a punch to the dick

these are the nights that apathy tastes
like the first time your grandmother 
gave you a sip of gin

the poison that would run through 
your veins the rest of your life

yet watching the woman of your dreams 
walk away haunts every dream

each step a punch to the dick

trying to pen the perfect poem at three 
in the morning while needing to take 
a shit in some sleazy motel in the 
middle of nowhere

the poet never gets the girl

only gets to listen to the stories of the 
popular fucks and turn them into the 
assholes they deserve to be

look out your window and watch a cat 
chase a bird as a butterfly chokes on 
a hazy summer nightmare

there once was promise in those skies

now, you only think about how soon 
does death greet you in the middle 
of the night

another glass of gin

you’ve been preparing for this
all your life

So we are

Clouds gray the morning light.
Black tires slosh one after another
through the same puddle.

The asphalt glistens, a touch of diamond,
as you stand under an umbrella,
a broken half-circle.

The book tucked under your arm
is already wet.
Drops race down your jacket.

The bus is late. A fact of life.
Strangers stare from car windows
at a fool who does not drive.

Time passes. You watch the tires.
Listen to brakes and sudden skids.
You practice avoidance,

hope the spray misses.
You are lucky. Sometimes.
You will get there, where you’re headed,

with wet socks and stuck pages,
alive, if not on time.
You will not worry long about it.

These are the small things
we live and observe.
They’re rarely fatal.

Just part of the bargain
of living one moment
after another.

All these drops, pearls really,
strung together for us,
making a life some how,

and though we kick and scream
at times
and try hard as we can,

it remains much the same,
a difference of degree only,
between a mild spray and a big splash.

A Dish Served Cold

Again she does
the things I once
found cute
at a party
for friends we
still share at a distance
close enough to register
wounds deep and unkind.

Her smile that shifts
by degrees to look
at me with a sweet sweetness
She could be a cat burglar
with knives for claws
slicing your heart.

A push up bra is an evil
trick but she wears it
to ready effect with
A blouse wide open
as if she was the star 
of an orgy.

I can’t help but stare.

Her tongue licking the
knife while eating cake
is an old move
but she does it
far slower than before.
By the end of the dinner
every man has an erection
and several her phone number.
While all the women, even her
best friend, want to kill her.

She kisses me on cheek
bites it slightly
A final turn on as I
get up to leave.
I hate you she whispers
I know I say as I head  
for the door.

Exit Strategy

Fade the maze-daze blues
Paid my rat race dues

Impulses i’ve calmed
late,
and collected-
mixed bag of nuts
from the men who dared
test 
my crazy

Toss it down
the highest staircase
my short legs can climb
Feel the burn
Have a laugh
Take a bow
Tumble away, my darlings

Snap out of it
Pager buzzing in your pocket
Table is ready-
the new you is waiting
Your memory must be erased
again and your wig is crooked
A tequila sunrise will set you straight

Now, 
take the elevator back down,
you dumb bitch

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 2022, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by J.J. Campbell, Joseph Farley, G. Arthur Brown, Kristin Garth, Willie Smith, Noel Negele, Dustin King, Dave Cullern, Donna Dallas, John Knoll, Nadja Moore, Rob Plath, Michael Lee Johnson, Daniel S. Irwin, John D Robinson, Arthur Graham, C. Renee Kiser, and Bogdan Dragos.

Get your FREE ebook here!

this fruitless journey

squeezing water out 
of the rocks again

this fruitless journey 
to the bottom of 
my mind

i will die penniless 
and insane

some little cabin 
a thousand miles
away from anything

some think it is tragic

i like to think of it 
as fitting

being popular was 
never my thing

being prolific was 
just insanity taking
the wheel and bleeding 
on the page

it gets a little messy

but anything worth 
your time is supposed 
to be that way

Ideas of Order in Camden West

Let the bullets sort out the truth
of the dreams in your veins.

You are king of the alley where you lay
until someone else come to join you.

Then you’ll shift your flattened box bed
to accommodate the newcomer,

share a leftover half-sandwich
provided by a social worker

and wait out the day,
as you always do,

so you can walk the night
and blend with the shadows,

becoming one of the procession
that lives in darkness,

or otherwise out of sight,
tolerated more if unseen,

your hunger and needs
offending no one who cannot see you.

What the Woman in the Porn Video Was Actually Thinking About

She promised herself otherwise.
But here she was yet again.
Riding his cock, daydreaming.

She keeps a calm, steady rhythm.
It just has to last longer tonight.
Body heat fades fast in February.

She kept her ‘librarian’ glasses on.
Lost in the animal groping
and the hungry licking of sex.

Why was she still with this clown?
How did he stay hard for so long?
As always, the swirling questions
came much sooner than she did.
He always had whiskey somehow.
What the hell did he do for money?

In the sweet surrender motion,
her breasts felt weightless.
Her worries, forgotten.

She was tired of endlessly shopping.
Shopping for cock, for arm candy.
She pined for quilted blankets, heat,
a good mystery book, and whiskey.

As he spasmed beneath her,
panting a lackluster “oh my god,”
she soon realized that religion
had failed her completely.
As she never evolved from
being a Pavlovian whore
for a devil-may-care smile
and whomever spoke poetic
whiskey soaked words at her
across the bar parking lot
in the frigid February night.

This was love’s lukewarm leftovers.
And she would clutch them closely.
No matter how bleak the forecast.
She promised herself otherwise.

The Sex Nerve

After a series of cat-cows,
followed by downward dogs and cobra pose,
Kevin instructed us to do long deep breathing 
while we clutched our ankles,
bent over in butterfly pose.

“It’ll help loosen your lower back,
opens your hips, 
and works on what the yogis call
the sex nerve,” he informed us.

The sex nerve? He made it sound mysterious,
an ancient Vedic rite only for the initiated.
The Land of Lingam and Yoni.

“Interlace your hands under your pinky toes,”
he went on, “Elongate and straighten your spine.”
But I was still stuck on “the sex nerve.”
What the hell was it?
What did it do?
I thought of the Kama sutra,
those acrobatic sex poses,
the promise of endless orgasms.
I looked over at Melanie, pulling herself down
so her head nestled on her knees.
What exactly was her sex nerve up to now?

But then Kevin had us back on our feet,
arms aimed front and back in a T, 
front knee bent in Warrior II, 
followed by Triangle pose.

Later I’d look it up, 
but all I got was scientific jive
about the pudendal nerve, the pelvic nerves,
the hypogastric nerve (thoracolumbar sympathetic),
components of the autonomic system.

Closet Entrance

Best pep rally I never went to,
I stood the nearly-nude 
editor of the lit mag against the wall; 
falling one silly millimeter shy 
of broaching her vulva; 
before an abrupt knock at the door 
ended the festivities. The editor 
flipped on the light; hustled into her dress. 
I snatched pants up from ankles; buckled, zipped. 
We tossed the editor’s slip and panties 
into a sack intended for uncollated pages 
to the spring issue. She opened the door 
on Mrs. Forget-Who, a social studies teacher 
in search of scratch, knew the kingsize 
walk-in closet that did for the lit mag office 
often stored misprinted pages 
teachers were welcome to take for scratch. 
I let the editor do the talking; and fast she talked, 
explaining, above the odors of live teenage sex, 
we were in the midst of an argument
about a poem when came the knock, 
and we hurriedly tidied the mess created 
when she had earlier thrown a pile of issues at me 
to, uh, demonstrate the correctness of her opinion. 
She was, after all, the editor; me? Oh, 
a potential contributor. Pep rally? 
Oh, yes, the rally for the big game tonight, 
of course; honestly, just slipped our minds. Poetry 
demands inordinate amounts of unmitigated focus. 
She got off with the English teacher sponsor of the lit mag 
admonishing her to pay closer attention to school-approved 
non-literary activities. I got off invisibly; 
as a potential contributor, someone obviously 
insignificant and not going anywhere in life, 
I failed to be worth wasting hot air on. 
I date – astonished at the editor’s creativity under fire – 
from that bang on the door forward,  
my fascination with poetry and the literary arts. 
My subsequent anonymous contribution 
(loath to cloud the editor’s eye 
with an affair of the heart) was, 
of course, rejected.