NOT LONG by John D Robinson

After he died I got rumours
that she was prostituting
herself for alcohol and
codeine: I made a visit,
the door was open, I
found her semi-naked,
semi-conscious on her
lounge floor, laying close
to the gas fire, she was
badly burnt and had over
medicated: I called the
services, maybe I saved
her ass that day: she never
thanked me for it, it was
love and hate between us,
no middle ground:
she died a little while
later, overdosing on life
and prescription drugs
and alcohol and a
broken heart that
could take no more.

Matador by Alan Catlin

 

Three days into a drinking
holiday weekend, shot full of
chemicals, beer and Red Bull,
he’s as hyper as Old Jake,
The Raging Bull himself
before a grudge match.
The whole world is a boxing
ring for him, stocked with men
he imagined his wife was having
it off with. He’s strung tighter
than a taut bale of barbed wire,
a snip away from release,
from turning whatever bar he
happened to end up in into a
killing field full of blunt force
trauma victims: his fists bloodied
and held high in victory for cheering
crowds only he can hear,
compressed eyes pinched
into tiny balls like buck shot
pellets stuck in hardboiled egg
whites, blood drops tattooed at
the corners, vestiges of physical
pains he could no longer endure.

Three Poems by John Sweet

down canyons of static

cold as snow as
cold as christ and we’ll
make it warm with
gasoline

we’ll set that fucker on fire
in the back of his truck

will leave the baby at the
desert’s edge with a guitar and
a handful of broken glass
and we’ll teach it the myth of
robert johnson

we’ll place it’s fragile skull
between the boot heel
and the rock

we’ll sing to it softly
until morning comes

____________

one from the age of subtle atrocities

living close to water
and without fear

living alone with the
wife and the secrets

small failures mean nothing
in windowless rooms,
small victories even less

look

it isn’t a story,
but an idea

man locks his daughter in
the basement when she’s
18 and then keeps her there
for 24 years

rapes her

fathers her children

signs deals for the movie,
the sequel,
the video game

considers god like you
would a second helping
of dessert

considers dessert

all of these choices to
be made while the crows
gather outside your
door

____________

 

lover

blurred outlines january late
afternoon grey houses in early evening
light, this woman who will set her child on fire,
these young men who will rape a teenage girl then
leave her in a vacant lot, this moment that will
arrive already ruined beyond repair and then
the one after that and then the
one after that

and the war, of course,
and without an end in sight

the mindless need for victory

the makers of bombs and of poison gases
balanced out by the
need for money to survive

the future still only a theory but
the possibilities narrowing

woman at the edge of the road opens a
can of lighter fluid and
all we have left is despair