Longing 

Woke up today
and missed you
more than the 
manageable amount 

a person can get
used to living 
with a ghost of the past 

but haunting 
is haunting 
and it takes its toll

I called in sick
to work

sat on my chair
with my construction 
clothes on,
just off the phone 
with the site manager 

still holding the banana 
I force feed myself 
each morning 

just after realising
I can’t cope today

I look at my bed
that has no sheets—
unable to sleep either.

What type of person
doesn’t even put sheets
on their bed 

me, I don’t 
and I wear my hoodie at 
night sleeping because
I haven’t renewed the gas card
and the house is as cold 
as somebody’s garden 

All the money spent 
for drugs and booze—
anything to carry you 
from one day to the next 
even though time will come
it will drop you on a hole
covered with your own feces.

One night 
I suspect
crossing a bridge 
I won’t make it all the way
to the other side of it

There will be a splash of water 
one cold night.

“Somebody dropped in!”
they’ll say
but they won’t be able to see me.

Shutters drawn.
Thin blades of morning 
grey light 
cut through the darkness 
of the room 

Sitting here 
and I miss you

so much so
at times 
it becomes a longing

a feeling I’ve heard
can poison a man
over time 

and how the time 
has passed

years have run away
from the both of us 

years apart
like a barren wasteland 
of time that will always
sit there
between us

all the hours 
of longing 

Sitting here
and I miss you 
as outside 
the black of the coming night 
is the same depth of dark
we’ve grown accustomed to
since childhood

and how I wish 
you were in my bed
asking me to be tucked in

the most beautiful 
woman in the world—
you in your pajamas
curled up next to me
on the couch 
on those cold nights 
of winter 
or those hot nights
of Mediterranean summer 

ghosts of past happinesses 
are hard to silence 

I think of that bartender 
at the local pub
that opens at eleven o’clock

I contemplate of calling 
for some opioids

It’s the same fight
time and again

trying to smother the longing
before it smothers you

cutting your losses
with a sobering acceptance

adopting a scorched earth 
policy on your own heart

#vanlife

in berlin, he’d been a curiosity shop 
employee, a background actor, a maker of old people’s 
porn,
a documenter of unexploded ww2 munitions.
he’d also written a few short 
stories and started an online fiction and poetry 
zine with me. it was a bust. all of it. none
satisfied, nothing paid more than minimum wage 
if it paid anything at all.
so, he moved back to canada and got a job 
as a flight instructor. three weeks later, he washed
his hands of that too. “shadiest place 
I’ve ever worked,” he told me. 

but with the money he’d earned, he was able to buy 
a van, 
outfit it with a bed, a dresser, and a toilet 
that was a 5-gallon paint bucket 
with a blue foam ring duct taped 
to the rim. 

his plan was to go on the road 
with the van and document the experience
on his youtube channel. 
his first video, called #vanlife, was an instructional 
about setting up the van 
and his bucket. 

it was mostly about his bucket. 
after that, he took to the road, tooling 
through british columbia and stumbling 
upon a little village called lytton. 
there, 
he met an old man in a diner who asked if he’d 
panned for gold 
in any of the local waters. he hadn’t, 
but the idea appealed to his romantic 
cowboy nature, so he did some research and 
after deleting his #vanlife post
bought 
a frying pan at wal-mart and spent the next month
squatting on his ass in a frigid river.   

it was a bust. just like curiosity shops, 
and background acting, 
and old people’s porn, 
and documentaries on unexploded munitions 
and fiction writing 
and editing
and #vanlife had been one. he packed up, 
left lytton, 
but not before smoking one last cigarette 
and flicking the butt out the van window 
which normally wouldn’t have mattered.
but that summer there was a heatwave, 
worst there in recorded history. 

well, it might not have been his cigarette. 
but something – a pine needle, a leaf – something 
caught fire in that part of lytton that day 
and now the diner 
where he met the old man longer exists. 
the old man might not even exist. 
lytton hardly exists. 

the whole village went up in a roaring fire. 
but my co-editor 
made it out of there with a half-pack of smokes, 
and his frying pan, 
and his crap bucket,
and no plan. but he didn’t need one. he knew 
something would come up.

Lusting after vacuity

The silence of empty spaces
& the desperate eroticism of loneliness.

I find complications malevolent
& complexities a nine-level torture saga,
a sermon of my vilest sins,
so I lust for vacuity,
to breathe free in a vacuum,
deliver a monotonous eulogy
to a hall that’s blessedly devoid
of impassioned mourners.

Instead, a feckless crowd of inebriates,
their disdainful glow & seedy aura
bereft of compassion but vibrant with 
the dead-end reciprocity 
of the terminally resigned.

These are my people
& this is my lust.

Into the Ice Night

drunk mornings that smell like vomit
evenings loaded with junk and ice
blurry months where suicide was chased but never caught
the big brown dragon soaring through the flaming meadow remains free
priests trying to teach the words of the Lord
helpful naïve youth handing out Narcan in dark alleys
mice and elephants fucking in dilapidated shooting galleries
barfing in the kitchen sink as a strange woman’s taking a dump in the toilet
staring at the rising sun at five in the morning while shaking a plastic
bottle full of chemicals and lethal reactions
the vapor’s released into the air all that remains a piece of
ice meant to eviscerate dreams and engender grandiloquent nightmares
algid embraces that could never heat up the summer nights
a single pair of lips that turned even frigid winter days scalding
lost years of blurry memories
a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s somehow acquired
attending university while drunk and high
meeting people at parties
faces never to be remembered
names never meant to be recalled
friendships doomed to obscurity
a parade of people lost in the fog
nothing was there just blank years staring at
the window and it’s fucking alright
nobody to care for nobody to care for me
friends out of necessity
one-night stands that could never become anything more
Emily’s eyes chasing me everywhere
her late-night embraces were superior even to junk nirvana
no one ever came close to replacing her
despite the hundreds that tried
more Four Roses in the glass
it’s time to disappear into the night for the last time

Happy with Christianity

Space ghouls leer through the hatchback
rear window
rays of karat gold pierce solid buildings
gnomes emerge from under tufts of sod
clutching skulls with matted hair
frankensteins are seen laughing
in their lab coats
in Le Jardin
overlooking bays of swill
pumped out of their factories
Pimpled growths appear on bites of fruit
You would not recognize a strawberry
It is you –
not the strawberry
Beeves hoof up in a pasture
and many people think that this is the end
Then hockey season starts
the Pope appoints a bishop
a mayor brays over airwaves
airplanes they come and go
Boats still exist
Radiologists send bills
and hump the blond mons
So it was just our paranoia
here at the bottom of the world
hiding inside the curtain
here slipping on the peels
looking at that chunk of grapefruit
Fair enough
I need to sit and think it out.
No one mentions her.

My Friend the Pimp

It happened at that budget hotel
out by the highway.

Popular with travelling hockey teams
and horndog businessmen.

And my friend worked front desk overnight.
Seventeen and very gay, back when it was 
far from fashionable.
Had to open the continental breakfast nook
first thing in the morning.

The pay was first job awful, but my friend had a side gig.
Worked out a deal with the girls, so they could
bring their tricks back to the hotel.

They paid him a special rate for a room off the books,
and he pocketed the money.

He didn’t even clean the room when they were done.
Just straightened up the bedspread 
and rented the room out to unsuspecting guests.

So, you’re a pimp,
I laughed.

No I’m not!
he covered his mouth 
in obvious embarrassment.

How are you not a pimp?
You collect from all the hookers,
and even provide them a venue to conduct business.

I could see him thinking, my friend the pimp.
He seemed noticeably bothered by the accusation.

But that pocket full of money 
was hard to explain away.
All the fishnet girls that kept coming
and going.

He turned the camera around to face the wall.
I was surprised that management never
asked him about that.

But they probably all had their own nefarious things
to conceal, so my friend kept pimping out all the girls for profit
and no one said anything.

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: Spring 2025, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by Salvatore Difalco, William Taylor Jr., Francesca Miele, Brandon Diehl, M.P. Powers, Juliet Cook, Andy Seven, Charles Rammelkamp, Casey Renee Kiser, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Jon Bennett, Sean G. Meggeson, Nicholas Alti, Maia Brown-Jackson, and Nathaniel Sverlow.

FREE EBOOK HERE

Phonelight

After the party is over 
Awareness sets in
Like dementia’s wicked twin
The saturation of reality 
Naked as the sky
Shorn of its dream of long-dead stars
Instinctively, we reach for the nearest device
Dispel the pain with dopamine distraction
Of greater pains and the coming apocalypse
So we walk, ghost-hand in ghost-hand
Into a curated future
Under the life-caul of the phonelight 
We witness the end of the world 
And lift only a single finger
To put it out of sight

‘D’                                       

my grandmother 
kept her 1924 
high school yearbook 
handy
and whenever 
one of her classmates would die 
she would take out a black pen 
and write a capital ‘D’ 
on the top of their b & w photo. 

my grandmother lived to be eighty-nine
so in the end almost all her classmates 
had earned  
their ‘D’ 
my grandmother never told me 
about these people
and wasn’t one to write down her thoughts 
so I have no idea how any of these ‘Ds’
affected her, but if it were me 

I think I would get a strange feeling of power 
and satisfaction 
every time I marked a new one down
especially if some pattern were forming
or a column had been 
knocked down. you see the problem
with school shooters is they just don’t have
enough patience.

Fresh Brewski, Duder

You can’t reverse osmosis now, you soulless 
sentiment of loss, you can’t masquerade my 
oblivion of confusion, you can’t even forget. 

Spooky boo, ghoul fiend, want to slumber party
my little sludge buddy? We can wander back
-wards toward euphoria, collapse in a puddle of 
brackish acid. Tickle each other as we try to
stand back up, but we always fall down, always
liquefy just like and until silence.

You can crush this conversation, you can crush
a palm of grubs, you can crush a bougainvillea 
pink pill, you can crush a future without touch.

No function is fully pooped until I shoulder in,
gagged with a paperweight, open wounds all over,
sporting a rather Spahn Ranch ensemble. 
I cut the music. I scream in the startling language
of actual exorcisms. Nobody makes a sound. 
Yes, excellent. I put on my own music.  

You can crush this fresh brewski, duder, you can
crush any scant savings on bail, you can crush 
cathedrals with the full hymn of your hurting. 

I confess, I’m a part E-Animal: half cyborg,
three-quarters dumpster centipede, endemic
to stratums of critically higher altitudes. Spirit,
who scared you to death, anyway? No biggie,
though, my astral amigo—another data hazard
won’t really my ruined organ mend.