Home

Archives

Guidelines

Contests

Links

Tips

Contact Us

SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS STILL ON THE GLIDER ON THE SCREENED PORCH by Lyn Lifshin

before traffic was no
more than a soft lull
beyond the elm trees,
ice clinking in frosty
glasses, my mother
still in 4 inch heels.

1 out of 6 by by Rob Plath

bukowski said
he punched out
one great poem in
every six

those are pretty
good odds

that means you gotta
keep banging them out
shitty or not to
get to that 1 in the 6

suffering and its proximity by David Mclean

they write that our awareness of the suffering
of others is deadened by distances
and i agree, you really have to see it
for it to be funny, that's why we have
TV

The Recipe by Emme Hor

1. keep on my knees
2. look him in the eye
3. rub his ego all night
4. cook up his soul

Sometimes Suicidal by Aimee DeLong

SPIDER BITES

I am Spider.
In 1960 I learned
to crawl.
In 1940 I woke up
with spider bites.

Last Night at Southport by Justin Hyde

tell her i'm a butterfly
with sixteen wings
beating in
succinct
anarchy.

microwave popcorn haiku by Pete Lee

pop. pop. pop, pop, pop,
poppoppoppoppoppoppop
pop, pop, pop. pop. pop.

 

Dinner with Reginald

He was a hard man to please, that Reginald. A diva if there ever was one, except he didn’t sing and he wasn’t black. He was just a very finicky eater. A food diva, if you will. Won’t you?

There was really no pleasing him. I started calling him Little Mikey, after the brat who hates everything in those old Life Cereal ads. Just try to cook for Reginald sometime. You'll see. Yet I kept trying.

One night he came home from his job at the quarry and I had placed lit candles everywhere, and rose pedals and dirt on the floor leading to the bedroom where sat a single red rose. I was being pretty frigging romantic.
 
Then came dinner. I sat Reg down in his booster seat, as he was a very slight fellow, tied his bib around his neck, and set his food-filled plate on the table in front of him. He grabbed his knife and fork, did a little cutting, and took a bite.

"I don't like this," Mr. Hateseverything said.

"Well, of course," I replied. "Is there anything you do like?"

"Yes, indeed," he said, somehow angry. "I like sweet and sour chicken and Marx Brothers films."

This much was true. Even now, he was speaking with an Italian accent and eating a shoe. Okay, so the shoe was Chaplin, but it was this that he was protesting to in the first place.

"I don't like this. What is it?"

"It's a shoe," I said.

"A shoe? Well, what's this bit, then?"

"That's tartar sauce. You can't eat a plain shoe."

"Oh," he said. "Well, I don't like this."

"Fine," I said. Fussy bastard. "We'll dine out. Chinese? Sweet and sour chicken?"

"No," he said. "Don't like that." Then he dropped dead. I had forgotten that I stepped in rat poison that morning.

"Oh, Reginald," I screamed. "Why? Why?"

There was no reply. My attempt at a romantic dinner had ended in tragedy. I wept for eight months, and then killed myself with a toenail clipper.

---

 

Biography

Michael Frissore's work has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Yankee Pot Roast, rumble, decomP, SNReview, and elsewhere. He is also a staff writer at Flak Magazine, and was recently a runner-up in the 2008 Pima Writers' Workshop Writing Contest. He grew up in Massachusetts, and now lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife.

 

Feeds and Mailing Lists:

Want to get your poetry published?

The litchaos.com bookstore: