Brian Rosenberger

Whore of a Muse

At times, he wonders if it’s worth it.
Never knowing his audience, if and by whom, his work is read.
Still he hopes. Sitting at the typer, long lonely nights, listening to
Monster Magnet, Rollins, and Hank III, drunk on bourbon and Pepsi
And thoughts of what might-have-been and never-was,
And God-Damn-did-I-actually-do-that?
He eyeballs the midget, short skirt (like duh! it wouldn’t be a long skirt),
Those thick, welcoming thighs, her smile, red as Satan’s asshole courtesy
of Cherry Kool-Aid and cheap Russian vodka.
Is it worth it? Word after lonely word, struggling to get the syntax perfect.
He dons the latex raccoon mask and steps forward, memorizing the setting,
Cinnabon incense, and Slipknot posters, everything looks better by candlelight,
Images stored for later. What matter is the Now; his hard-on points the way.
Is it worth it? What he does for inspiration?
At this point, seeing the midget smile,
what comes after is gravy.

Jon Bennett

Pink Eye

“I’ll send you more pictures of my armpits
when I’m over this pink eye,” she texts
I accept this, as pleading
would only discourage her
“OK, talk to you later,
I have to check my cat,” I reply
The stray cat behind the dumpster
has eaten every scrap
of the tuna I left, even the paper label,
a tin can that bare speaks of starvation
but I’ve brought more
“That’s new,” I say, “you look ridiculous,”
for a sheet of sticky brown paper
has adhered to the cat’s side
The cat hisses when I try to remove it
so I open the cans
as it shows me its pink asshole
hopping into the brambles
when I get too close
We are both starving
but for different things.

Alex S. Johnson 

Lucretia My Reflection

Kandy Fontaine adjusted her green-tinged mustache, micro-tuning the nanotech processors. Today the ends flared like the holocentric village villain; tomorrow, or in the next instant, the ends would justify the mean streets her etheric form would wander. 

Truth be told? She was tired. Tired of playing the game. Tired of conforming. So very tired of witchery as usual.

Yes, she had become a cybermagus and a mistress of magick war. She invented Grimwar and enjoyed being the local admin, outsourcing responsibility for the other nodes to various randoms, some of them beastheads–the parrots she dug special. One parrot in particular had looped through several tunnel systems in timespace and had replaced practically its entire body, such as it was, with robotic parts. 

The chaosian play was good as it got, but Kandy realized that she could play forever and the sweetness would continue to follow the law, diminishing returns chasing themselves down the rat’s alleys where the dead men lost their phones.

Lucretia buzzed her.

“Kandy,” she said, pausing to dab at her Fuck Me Red ™ lipstick implants in the mirror. The nanotech particles caused her face to shimmer, and behind tincture of drug couture she became a princess with the keys to the seven worlds.

“My reflection or yours,” said Lucretia quizically. Kandy’s pussy pulsed and warmth spread along her limbs, but she also recalled that the last time she and Lucretia hooked up–some gentech prince in vircher space thought it might be fun to watch their avatars fuck–she’d felt degraded and used, and not in the good way.

“Honesty, or…”

“Girl, you know I’m always honest,” said Lucretia. Which was a damn lie.

GhostDance at 5 zm was key to their reconciliation. They met at Shirleyz City of Dizbusters beneath the lava flow of Death Moon Omega. Both hit the Strobe heavily beforehand and their eyes glittered with skull-clots that chased each other in circles. Holograms of Dr. Gruje Panasky followed them down the streets and byways of adventure that snaked, split and became avenues of sin. 

“We have to stop doing this to one another,” said Kandy finally as their avatars melted back into the writhing pixelated black silkworm bedsheets. “We’re too much alike, and that means one of these days we’re going to jolene one another.”

“D’ya mean like that story where jolenes formed an alliance within the body of a single cyberwhore?”

“Kind of, yes.”

“But that has less than nothing to do with us. Think about this in relation to any response. What kind of feedback response did you get from your therapist the last time you discussed us?”

Kandy didn’t want to go down that road, and said as much. She kissed Lucretia one final time on those lips that were always fading to cyanosis…fantastic flavor, she thought, strawberry switchblend. 

Lucretia pulled out a single blade. It shivered between them. Kandy discovered she no longer had feelings either way. She could die then and be through with all of it.

“Do it,” she said. “I’m ready. Do both of us.”

“I’m ready too,” said Lucretia.

Afterwards they found themselves walking in comfortable silence along the beach of the Luminous Shore, as the other ghosts flickered and zipped in and out of their peripheral vision.

“Twas always thus,” said Kandy after awhile.

“Indeed,” said Lucretia.

“What exactly was up with that gentech prince?” asked Kandy, not really interested in the answer.

“Hell if I know,” said Lucretia. Her chrome skull was becoming more exposed, while Kandy’s was just growing in.

Salvatore Difalco

What The Mouth Tells

She said, You have scars in your mouth.
I guess the mouth goes through things
in the course of a life. The attempt to
emulate Chuck Smith and uncap a beer
bottle with your teeth; the lobster dinner
at Gerlinde’s cottage after six shots 
of Courvoisier; the three day blow
via Wilson and an eight-ball cut
with powdered glass it felt like;
never mind the session with a lady
from the Red Zone who found 
your lurid longing almost off-putting. 

How bad is it? I asked Amy the hygienist,
who amiably declared I had nothing 
to worry about except oral cancer.

I departed the clinic with a smile
less yellow than an hour before and my
thoughts adrift, recalling Chuck Smith
for instance, who married my cousin Maria
and is still kicking around albeit 
with dentures; and I wondered 
what ever happened to lovely Gerlinde
who my best friend Andy abandoned.
And what ever happened to Andy,
who split for the north without warning?
And Wilson is probably married with kids 
and wearing a girdle and feeling 
pretty good about how things turned 
out for him, given everything. 

And the lady from the Red Zone
back then already jaundiced 
likely grew too cynical
to profitably ply her trade,
not unlike that john many years ago 
who paid her in five dollar bills
for a taste of humiliation
and said that life, too, made him sick.

Casey Renee Kiser

Fck Me Like a Dyed FlwR

I’ve heard it all but please,
tell me how you know about blending
colors as they run
down this kind of masterpiece;
The finest piece of ass you’ve seen since
running behind at the museum
With all the things running 

down my legs,
tell me you know how to keep the dead
petals from falling all at once
Tell me you know something I don’t 
Your look is killer but I already know
about dying

Have you ever seen the rose 
that grew up between the wolf’s teeth,
but in two worlds-
Up from under the foolery of the wool;
then back 
under the day-drinking trailer park clouds, 
where slashed tires just say afterparty
The rose that grew from inside
a pinball machine, always getting slammed
on both sides by sore losers
Get a good look Daddy,
Is that what you said to call you
Should I do a three-sixty and wink 

morse code come fvck me
Can you get me so wet, my dye 
will challenge my mascara to run,
run, run, run faster
than my cold feet ever could. I know,

You need a gal
with a deathwish, a gal that bloomed 
in the noose fields of mind fuckery, 
in the sad sac 
of bad company, and still aced that escape
artistry. Well, fuck you,

if you think you’re coming over at all
to fvck me. This black blood rose is real,
and worthy of more than your stupid
fantasy. Get out of my garden
and take your dollar store paintbrush

Brooks Lindberg

The Three Halves to Sainthood:

I.
A prophet seeks to change the world.
A saint, themself.

I spare neither myself nor others
following my nose.

II.
A prophet blushes at their sins.
A saint, at none.
But both feast on sins
and famish in their absence.

The difference is a matter of gluttony.

I gorge on oysters, pussy, argument, honeycomb.

III.
A prophet needs a devil to overcome.
A saint, their will.

I throw my skinny body into cold ocean—sickness, old age, and death are all I brawl
while knowing this:
I lose.

You do too.

IV. 
I consecrate the earth—
your eyes
your dry skin
every worm in every bowel.

I shall not live posthumously—
I love you now.

Give me a call.

If we are wretched creatures
then friend
fuck salvation.

William Taylor Jr.

Speaker Noise

It was Bakersfield, circa 1985.
We were misfits in black,
high school and college dropouts,
jobless as often as not.
Scared of girls,
scared of boys,
scared of most everything
the world had to offer us.
We’d sleep by day
and in the afternoons we’d wander 
the malls and parking lots.
Most nights I’d gather us up 
in my puke-colored Datsun 
and we’d stop by the 7-11 
to grab a case of whatever swill
we favored at the time.
We’d end up somewhere, 
most often a neighborhood park,
where we’d sit at a picnic table
with a boombox and a little suitcase
of cassette tapes.
We’d drink and smoke and listen 
to our punk and our deathrock,
our jangly guitars.
We didn’t talk much,
maybe argue a bit now and then
about what to put on next,
but mostly we’d just lose ourselves
in the speaker noise.
Sometimes the cops chased us away
but mostly they left us alone.
Now and then one of us would bust out
 a mixtape we’d made.
We put a lot of time and thought
into those and I remember the one
I was most proud of. I christened it: 
Shitty Bitch: A Collection of Love Songs.
It was a bunch of noisy tunes 
about being dumped or passed over
because I was mad at a girl
for breaking my sullen 
and misunderstood heart.
It always felt good
watching your friends nod along 
to the songs you chose,
saying fuck yeah now and then
as they sucked at their beer.
It helped a bit to feel
that they understood life
and its trouble 
in the same way you did.
You felt a little less alone
when Rollins screamed
some line that cut straight through you
with its truth,
and your buddy opens
another beer
and says, goddamn right.

Alex S. Johnson

Fucked Up Fairy Tales: Pudding Fairies 

Empress Cherrypop, her flaming red hair unbound and floating in the etheric breeze, gazed down from the crystal balcony of the Euphoric Palace at the writhing mass of pudding fairies below. 

Their gelatinous forms shifted and merged in obscene configurations, reminding her of that documentary on deep sea creatures she’d watched with Silver last night. The way they moved, pulsing with an inner light that made her think of bioluminescent horrors.

“They’re getting restless again,” Silver whispered, wrapping cool arms around Cherrypop’s waist. Her silver hair cascaded over both their shoulders, mixing with the empress’s flame-red tresses like metallic blood.

The pudding fairies had been acting strange ever since that ancient grimoire had been discovered in the palace kitchens, bound in what appeared to be human skin and written in a language that looked suspiciously like binary code.

Below, the pudding fairies began to form a massive spiral, their bodies melting together into a hypnotic vortex of vanilla, chocolate, and blood-red strawberry. It was beautiful in a nauseating way, like watching flesh dissolve in acid.

“Something’s emerging,” Cherrypop said, her voice tight with anticipation and dread.

The spiral began to pulse with an otherworldly light, and from its center rose a figure that made both queens gasp. It was the Mistress of Graves herself, but reconstituted in pudding form, her body a shifting mass of dessert that somehow maintained the shape of a woman in a flowing gown. Her face was a constantly moving tableau of features that seemed to be drowning in custard.

“Welcome to my kingdom,” the pudding apparition gurgled, her voice like someone drowning in butterscotch “I’ve come to claim what’s mine.” 

The fairy creatures below began to keen in harmony, a sound that made Cherrypop’s teeth ache and Silver’s skin crawl with goosebumps.

What happened next occurred with the terrible inevitability of a nightmare. The pudding fairies began to rise, forming a massive wave that threatened to engulf the palace. But Cherrypop and Silver had been prepared for this moment. They joined hands, their ancient queer magic surging between them like electric current.

“Now!” Cherrypop commanded, and Silver pulled out the secret weapon – a massive spoon forged in the fires of the palace kitchen by the royal chef, who had been mysteriously transformed into a talking teapot the week before. The spoon began to glow with an inner light that matched the bioluminescence of the pudding fairies.

The Mistress of Graves let out a shriek that sounded like a thousand spoons scraping against the bottom of empty bowls. Her pudding form began to collapse in on itself as the fairy horde was sucked into the vortex of the magical spoon, their bodies compressing into a single serving of the most dangerous dessert ever created in the Kingdom of Euphoria 

When it was over, all that remained was a single bowl of innocuous-looking pudding on the crystal balcony. Cherrypop and Silver looked at each other, their faces reflected in its perfectly smooth surface.

“What should we do with it?” Silver asked, prodding the bowl with one perfectly manicured finger.

Cherrypop smiled, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Let’s serve it at the next royal banquet. I hear the Duke of Tartland has been plotting against us.” She leaned in to kiss her partner, tasting of cherry wine and revolution. “Besides, who doesn’t love a good pudding?”

The pudding in the bowl wiggled slightly, and both queens could have sworn they heard it giggle.

Tempest Miller

Piss in Coffins

What is death?
These days it’s NHS Big Data telling you when.
It’s four months in hospital, flooded in Nordic pharmaceutical statins. 
It’s eight years in a coma, plugged into the Internet.
They play carny music to make you bob back up.
So they want piss in their coffins.
A piss dirty bomb in their blood.
For the Malaysian surgeon, to add his own lethal weapon
of kidney stones.
Stacks and stacks of piss, in boxes, cream of the crop.
Figuring out the best piss like trying to solve a Rubix Cube.
It’s the new death bed crosswords and sudoku.
No cool-out time, no step-out time, no idler time,
every waking death moment – and how they drag –
you think about piss.
Time is longer with resistance.
The resistance is uterine.
Is milk. An assembly line of breast milk.
Is pre-cum, the colour of Oreo cream, pure stuff,
bull-made stuff they take from a whale penis by
the bucket. Semen worth tens of millions 
on rebreeding programmes,
on new animals. 
My life in the Kingdom of Heaven is worth thirty grand,
quality-adjusted. That’s hard to catch your breath for.
The human animal wants piss and uterine stuff in its coffins.
Bury me in piss, it’s all they pray about.
Coroner, please let me be progenitor for this new cultural movement.
It’s facsimile, it’s about smoothing out my face.
I did all I could in my lifetime
but it was genetic. Make me look like a sharp-jawed prince!
Put piss in my coffin!
Put piss in my coffin!
Put commie piss in my coffin!
So, with enough court cases they put several commodes
in the coffin.
And the interns who do it are gagging and laughing.
Don’t they know this meant something to someone?
Stuffing their own turkey cadaver with urine?
Go back from 1776 and at some point, 
there was a President of the United States who 
longed for a golden shower in his tomb.

Dustin King

Litany of Lethargy and Glee  

Ding, dong
     The pristine is dead 
Indeed 
     We believed in beauty 
Under the influence of seaside DMT 
     We pleaded with the Pleiades  
and Nietzsche
     Singing Peace Be to the Bourgeoisie 
ADHD and a peanut allergy 
     upon our eternal return 
Augury in salt-seasoned leeches 
     VIP Ouija boards
Anthropocene elegies 
     In Zombiocene teenzines 
Manspleened peaplant pedagogies 
     The study of the horsie’s doohickey 
to determine what breed she be 
     Beergoggle bestiality 
Greedy andouille sausage fingers 
     picking the bookie’s boogies 
Sublingual glands gleeking out 
     a meager living 
Deemed by some deity
     crash test dummy for The American Dream
The Old Me, The New Me, The Real Me 
     American Memes
Weenie-winking heat-seeking ecofreaks 
     Techies and Trekkies and Taki-teasers 
 Sheeple surely
     G-men in G-strings and pasties eating pastries 
The Easter Bunny screeching carpe misdemeanor 
     in each elongated ear 
Pussy-eating near-death experiences 
     Eons of premature ejaculate 
Buggery and skulduggery 
     The ETA of the EMT irrevocable 
Dopamine to be distributed directly 
      by eager beavers 
licking at the leakage from diarrhea diaries.