Dirty Books

At least we got the Bible out of the schools,
all that violence and vulgarity
no better for elementary school kids
than the so-called danger of LGBTQ books.

Davis County’s always had its problems,
standing out even in a state as white as Utah,
widespread racial harassment throughout
the school district, hundreds of complaints
simply ignored by the local authorities.

A few years back, a school-bus driver 
slammed the doors
on a biracial kid’s backpack,
dragging him along a few hundred feet.

So I was glad when one of the parents
leveraged the new law aimed at LGBTQ authors
to complain about the “pornographic content”
of the Bible, to get that “sacred text” banned, too.

Of course, they established a “committee”
to review the request, 
all that filth in “Song of Songs”
about his sister’s vagina tasting like wine,
her breasts being “pleasing” to him,
the part in Numbers about raping a three-year-old girl.

Finally, the committee agreed the Bible
was a “challenging read” for children,
best taught and discussed in the home.
The best part? Watching my neighbor,
that smug, hypocritical bigot,
fuss and fume about how the country
was going to hell.

The Ranch

We’re watching late night comedy
Undressed like animals
Woody slides the coke tray out from under the couch
Neil working the swivel-recliner
Upndown
Backnforth
Roundnround
Cold frosty bottles in a brown paper QFC shopping bag on the coffee table
Becca can’t keep still with my boxer shorts stuffed in her mouth
I puffing albuterol nebulizer
Paired with bong tokes 
Neil jokes about the blood of Christian children
He uses instead of bong water 
Woody’s back pain following him from the Wing Stop
Where we’d just pulled a job
It was Becca’s idea
Sometimes she had one
Like a light bulb in an attic
It looks like she wants to say something 
I yank the shorts out
Take your time says Neil we got all night
Little do I know that while I am at work Neil and Woody strap her down to the coffee table and take turns objectifying her body
Woody and Neil
Lumbermen of imminent GenPop video games
I think, Becca starts her eyes wide with speed I forgot my cigarettes at Wing Stop!
Give her something to suck on Ivan, if you can find it Woody chortles
Maybe you left ‘em in the safe we just emptied at gunpoint Neil points out
You think? Becca pipes incredulously
She has one little dainty white sock on while wiping her armpit with the other
I stand up
I sit down
I stand up
I sit down
I stand up
Willya fuckin’ quit that lvan you freak you’re freaking me out yells Woody
I sit
Tufts of cat hair adrift
Somebody needs to clean up after that fucking cat I proclaim
Becca’s baby blues startled, head darting about
My kitten! Where’s my little baby kitty?
Between your not-so-little legs Woody jokes
Comedy punctuated by commercials for insurance against tragedy 
Becca pokes me
Gimme a smoke Eye
She wants a smoke Eye mimics Woody
Give her a smoke Eye parrots Neil
I still wearing my rubberized dead president mask
Fuck all of you 
I got an agenda
Let’s split that stash so I can take this mounting phallus and stick it in Becca before the world ends
They’re used to my scat
My scandalous
Scatalogic
They indulge in it
Even revel 
I can’t phase them 
Woody snorts a chub, chugs a frosty
Starts waving his limp baton around like a schizoid Viennese conductor 
Didja hear him Neil? Whip out that stash
Neil stunned, frazzled
Fantasizing about prenatal Jesus
How to reverse the Resurrection 
Woody like a field marshal of the Lower Rhine 
Brandishing his deflated pizzle in circular motions 
A man in charge
Despite palsied rats running his spinal column
Upndown
We’re flush
From the rush of crime and chemical intake
Frosty bottles
Cold skin like Japanese porcelain on a mist-shrouded morning after the flattening of Hiroshima
We got the shivers 
The fidgets
Wary of sirens slashing apart the sky
Random phones ringing
Angels burned at the stake
Woody’s wee willy flopping like a wet sock puppet
I explode
Damn it to hell you morons I demand my cut this instant!
Becca prods
Becca’s got issues
Becca’s got needs
Becca wants her membranes stimulated
Olfactory
Pulmonary 
Anally
Let’s take a shower Eye
Let’s do Jäeger bombs
Let’s do a line
Light my smoke willya
Rub my back
My feet
Pull my hair, slap my ass
Make me one of those omelettes you make
Becca twists around
Doesn’t he make the best omelettes?
Becca talking to the wall again 
Seeing her friend Melissa again
Melissa the bar slut everyone wants a piece of
A cute fat young thing
Who’d suck you off for a double vodka cran
Until the night she got super drunk at a party on a boat and fell overboard 
Nobody even noticed she was gone til the next day when her body was discovered floating face down in Shilshole Bay
There was a wake for Melissa at Wing Stop
On Taco Tuesday
Becca accuses me of lusting after Melissa’s fat stinky fanny
Is that any way to honor the deceased I wonder aloud
Admit it Eye! You want that ass! Everybody does! You’re no different! Fucking men!
Too true Woody agrees
She did like dick Neil adds as he flops back down on the squeaky recliner
Empty-handed
Any motive for rising in the first place forgotten 
Must’ve been days later maybe hours but realistically just minutes
Bills rolled
Benjamins
Crispy from the take
Powder mirror passed
Smudged with gas
Gas from ass
Frosties quaffed
But not so chilled now
Neil announcing a need to drain the liz
I enact my agitate-Tourette’s routine
Stand
Sit
Stand
Sit
Stand
In jerky pantomime 
Working on the Stoli now
Surreptitious hits from the kitchen freezer between rapid pacings
I look closer
Between bags of frozen peas and Trader Joe’s wontons
The big fucking bag of cash
Our foolproof stronghold at the Ranch
Top-load freezer in the kitch
Guys not playing with very many cards in the deck here
I re-animate my Myoclonic epileptic routine
Sit up
Stand down
Sit up
Patent that shit
As Neil settles deep into recline
Stretching out
Swivels from the flatscreen 
Accordions spine straight up 
To grab a bottle with a lurch of the chair’s mechanism out of which erupts a
Sudden
Blood-curdling squeal
Like horror movie macabre
What the fuck gasps Woody
Becca practically leaps into my skin 
Neil petrified 
Frozen in space
Spasmodically I sweep into action
Becca caught in my wake like a house in a hurricane 
Woody clutches behind his back
At his spasming sciatica
Neil gone dormant
Catatonic
Shock he’s in shock right, Eye?
Quite observant my love
But you might want to step away for a sec
Why what’s wrong is Neil okay? Should we call a parametric?
Naw
Actually 
I believe this is more a job for the hazmat crew
A what? Omg what’s that smell?
I stoop to lift up the swivel-rocker’s flap of fabric
Sure enough
The cute kitten had covertly crawled into the mechanism
Warm dark and cozy like a womb
Until the shifty weight of Neil returned
Woody flat on his back on the couch as if gunshot
Writhing 
In turmoil
I tease
Can I get ya a beer Woody? A toke? How ‘bout a little railer? Good for what ails ya?
I sing dangerously close to exalt
Woody waves me away grimacing 
Neil inert
Zombified
The rapists
Out of commission 
Becca glued to me like duct tape on an open wound
High time indeed to
Decamp
Vamoose
Skedaddle
All the obsolete terminologies for disappearing
Throw something on girl, any old burlap sack will do
I tug at Woody’s track-suit pockets for the keys to his pickup as he squirms and struggles
As Neil fights petrification
Becca tottering naked as a wasted Venus yet still with one dainty white sock on
Woody fighting back now despite palpable paroxysms of torment
In a grapple of disrobed scarecrows
I yell
Damnit woman we gotta scram! Put some clothes on and in the freezer? There’s a bag with the green! Grab that stash, I’ll be in the truck!
Suddenly my marble effigy of a tart sprouts wings
Keys clenched in a fist I ransack the hall closet
Holes punched through the door
Like every other door at the Ranch
Snag a bloodstained chef’s coat, stiff black leather chaps
Clutching my privates with an old catcher’s mitt
I flee
Out the door and into the black
Becca already tucked in the passenger seat of the truck
How’d she get that fast?
Didja get the goods?
Becca with SpongeBob pajamas on
Her ample anatomy jutting and swimming
Her face streaked with tears
Lamenting her massacred pussycat
I gun the engine which screams like a horse being butchered alive
We tear out of there
I snatch the brown paper sack
Gaze salivating within
Wtf?
At a bag of frozen peas
Becca where the fuck’s the cash?
What? I grabbed the green like you said! Why do we need frozen peas anyway?
I still wearing the dead president’s mask
I try removing it
I tug and yank
But it seems fused to my face
Becca starts laughing 
Frantically 
Idiotically
Maniacally hyena-like
The night speeding with hallucinatory flashbacks
Now you got a dick for a nose!
A dick for a nose
A dick on your face
Adickadadickadadickadadick!!!
Keep laughing wench! I scream
You’re the one with the dead fuckin’ pussy!
Sonny and Cher on the AM radio
John and Yoko on the FM dial
Sid and Nancy dead at the Chelsea
Bonnie and Clyde we are not

He Who Loves Grape Juice

no poem today 
why? 
pickled, fried 
last night 
one of those 
never empty wine glasses 
great dinner 
great talk 
but who can remember? 
oh, once or twice a year 
Bacchus reigns 
converses about the past 
the characters that are shadows 
so many dead 
diabetes 
drugs 
cancer 
oh just a list of common afflictions 
but the characters 
that saw sunrises, midnight moons 
Paris 
the mirror in the Charles Village Pub 
the interior of a deep philosophic mind 
making illegible notes to itself 
the poet whose best work 
was published after her death 
we toasted them all 
again and again 
luckily my wife drove home 
traffic patterns were askew 
for me 
and so this morning 
unsympathetic for sure 
few tolerate overindulgence 
though the wines of the world flowed 
from Spain to New Zealand 
we helped diverse economies 
with our indulgence 
but this morning 
who really wants to type words 
the sound of typing magnified 
in the pickled raw mind 
the typing arm attached 
to the arm of another arm 
and that to that of a hammer 
and so this morning 
feels like a vampire 
that didn’t escape the sun 
or the stake 
how shriveled raisins are 
and the reasons 
for overindulgence

Rain Don’t Break Bones

We invented poetry because
some of us 
don’t know 
how to masturbate.

Rain don’t break bones 
I tell the woman
beside me in bed.

She flicks my head
and says let’s fuck instead.

Funny we both know
the what instead of.

All the while
rain’s been falling outside.

Abigail’s Party

At Abigail’s party
Farrah says she’s one hundred percent 
committed to romance. 
I had a crush on a French bartender 
who never read Houellebecq, god 
we were bored to tears. Do you remember
newspapers, she says. I mutter something 
about wearing my best shirt to the Prado 
to see Goya’s Black Paintings
and she lifts her glass 
and lists the number of ways 
the world is a mystery

                                  take Abigail’s party 

For instance —we’re in a hallway 
pink as a vulva, and Joan 
saw a UFO over the Unadilla drive-in 
on Friday. Laura is dead. The dog sleeps 
at Paul’s feet. John and Lise fight 
with cudgels, then apologize to Chloe 
for not having a car. Henry joined the circus 
says Bret. There’s a fair young man in the kitchen
clumsily lipsticked. Has anyone seen Abigail?
Albert no longer has the sparkle 
in his eye. Nothing happened 
particularly, and the nightcap crowd 
can’t be cut from the wall. You’re wearing 
your best shirt again, and that’s enough.

God Is A Place

God is a place with no scope—a room with no space, walls of no height, imaginary windows, illusionary doors. It cannot be gleaned from out here or in there, nor in thought or dream. It is a place where nothing exists—a place in name only; oblivion, death.

It always was, it is, and it forever will be – yet never were, and can never become. In this paradox lives the illusion of scale and creation, growth from motion and emotion, free will and meaning; a place that is not God.

Perforce, you exist and life is part of something rather than nothing. Perforce, you feel there are choices you make. Of course, these are the illusions. You can attempt to believe, seek solace– distraction as well—in the stories we tell to avoid the truth, looming: You are a prisoner of Eternity until you return to the place that is God—a place you never left. 

It is a beautiful and horrifying thing.

***

Previously published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal

Right Here

Not far from where you sit, right now,
just a mile or two away,
there is a house
you never really notice.
It has white, vinyl siding,
a small porch, a basement.
A single rose bush decorates the front yard.
Not far from you there is a man
sitting in a chair and savoring
the weight of a gun in his hands.
It might be a new gun
or something he’s had forever.
Maybe it was his inheritance
from a careless father
or he bought it from the back of a van
or at a gun show.
Depending on where you are,
the man might be holding
a semi-automatic rifle
or a .22 caliber pistol
or maybe a .357 Magnum.
Not far from you, a woman,
or child, or man stands, oblivious,
in a kitchen, maybe chopping onions, 
or on a sidewalk,
or is maybe entering a school or movie theater.
A commonplace horror
will happen very soon.
It will happen so close to where you are,
right this second,
that a stray bullet
could come through your window
or even a wall
and take you the fuck out.
Or it might take out your child,
your wife, your dog.
You have always
held that “Guns don’t kill people.
People kill people.”
What about when your own baby
has been shredded
by high caliber bullets?
What about when you don’t even know
you are screaming
until someone puts a needle in your arm?
But you still have a little time
before it all goes down, so relax.
Drink your coffee and don’t think
about your neighbors.
Look out your window at America.

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

Featuring poetry by Taryn Allan, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, M.P. Powers, Jason Melvin, Tempest Miller, Michael Ashley, Alan Catlin, Jade Palmer, Damon Hubbs, Brooks Lindberg, Johnny Scarlotti, Casey Renee Kiser, Karl Koweski, and Noel Negele.

FREE EBOOK HERE

look what happened

“what is it?” I asked. 

she gave me a slight, unsure smile. 

“what?”

“I’m just trying to figure out 
how kinky you are,” she said. 

she could really get off with her vibrator, she told me. 

it was a dildo with a little stem 
on the bottom. 
she held it like a gun when she showed it to me. 

“I’ve actually never used that end,” she said 
as the phallic cannon bobbed in the air. 

I held it against her and turned it on. 
she leaned back and started to moan. 
she clenched the sheets
and arched her back up. 

I kissed her. 

I kissed her neck. 

I put my mouth on her breasts, 
licked, nibbled and sucked. 

she cried out as she bent herself upward. 
she grabbed and pulled my hair. 

“I should have put a towel down,” she said 
as she came back down. 
there was a big wet spot on the bed. 

“I squirt when I use my vibrator,” she told me. 

we had a laugh. we changed the sheets. 
we watched a movie. 
I went home. 

all I had to do was kiss her back, 
she said. 
and look what happened. 

Write a Poem About Us She Said

It’s not love
it’s something more simple, 
less demanding.

She has a small room
in a bad neighborhood
with a small kitchen and a pleasant bathroom
and the washing machines are in the basement
and the air conditioning
is included in the rent
so we keep it on
all night and all day long.

She only has one chair to sit on
so she drags it next to the bed
and sits on it
and I lie in bed
and I keep the ashtray on my stomach
and we talk and talk and talk
and we laugh and laugh and laugh
and we remain silent
as much as we talk and laugh.

(The TV is broken so there’s not much else to do.)

We drank all five wine bottles
she had bought with her money
(she works, I don’t)
washing down 6 xanax pills each
and smoking camel cigarettes
until 6 or 7 in the morning
at which point she lay beside me
and we had a wonderful time
fucking for a while,
and then we fell asleep,
as the shutters where down
and no day light
intruded the fine darkness of the room.

Nothing can harm us
as long as
we are kind to each other.

 I woke up at 16:00 in the noon
and she had already been up from 12
and gone down to grab coffee for us
and she was listening to her music on the balcony naked,
sitting on the only chair-
her beautiful legs over the railing
and on the nightstand
my not so cold coffee anymore awaited.

I got up from bed
heavy from the alcohol
and the anti-depressants
and went to take a piss
and when I returned
I lied on the bed again
and she lied beside me
calling me lazy
and she kissed me
and I rubbed her clit
and she said: “No, not like that. Like this.”
and holding my hand lightly
she guided my fingers over that wonderful pussy of hers,
and taught me how to make her cum with my fingers
which took some time, and when she did
I put my cock inside that wonderfully wet cunt
and I fucked her for some time
and at the end
my dick got soft and tired
and she put it in her mouth
and gave me the best blowjob,
the kindest one I’ve had,
and she swallowed my cum
and she said:” Let’s take a bath together.”

Her bathtub was small and we had to stand
and we began washing each other standing
“It’s going to take a hell of a lot of shampoo to wash all this hair” I said
“You have to collect it.” she said
and I washed her head
as she washed my cock
which was still a little hard
and we kissed
and I washed her back
watching the lather
slowly travel from her neck to her beautiful ass
and she washed my chest
and I washed her thighs
and she washed my face and my ears
and I washed her cunt
and she washed my hair
and I wrapped a towel around my waist
and she wrapped a towel around her breasts
and we brushed our teeth
with her toothbrush.

She said her toilet leaked when she flushed it
so I said I’d fix it
and I opened the cistern
and I plugged the hole
from which a plastic button was detached
with a tampon 
I took from her purse 
and as she cooked spaghetti with squid
I yelled at her from the bathroom
the problem and how I had fixed it
and she yelled back happily that I am a genius
and I felt proud
and returned and smoked and drank one of the three
beers she had bought that morning
and I said those pills really were something
and said too bad she didn’t have any more
and she brought the plate and put it on the chair
and dragged the chair in front of the bed
and then lied next to me.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked.

” I’m not hungry,” she responded

and I ate while she watched smiling and smoking and drinking 

“Is it good?” she asked behind her crossed thighs

”It’s very good.” I responded
looking at the curves of her lips
while she smiled 

It was very good
everything was very good
and the world itself was on hold
and waiting to close in
and death trembled each time we laughed
and I felt three centuries younger
and we both knew
we would lose the magnificence
when we’d separate
but we were too brave to whine about it
and at 21:00 in the night
I got dressed and opened the door

and turned and kissed her
and her eyes were knowing and understanding
and clever and clear
and she said: ”Goodbye.”
and I said: ”Goodbye,” and I left
I left
I left
all the brightness that life had for me that day.