Jon Bennett

Proof I’m a Great Artist 

My parents were folk dancing 
you may wonder what type 
Balkan folk dancing 
it was always Balkan or Greek 
until mother weakened 
then it was just father 
doing Scottish reel dancing 
Anyhow, they were doing Balkan 
folk dancing 
in a community center somewhere 
Off to the side  
I had my G.I. Joe doll 
and was putting him through his paces 
He ran along the weird 
institutional wainscoting 
across the backs of folded metal chairs 
he did flips, G.I. Joe did, 
occasionally flew, spun 
Yes, I really put him through his paces 
A woman was watching me 
I was cute, 6 or 7,  
and she came up and said, 
“You’re going to be an artist.” 
I remember little of my childhood 
but this proclamation stands out 
it’s an ego thing 
So now I sit here 
with my feathered quill pen, 
my brushes, paints, the kiln, 
the marble blocks and chisels 
and my voluminous  
silken ascots 
still seeking validation 
it’s like a soul-sized hangnail 
following me through life 
So I’m vicious, laying waste  
to my competitors 
with my razor sharp tongue 
I was good with that G.I. Joe 
but maybe the woman was wrong 
maybe what it meant was 
I’d make a good 
soldier. 

J.J. Campbell

the sweet nectar of death

they never warn you as a 
young poet about the nights 
alone
 
digging through the garbage
for a meal
 
that all the good poems will 
come to you while taking 
a shit
 
that no one wants to read
anything other than what
they have written themselves
 
there is no money in it for you 
until you taste the sweet nectar 
of death
 
yet here we all are
 
scribbling down random thoughts 
and swearing someone is going to 
nourish the genius trapped between 
each phrase
 
there are no rich women to take 
care of us
 
no fans mailing you dirty underwear 
from another country
 
hell, even the stalkers have given up
 
it’s an old barn in the middle of nowhere
 
the trusty shotgun from the corner
 
the last bottle of scotch you’ll ever 
get to enjoy

Daniel S. Irwin

Spirits

Spirits come to me in the night.
My fault: bad booze, cheap dope.
Or rather, cheap booze, bad dope.
That compounded with insomnia.
My visitors always want to talk.
I could care less, but they stay.
A volley of mangled refrains in
Bygone dirges of hopelessness
Spoken by headless chickens.
A good host, I compliment them
On their flawless French, though
I don’t understand a word of it.

Randall Rogers

Solution

What if you didn’t
grow up with TV,
radio, or anything 
electrical except 
lightning (and firefly)?
You’d read if you could,
train physically, play, write (if able),
speak, perform at the theater and home.
You’d ponder, drink wine, feast plenty, consult oracles, 
engage in blood-thirsty politics, civil war,
cult religion, human sacrifice, 
you’d avoid proscription,
attend circuses and gladiatorial games,
puke in a vomitorium, be real stoic
and long for Jesus.

Bruce Mundhenke

Chesterfield

Chet sat on the edge of the courthouse lawn. He was a thin black man. He wore khaki slacks and a green t-shirt and had a fedora hat on his head. It had cooled off a little now that the sun was going down, but it was still hot. Chet took a drink from a half pint bottle of Jim Beam, then offered me a drink. I passed. I told him I had been working in the sun in the switchyard at the mill all day, then sat at the corner bar and drank beer after work.

Chet told me he hadn’t worked for a few days. Chet was a coal miner, but he missed a lot of work. He told me one time that coal mining interfered with his drinking. He told me he had been staying with Carolyn a few days, but she run him off. Carolyn was a black nurse that Chet hung out with at times. I had a couple of joints rolled. I took one of them out of my cigarette pack, lit it, then passed it to Chet. Chet took a long hit, then passed it back.

“You want to go to Springfield Doug?”

“Chet, you know I don’t drive.”

I lost my license 6 months ago, but Chet always seemed to forget that. He always had money in those days. The coal mine paid good. He spent most all of it on alcohol and women. Those were the two things that seemed to matter the most to Chet.

When Chet was very young, there had been a club in town that many white woman belonged to. It was called the Chesterfield Club and to be a member a girl had to have had sex with Chesterfield. I guess Chet got around pretty good when he was young. Through the years, I heard that story told by several older guys, including my Dad.

Chet spent a lot of time in Springfield in those days. He would go up there for several days at a time to drink and shack up with women in motel rooms. He had a million stories about his adventures in Springfield. They were filled with dark humor and danger. He was a very good storyteller.

He started telling me a story about an adventure he had last week. It seems he had picked up a woman in a bar in Springfield and they rented a motel room. When he woke up, she was dressed and at the door with his clothes in her hand. By the time he got out of bed and ran outside, she was pulling away from the motel parking lot in a cab with his clothes and his money. The motel clerk came out of the office and escorted him to his room. He was able to get in touch with a buddy in Springfield, who brought him some clothes.

When Chet got old, he stayed in town. He no longer went on adventures in Springfield. He would be seen drinking daily at local bars. He had a sleeping room above one of the skid row bars. His daughter managed his money for him. One time she told me that he got a social security check and a pension check from the mine. She said she would meet him several times a month to give him money, because if she gave him all his money it would not last him through the month.

Sometimes when Chet couldn’t connect with his daughter right away, he would borrow twenty dollars from me. He always paid me back. One time I walked past him while he was sitting at the bar of an establishment we both frequented without speaking to him to sit with some friends at a table. As I was leaving, he stopped me at the bar. “You ain’t getting shy on me are you Doug?” I laughed and told him no.

On Saturday nights, local bands would play at the bars and these nights would find Chesterfield out on the dance floor, dancing with the young girls. One night, I remember asking a buddy, “You think Chet ever gets any these days?” He laughed and said, “I doubt if he can shake the wrinkles out of it these days.”

Finally, when Chet was 82 years old, he became suspicious of the people who rented rooms near him. He felt they had it in for him, so he set a fire in the hallway. He was arrested and it was determined he had alcohol dementia. He was placed in a nursing home just outside of town. After he had been there for a while, I decided to go see him.

I learned that he had died. The nurse said he was a harmless soul and often very funny. She said he was well liked by all the staff, especially the young girls…

Charles Rammelkamp

Tina James Raises Her Voice

Joy and Iyana started it,
sent out a flier to organize
the protest at Baltimore City Hall,
about forty of us exotic dancers
there to demand our jobs back.

Other live entertainment had re-opened
after the mayor’d shut everything
because of the coronavirus,
why not adult entertainment, too?

I’ve been dancing ten years now,
but since Fantasies closed a few months ago,
I’ve had to go back to my FedEx job
just to make ends meet.
I used to make enough dancing
just two nights a week,
then be home with my kids.
Now? The schedule’s just too much
to juggle work and virtual learning.

Some of my friends’ve turned to websites
where they post nudie sex videos,
interact online with subscribers,
but that’s just not me. 

So yeah, I drove down from Pennsylvania
to protest outside City Hall,
and when Iyana called out 
through that pink megaphone,
“WHO ARE WE?”
I yelled back, 
full-throated as MLK’s Dream speech,
“STRIPPERS!”

“WHAT DO WE WANT?”

“OUR JOBS BACK!”

Charles Rammelkamp

Beached

When the Penthouse strip club sent invitations
to its end-of-summer luau
to the people on its mailing list,
one of the unmarked envelopes,
addressed to Dewey McKay,
a regular after-work patron,
sent to his office in the big downtown tower,
spilled a suspicious white powder
down in the basement mailroom.

Panicked, the mail clerk called 911,
the building ordered evacuated;
a fire department hazmat team 
charged downtown, bells clanging, lights whirling.
Tests confirmed the powder benign –
a pinch of sand for the luau.

Authorities complained they’d had to
“spend a lot of resources”
to respond to the situation,
hinting Penthouse should foot the bill.

“We were only trying to generate 
some excitement for the luau,” 
Penthouse owner Wade Cousins apologized.
In the end, though,
the cops got free drinks and lap dances
at the luau, leis draped around their necks.

James Reitter

No More Room for Monsters

I once had monsters living under my bed,
deranged creations used to pay rent there.
Vampires once came through my 
childhood balcony window where I later
crucified a demon corpse one Halloween. 
It had a goat’s head and arrows through its eye
and was stuffed with my sister’s clothes to 
fill out the body. I was shooting for adolescent
realism, dripping blood and all. 

To avoid the monsters, I replicated death by
taping a knife handle to my chest and dousing 
it with ketchup, careful not to stain the sheets. 
My bedroom was rigged with traps and alarms,
understood all too well by my dog. 

I invented a protector, and elf king named Lyfear.
Resting head to pillow, I heard him patrolling
my unconscious, every heartbeat a footstep, vigilant 
against the giant ants, the headless corpses. 

Then, the monsters went away. No more Goonie gadgets. 
No more ketchup on the bed. No more Elf king. 
No more guard dog.

Instead, I have others do the work for me. Jackson 
has given me dragons. Romero has resurrected the dead.
Argento has provided the black glove murderer. Fulci, 
the rabid dogs and Rollen the Succubi. I suppose it’s easier
this way. There’s too much clutter under the bed these days
for monsters.

Tony Dawson

Moses Interprets the Ten Commandments

The Summons

Mount Sinai was Yahweh’s second home
where he always liked to roam
while keeping an eye on those below
so they knew that He was in the know.
He’d rescued the chosen from heathen Egypt,
and had to ensure that they stayed on script.
He’d always had Moses on speed dial, 
since he’d floated down the Nile.
Yahweh decided to give him a call
to get him up Sinai before nightfall.

Moses arrives on Sinai

When Moses arrived, he was utterly buggered
Yet Yahweh still chided him for being a sluggard.

“Christ! Where’s the fire?” asked Moses, knees creaking,
“I was having a beer. Why all the shrieking?”
“Take the name of my unborn in vain
and your future will go down the drain!
Remember ‘God the Father’, and the rest?
Well, it’s the Godfather bit that I like best!
You’re here to take down my new rules
to prevent the chosen ones acting like fools.”

Moses receives the commandments

He handed poor Moses two very large stones.
“You’re joking!” cried Moses amid moans and groans.
“Never heard of pen, paper and ink?
The Egyptians have got them. It makes you think
you’re behind the times, not up to snuff.
So come on, Yahweh, it’s not good enough!”
“Less of the lip and get down the mountain.
Cut the crap. It’s late and I’m counting
on you to spread the word and straighten them out.
Run along Moses, you’re meant to be devout.”

Moses breaks the tablets

The prophet fell on the way down and the tablets shattered.
“Shit!” he exploded, wondering if it mattered.
Yahweh did hear the oath and the stones break.
“You clumsy oaf! You make my balls ache!
Can’t you deliver what amounts to a letter?
Perhaps Aaron or Amazon would’ve done better.” 
A chastened Moses gathered up the bits,
muttering about Yahweh getting on his tits,
scrambled down the mountain and sat on the ground
where hundreds of the chosen were milling around.

Moses glosses commandments 1, 2 and 3

Moses got to his feet, as grumpy as hell,
and glared at the mob, while ringing his bell.
“Listen to me you lot. I bring rules from on high.”
The chosen ones heaved a collective sigh.
“Yahweh calls them the Ten Commandments, 
though I think they need a few enhancements.”
A voice in the crowd shouted, “What a damned cheek!
Come off it, Yahweh! You’re a control freak.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” muttered Moses,
wanting to come out of this smelling of roses.
“Take the first commandment: ‘no other gods but me’.
It doesn’t take a genius to immediately see 
that, followed by two, he’s just a Mafia boss
running a protection racket and doesn’t give a toss
about the rest of us. He’s invented the vendetta
until the fourth generation! And it gets better:
if you take his name in vain, like I’m doing here,
he threatens rather more than a word in your ear.”

Moses glosses commandments 5 and 6

“As a Mafia don, he’s all kith and kin.
If you step out of line, it’s a mortal sin.
So, look after your mother and father
and Yahweh won’t get in a lather.
Now six is a bummer, mostly for the Yankee
(and his armory of M16s) who’s liable to get cranky
when a shopping mall’s nearby—in fact, it sucks—
if he can’t slaughter women and kids like sitting ducks.
That would take the laughter out of the slaughter.
Yanks have to shoot people, come hell or high water! 
In a sinful world there are no innocent bystanders.
It’s no fun if you can’t fire your gun like military commanders.”

Moses glosses commandments 7, 8 and 9

“No killing? Then, how about killjoy number seven?
I say, ‘Have some adult fun rather than go to heaven!’
‘Being at sixes and sevens’, to reach the obvious conclusion,
was once about murdering and adultery, not confusion.
Eight says no stealing, so hands off the neighbor’s wife,
or Yahweh might just decide to take your life…
Nine bans false witness against your neighbor,
even if his wife’s pole-dancing with you as a favor.”

Moses glosses commandment 10

“Finally, no coveting the neighbor’s wife or his ass!
The wife’s ass, fair enough, but the neighbour’s? Seems crass
to me, unless He knows you’re someone inclined
to approach the people you fancy from behind.
After all, he’s a deity who made Adam out of clay.
Didn’t he know it’s more fun the other way?
Yahweh gives us a sex drive and then trusts to luck
we don’t covet the neighbor’s wife, for a sinful fuck!
Having sects is preferred to having sex in the US of A,
‘cos it brings in more money and is less risqué.”

Phoenix DeSimone

Son Goku

“Well, hi there. I didn’t expect there to be children in the room tonight, but I’ll try to keep it PG. My Name’s Troy, I’m 33 and I guess it didn’t start for me too different from anybody else. I was sitting there at my mother’s computer – you know, back when the monitors used to be huge and the speakers weren’t built in – minding my own business. I guess I wasn’t really minding my own business. I was surfing the web. Back then we called it surfing because nobody really understood google. Well I was looking at pictures of this cartoon I used to watch. I think it was called Dragon Ball Z or something like that. They were little cartoon characters and they fought space invaders and demons, with like karate and special powers. I suppose that’s not really the point. The point is that I was sitting at my mother’s work computer looking at pictures of cartoon characters online. I was scrolling and scrolling and looking and looking. It was fun, you know? These were the days before iPods and iPhone games, there wasn’t so much else to entertain yourself with. Anyway, I was looking and looking and then there it was. It was the cartoon characters that I had come to know and love for their fighting skills and super-hero antics, but it was drawn by a fan. At least I guess he was a fan. He could have hated Dragon Fall Z, though. Anyway. This guy drew a picture of the characters naked. The main guy’s wife and some other character’s wife were being embraced in either arm by one of the main bad guys. I think that was the first time I’d ever known that girls didn’t have pee-pees too. I was like ‘what’s the bad guy doing with his finger where those girls pee-pees go?”

The crowd of people around me laughed and I let out a chuckle.

“Well, you know how the internet goes – one minute you’re looking at a picture and the next your clicking a link. Then that link leads you to a website with more pictures. And then that website might have links to more websites and then those websites might have links to more websites with even more pictures. Pictures of the characters from Dragon Fall B putting their pee-pees in the girl characters. And even pictures of characters from other shows putting their pee-pees in girl characters! I kept looking at picture after picture. It was a lot to take in really. It was a lot to take in because I was only about 10 years old, and all of a sudden, I felt something stiff in my pants. I was an only child, and I didn’t really have any older siblings to tell me about this. I put my hand on it to try and understand what was going on, and man, did that feel good. It felt good in a way that I’d never felt before. I moved my hand up and down and up and down and then BOOM. There was white stuff all over my hand.”

The crowd laughed again.

“Well anyway, those trips to my mother’s work computer got more and more frequent. I’d type in the words that lead me to the photo accidentally the first time and go down the rabbit hole. I didn’t really know what I was doing to be honest – I just knew it felt good. This must have gone on for a few months. It went on like that until one day I was looking at the photos, gliding my hand up and down, when I noticed an ad on the side of the screen. The ad had a short video with real people pushing pee-pees in and out. I didn’t know much about it but clicking the wrong thing had already brought me to this happy place, so it didn’t seem like a half bad idea. I clicked the ad and was brought to a 15-minute long hardcore clip. Now I probably don’t need to tell you all this, but a 15-minute clip was a big jump from somebody looking at just pictures. AND THEY WERE REAL PEOPLE. Well I was gliding my hand up and down and up and down and then a bunch of white stuff spilled all over my pants again.”

I cleared my throat as a few people giggled again.

“Well as I got older it got to be more and more of a problem. My mom found out I had been watching porn on her computer and ended up grounding me. Which I especially didn’t get when I grew up and found out how many men watch it. But I guess it was becoming a problem. I would go in there everyday after school and watch video after video. I hadn’t even kissed a girl yet and it was already the most exciting thing in my head. Well, I was too afraid to talk to any of the girls because my wee-wee wasn’t quite as big as the ones I’d seen on the computer screen. Well I stopped using my mom’s computer as much and got a little braver when it came to talkin to females. BUT THEN came high school and you know what that meant – smart phones. Now I was a teenager and I could have a porn fix whenever I wanted. I’d wake up. Wank it. Go to school. Come home. Wank it. Hang out with friends. Wank it. It was the dream come true. Well, it was the dream come true until I was out partying with some buddies and this girl ended up taking me into the bedroom. I got harder and we started going at it. It was my first time and I was ready to put to use all the studying I been doing. The problem was the real thing didn’t live up to the porn I’d been watching. I mean threesomes, BDSM, torture, the real thing was nothing like it. I went at it her as hard as I could, but I could never get off. I remember dropping off everyone at home that night and going home and wanking it one good time and the white stuff came pouring all over my sheets.”

I paused expecting a laugh again but didn’t get one. The women with the little boy next to her shook her head.

“Sorry. Well of course it got worse as I got older. Once I had a job I was able to start spending money for porn. I’d have a girlfriend every now and again but it was always about the porn. I’d have to hit her from behind and pretend I was watching a porno flick just to get it off. Hell, I’m not complaining but it was rough. I was getting older and starting to realize my reality was never going to be like that. I’m sure all of us in this room have gotten to that point. Well, that girl ended up leaving me for a guy with a big dick, and I don’t know why but I decided to blame the porn. That might be because she found out about the $97 I was spending on multiple accounts on OnlyFans, something I was hoping to never have to admit. Anyway. The good news is that I’ve haven’t wanked it in 4 days and I’ve downloaded an app to block porn sites on my phone. So here’s to a better year, or years.”

A person or two clapped as I stepped away from the podium and sat back in one of the metal folding chairs. I stroked my beard as Stacy, the host of tonight’s meeting, walked back up.

“Umm, thanks for that, Troy. Not quite sure what that has to do with Domestic Violence, but thanks. Anyone want to speak next? Sure Cheryl. Come on up.”

Cheryl walked up to the podium and cleared her throat. That’s when I remembered it was Tuesday. Porn Anon meets on Thursday, you jackass. I put both hands over my face and shook my head.

“My name’s Cheryl and I’m a survivor of domestic violence. I guess it all started –”

“I would like to deeply and profoundly apologize.”

I stood up and Cheryl stopped speaking. No one said anything back and I walked out of the room. I felt embarrassed but at the same time confident. A room of at least 20 people know I was a former porn addict and it doesn’t feel too bad. Now I’m not saying I went home and wanked it that night, but I could have. And that’s saying a lot.