Tempest Miller

Sex in Hell

Flame geysers shoot up your crack,
and tether –
hydrophobic to your colon.
You lay on your leather coat atop a rubbished stone.
Dirty Dick, bf, rubs clotted dirt over your pecs.
He licks his furnishings off you
in round and round the garden like a teddy bear circles.
He adjusts, fidgets, scuffles.
He sodomises you 1) with a roadsign and 2) with a rainbow trout.
He whips you with a flannel he bathed in fire.
He inserts olive-oil-lubricated dirt into your trachea
with a whole fist
and then goes to do the same in your colon.
He sojourns his white cock in your ass.
The white of Hell,
the white whale he is,
floating over you one-eyed, pentagonal, askew.
You shit out fire-dirt-geyser-oil onto his cock.
Your stench of fecundity overwhelms his disgust
and he cannot whiten further.
He laps at your black-haired aestheticism,
saying he’s never seen someone with so few wrinkles.
He grips your meaty handlebars –
you were razor-thin but you drank from sewers and fattened.
He puts his ass onto your face.
You feign non-reciprocity,
you push him off so that he falls into the seas of Hell,
that lap at where you lay
on your biker jacket,
diseased,
post-modern
fine art
punk
who looks like a sordid shrivelled field mouse.
You turn away from him
as he emerges charred and bloated.
You drink absinthe,
you gush to him, still turned away, in Flemish
about how you think his cock is a stinging nettle
up your shitty shitty shitty pulsing colon;
and how you adore it,
how you don’t get butterflies but whole murders of crows
and how a part of you is chomping at the bit.
But not tonight,
not for the hundredth time tonight.

Michael Ashley

The YouTube gurus tell me to live in the moment

but how do you do that when there are so many catastrophes to ruminate on?

the ones I built up ahead of time
that I constructed brick by brick
scene by scene
until I could clearly see that anvil swaying above
on a thinning slither of rope

the ones which I lived in that moment 

the sharp edge of the anvil descending 
compressing the air above my head 
the skin slowly pressing itself into my skull
the tiny crack as bone enters flesh

right now here I am sat watching a YouTuber tell me
how I should live in the moment

running my hand down the rough upturned base
of the anvil

a dark reflective shadow 
its circumference pushing itself out across the floor

the warm gore gathered around
my naked toes

Damon Hubbs

Tennis Socks

It was the year we gave up rooftops for boat decks.
You had fallen for Auden 
and that man with golden talents
O what was his name  —Thom, John  

sucking cocks in your tennis socks 
from Good Harbor to York Beach, 
you thought you were the woman
who invented love

but love couldn’t save me, or you
so we drank at the 525 
like Hamlet’s gravedigger-clowns, 
unaware of our own errors 

unaware that all the boats are named Grady 
and that Pedro pitched Don Zimmer to the ground,
unaware that Toby died 
and Holly crashed her car into The Oceanside

searching for Mercy Street in the Magnolia dusk—
It’s not there, baby. It’s not there. 
You served aces and I 
fished white blossoms from your hair.

Brooks Lindberg

Why Even the Deaf Sing

7 times 70 the
condom tears and
7 times 70
I only
am escaped alone
to tell thee.

Melville had whales and Shakespeare.
Hemingway, bulls and Melville.
Bukowski, racehorses and Hemingway.
Schopenhauer, his jizz on bare breasts.

And me,
I’ve children
outer-darked
roving desolations
for explanation.

The children
of course
being poems.

The womb
of course being
your eyes.

We read as we fuck—
desperately 

fine with flings
though craving what
we could ferry to
the grave.

M.P. Powers

wal-mart customer

who would’ve known 
the guy who considers anything 
with a vegan label to be a threat 
on a par with the suitcase nuke 
is also the guy who’s never come 
within a bargepole’s distance 
from the self-checkout line 
and the one who refuses to return
his shopping cart to the stack 
and leaves it in the gap 
between his jeep grand cherokee 
and the car next to it a 3/4th drunk 
plastic cup of mountain dew 
in the cupholder who would’ve 
known who would’ve known who 
would’ve known?

Gregg Norman

We Came Upon a Midnight Clear

We sang upon a midnight clear
that odious song of old,
of angels bending to touch their toes
and bitch about getting old.

A piece on earth to everyone,
a glorious, rollicking shag.
Then hear in solemn stillness as
the angels gloat and brag.

For souls below need sorely now
a bop-till-you-drop kind of night,
a knee-shake, bottle-break reverie
to set their spirits right.

Look now for glad and golden hours
to follow this toe-curling fling,
and lay upon your rumpled sheets 
and hear the angels sing.

Scott C. Holstad

Hell

Smack dab in the middle of the
club, cornered, no way out.  She
had been following me for
weeks, harassing me, driving me
fucking nuts.  She was 
everywhere I went, no escape
20 calls a day

(God, I want you)

she assaulted anyone I was with
told her I was gay, didn’t work;
couldn’t bluff the bitch.  She was
a fucking nightmare!

(I want you in my mouth
right now right here)

Yeah, sure bitch, the place is
packed, no chance, be my guest.

Damn if she didn’t drop my pants
and suck me down to the balls in
three seconds flat!

While they pulled her off of me I
wondered if IT would remain
intact with that kind of suction
and why did they ever let her out
of the nuthouse and what did I do
to deserve this.

I only heard from her twice
more

(God, I want you in me,
can I have some of your poems?)

I think they locked her back up.

M.P. Powers

the nobody inn 

it claimed it was a non-smoking unit 
but it reeked of stale smoke and there were 
cigarette burns in the bedding and the refrigerator 
was about a meter from the bed 

and there was a towel in the freezer 
and a toaster and coffee pot were on top 
of the water boiler and there was a hat 
wedged behind the tv and the toilet seat 

was cracked and someone had left infection 
ointment in the vanity and given the number 

of bugs and other hungry organisms 
in the room you got the impression 
the owner of the hotel was a believer 
in the sanctity of life 

he was a little old indian man 
a kind old man with the most elegant hands you’ve
ever seen but when I called him to complain 
the phone just kept ringing 
and ringing so eventually I gave up 

and had a little whisky
and watched bonanza
then lay down 
on top of the mattress and slept
with all my clothes on.

Casey Renee Kiser

The Horror We LoVe, The Movie We LiVe

It all starts when we let it in;
plants a flag under our skin

The Thing must be You
The Thing must be Me
The Thing must be Us
in each other’s company

How the distance takes our shape
when we don’t choose a form to
just fucking communicate

Lights out; crawl around within
No surrender for the win

You’re suspecting Me
I’m suspecting You
They’re suspecting Us;
Seeing red when we are blue

Last swig of that J & B;
Let’s end this here with the flames
The real thing, we’ll never see