. 

He grasps her arms, lifts her up and over him and onto the bed. She bounces face first onto the mattress, chuckles from behind a wide pleasing grin and rolls onto her back. She slides the fingers of her right hand across his cock, winds a strand of long black hair around her left forefinger and spreads her legs. 

He crawls across the bed, slithers his corpulent body between her legs and guides his cock inside of her soft wet pussy. She draws a quick breath, peers down at the narrow gap between their stomachs, arches her back and groans with pleasure. 

“Oh yeah.” She sighs. “Right there babe oh yeah right there don’t lose it.” 

Her legs quivering, she sighs and stares up at him with wide starstruck eyes. 

Gripping her hips in both hands, he leans back on his feet and slides his cock in and out. A small sensation rises from somewhere deep inside of her, sending seismic vibrations throughout her body. The cheap metal bedsprings squeal under their combined weight; the even cheaper wooden headboard thuds against the motel room’s sick green walls and sends the three second-hand landscape portraits into a swaying and scraping frenzy. 

She grasps the bedspreads until her knuckles turn pale as their orgasms collide against one another in a supernova of sexual ecstasy. His body shudders with carnality. They sigh, their bodies heaving from exhaustion, and grin at each other. 

He plops down beside of her and plants his right hand on his chest. She grins at him and hikes her right leg over his left. 

“Oh God, babe.” She says. “You were great.” 

“You were wonderful.” 

She leans toward him, her mouth curling into a satisfied smile. He winces, his face creasing with pain and raises his left hand in a protesting manner. She leans back and greets him with an apologetic expression. 

“I’m sorry, honey.” She says. “I didn’t mean to do that.” 

“It’s okay, baby.” He says. 

They look down the length of their bodies toward their genitals and smile. The bright pink tube growing from the tip of his shaft connects to the small soft pink pocket growing from the center of her vagina. It pulsates and pumps a continuous amount of sperm inside of her. 

He brushes a strand of hair away from her face and grins. He stares into her vivid deep-set blue eyes and feels his heart twitch with joy. 

“How many do you think we’ll have?” 

“Two,” He says. “Maybe three.” 

“Are you sure?” 

He nods. 

They rests their heads together. Their eyes flickering with affection, they hold hands and listen to the sounds of raucous night traffic blare outside of the motel. 

No matter what, whether human or inhuman, love is what it is. 

John Alejandro King

Catwalk of Spies

The Agency neither confirms nor denies
While booking its models
On the catwalk of spies

That the catwalk of intel is a runway of lies
And everyone poses
On the catwalk of spies

Catwalk of whispers, catwalk of sighs
Catwalk of secrets
Catwalk of spies

Cover is a microskirt flaunting your thighs
With sheer blouse unbuttoned
On the catwalk of spies

And truth’s a pair of pumps, too small by one size
Make sure you don’t stumble
On the catwalk of spies

Covert action is shadow that brings out your eyes
And black ops make you slimmer
On the catwalk of spies

Spy dust is blush the makeup artist applies
And everyone’s airbrushed
On the catwalk of spies

Agents are items you accessorize
You wear each one proudly
On the catwalk of spies

But when the big designer your portfolio buys
And you make that cold read
On the catwalk of spies

In that moment your dress falls, and you realize
Strutting forth naked
On the catwalk of spies

That the passage through which unto light we all rise
That runway of spirit
Is a catwalk of spies

Catwalk of whispers, catwalk of sighs
Catwalk of eternity
Catwalk of spies

J.J. Campbell

if i was a wiser man

i remember the shower
and you coming in right
as i was washing my balls

you looked me right in 
the eyes and asked may i

if i was a wiser man
i would have married 
you right there

but that kind of shit
didn’t exist in me at 
the age of 21

but the images stuck 
in my brain from that 
shower still persist a 
quarter century later

i’m pretty sure you 
and your family are 
comfortable living 
out west

i still laugh when 
you said i’d be the
perfect one to have 
an affair with since 
i was living on the 
other side of the 
country

well, here i am on 
the other side of the 
country

patiently waiting

HSTQ: Winter 2024

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 2024, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by Alan Catlin, Chris Butler, Johnny Scarlotti, Arthur Graham, A. Lynn Blumer, Judge Santiago Burdon, William Taylor Jr., Damian Rucci, Adam Hazell, Brenton Booth, Karl Koweski, Damon Hubbs, Casey Renee Kiser, Mike Zone, Harry Whitewolf, Daniel S. Irwin, J.J. Campbell, Jonathan S Baker, Andrew Vuono, and Donna Dallas.

FREE EBOOK HERE