Confession

Poetry is
pornography for the heart,
lust in the lexicon.
It is ever The Nude Girl.

At its best,
it renders white pages into flesh tones and dark downy darts
between legs.
It renders text
into sex.
Mouthing the round words curved by assonance
renders them as breasts.
The firmer consonants
slide against the tongue like areola.

And I like it like that – it should be lewd and low.
It should be stuffed under mattresses, hidden in pockets,
and, at first, glimpsed furtively
when no one is looking.
Part of me will never want
to show poems to my mother.

Catholic school nuns
Persuade their victims by rote:
“Our Father, Who Art in Heaven,
“Hallowed be Thy Name,”
but vulgar little boys like me
hallowed the sounds of vowels
and clutched at consonants privately.

The Sisters were moving towers —
black masts sailing
up and down between the desks.
Their paddles fell like falling spires
against the inattentive.
“Jesus loves me, this I know.
“The grownups hurt my knuckles, though.”
Curious boys will always
eye the girls in the even rows.

I, low,
nursed my favorite heresies in whispers —
paganism in the pages —
and easily adopted other Gods.
I, a secret Heathen,
Took Poe’s “Raven”
as my inner golden calf.

And poetry
nurses the Sin of Wrath.
At my desk I told myself
in inner ceremonies
I privately hoped
I’d someday pick the perfect words
To finally tell God
I never loved him either.

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 2026, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Misti Rainwater-Lites, Salvatore Difalco, John Yohe, Casey Renee Kiser, Ivan Jenson, William Taylor Jr., Jeff Weddle, Daniel de Cullá, Nathan Bas, Donna Dallas, Luz Aida Rodriguez, Daniel S. Irwin, Todd Cirillo, Paige Johnson, Brian Rosenberger, Karl Koweski, Ronan Barbour, Arthur Graham, David Estringel, and Dana Jerman.

FREE EBOOK HERE

Meditations For The Age of Discernment

The first word in boundaries is bound —Jerry Stahl

Been meaning to ask my dad if his best friends’ house is haunted. Just feels like a discount disappointment machine alive with petrified guesses. 

The last time I met a decent man was my father, and even then that’s a shade away from never.

I’m not sure my heart goes to  anymore.

To cheer me up, here. I’ll make a swift list of my favorite pornographers.

Definitely we’ve got Genet and Bataille. De Berg and Apollinaire. Passolini and Houellebecq, King, Sotos. Cocteau and Indiana and Nin. Nabokov, maybe Huxley. Maybe Sexton. Algren too. 

Education in the recovery of their tatty disillusions. Margins ripe with glimmers of failure. Degenerate as birdsong. There, whew, all better. 

Since Covid, everybody has been so good at staying in their lane, it’s given me more room to get out of mine. But the loneliness remains industrial. Show me a fence and I’ll move my hips around it.

Late morning sleeping pill hillbilly fever dream— neighbors trash fire blowing across the road. Could I give one huckleberry fuck about these tinsey gods of odds and ends sighing united into some leaky biohazardous hopeless hospital mirage?

Overheard: “you’re really on brand, goddess” at a bar yesterday. Definitely a phrase dudes should be heavily incorporating into the modern lexicon.

However much most might prefer to stop pretending and let it evolve like some tangerine aftershave mellieu caught on my shoulders for a few hours post sex.

Not going anywhere today. The black silk robe. My favorite burgundy lip color. Old classy nuance. Time to stain tea mugs and watch traffic cones tip over outside the pawn shop. Ah ha— now a windstorm. No wonder for all the bad fantasy.

Lullabye

I usually wake
in the middle
of the night
around 2 a.m.
when all is dark,
too quiet and cold.
I stay up for about
an hour and a half
reading, pacing,
scrolling social media,
peeping out at the stars,
dreaming of her
singing me a lullabye–
shhhh darlin, lay back down
it’s only a dream.

Roosevelt Island Haiku 

Please consider my taste
The captivating pivot 
leads to the inevitable collapse
The truth of a time-
stamped poem is like 
too many detectives 
in search of a grand piano

and in another life 
I’m building rooms
exploring connection and exclusion
but today 
let’s just say the speed skater 
has an ass like the most beautiful 
windmill in Holland 

Let’s just say 
I read your Roosevelt Island haiku 
and found it marvelous 
Let’s just say
I never knew 
that Dawson Leery lived in Massachusetts 
I wonder if he listened to The Modern Lovers 

     drunk on the tramway
     hospitals & asylums 
     Young Turks, graffiti 

Perfect Friendship

Because you never settle for a quickie without a condom
Or for slapping your tits with an erect penis
Now I want you to spread your legs
On the donkey of our love bed
Because I want to thank your vagina
In the name of the maternal vagina
For so many things you’ve given me in life
Because I want to tell you:
 -Thank you, Cunt!
Before we separate
And buy two beds so we don’t sleep together.
Thanks to you, and my seed, we formed a family
Creating a warm home.
You helped me get a job
So I could earn my daily bread
With the sweat of our two brows.
Sometimes, you let me rest between your two tits
To meditate on the sex we shared
Throwing myself from your moving cunt
To come against the bedroom wall.
I know you came to Earth
So that your carnivorous vagina
Could devour this little churro of mine
That rose erect before you
Like the tongue in our labial kisses
Your hands gripping it tightly
To lead it to the true and necessary hole.
Instead of singing, I bellowed
And you moaned, feeling your nymphs turn to mush.
Tired now of our labor
Of inveterate fuckers
Now we separate rooms
Because I can’t stand
That unpleasant skunk smell from your cunt
And you can’t stand
The farts I let out, telling you as I fart:
-Catch them with your hands
To let them enjoy your peace.
That’s why it’s better that we sleep separately
Each in a room
Giving ourselves
Perfect friendship.
I, in my dreams, will raise my penis
To the temple of your vagina.
You, in your own way
Will sing to the penis that was light in your vagina
And the heaven of its palate.

Shadow Cat, 2004

After Richard Hambleton (1952-2017)

Shadow cat
p   r   o   w   l
Low’r
East Village
silky
sidewalk
slink
lookin’ high
lookin’
low
‘round lampposts n’
alleyway
piss puddles
for
a tasty
trick
or treat.

Oil slick
tangles—
blacktarsexy
sheen—
brown sugar
smile
n’ puncture claw hunger
jonesin’
for the exhale
of a hypodermic
pounce. 

Fat rat’s
‘round the corner
throwing bones
sniffin’ bacon
playing
its fat rat
games
ripe
for the pickin’
to plop

on the doorstep—
eight lives
d
o
w
n—
on this ol’ city
street
for a thump
(n’ a thump
n’ a thump thump thump)
n’
its lil baggies
o’ cheese.

***

Previously published in The Daily Drunk

Sugar

We were going pretty
hot and heavy for a while,
the bedroom windows
were all fogged up.
I made sure to take my time,
hit all the erogenous zones
because I wasn’t sure
when I’d be here again.
We both finally finished
and while still breathing heavy
I went into the bathroom.
Standing naked
in front of the toilet,
it took a minute
to get it going.
Figure the piss had to
weave its way through
the previous emissions
until it finally rushed out
of me in a hot stream.
I stood there 2 or 3 minutes 
looking at my face in the mirror, judging,
while it just kept flowing out of me.
Backed up from the first beer
we shared until hours later
when she gripped the sheets
as I released inside her.

When I get back into bed she says
“You were in there awhile,
did you have to flush out
all that beer we drank?”
I thought to myself
yeah, along with the guilt
of fucking my neighbor’s wife.

Toast

Blame the Veuve Clicquot & get ready to not be able
to concentrate on anything, because your girlfriend
is super horny for you she just rubbed two out. 

Blame doctor Dom Perignon, tumbling naked
wishes you were here wrecking her hair and covering her with kisses.
Deep mouth open sucking messy gorgeous unstoppable kissing
jilling her off a third one Oh—

She’s straight… outta the shower, undressed,
and doesn’t identify as monogamous for fucking fuckery’s sake,
she identifies as lightning, as wanting. As a sexual longing machine—
desirable destined for your arms.

As fuckable and functioning and ready and awake, hungry in love.
As mad and wild and ravishing and human and feminine.
As much yours as anything could ever be.
Deep as a sword could be plunged into a heart.

Blame the perfume in the starry cascade.
The spark back in sparkling. The light back in nightlights.

Blame the Moet for hot pulses coursing like a train
toward high times in this low life. 
Cristal too for Laying lying lacking lunging for
lustful reasons for here she is, refulgent. 

Never mourn nor pine for what’s right in front of you—
Come in haste like bubbles poured out to waste
this beautiful goddamned golden day
in this magic bed with her.

Nature Is High, Man

Too high to climb the pine tree
with the skinned trunk,
my ears latch on to the buzzing 
     of the forest dark,
a million stabs and suicides—
murder has many voices
     and many choices
and we wear the plaid shirts
and Kodiak boots not
     just for kicks.
An ample bear commits
no wrong by slamming through
the brush pursuing a moose.
     The moose might differ,
but the forest exists for every
thing and now and then a bear
     must eat a moose 
to feel alive, to feel bear-like.
The moose would argue
that its life means more to it
than dinner for a brute.
     But Nature differs.
Nature is too high to give
a shit what kills or doesn’t kill.
Things have to eat. Things
have to die and sometimes 
     these things coincide. 
Meanwhile Nature chills.