Artwork by Bruce New

Charlie Parker's Garden (poetry) by Puma Perl

Red Mama (artwork/poetry) by Moctezuma Johnson

The Mob (poetry) by Doug Draime

Willie Lepers (music video) by Norman Ball

1 out of 6 by by Rob Plath

The Recipe by Emme Hor

Sometimes Suicidal by Aimee DeLong

Last Night at Southport by Justin Hyde

microwave popcorn haiku by Pete Lee

 

Book Reviews:

Dancing on Thin Ice by George Anderson ( review by Ralph-Michael Chiaia)

92 Rapple by Lyn Lifshin
(review by Helen Peterson)

10 Poems & Ampersands
by Ralph-Michael Chiaia
(review by David McLean)

 

dedicated to the butterfly tattoos of the universe

not once
during these alfalfa years
and tungsten bundling of decades
have i ever considered
paying a junior college van gogh
to needle-gun my parchment
in order to compensate
misplaced ego
for soul.

swimming with unicorns

the kenyans will win marathons
the yellow lines in parking lots will be repainted
the bright eyed infantry will
take night classes to get their mbas
and become six sigma black belts
limbs will be severed in industrial accidents
foster children will be
raped in rooms full of potpourri and stuffed animals
pelicans will drown in oil spills
midgets will commit suicide amidst confetti
but the shelves will always be stocked with marshmallows
and chances are
you will float through this life
untested
like a pink moon.

sos

and then you're shipwrecked
on an island
with fifteen mfa candidates
carrying fifteen theses
and forty-thousand dollars
in crisp traveler's checks
fresh from the wax palms
of their mothers and fathers.

first couple days
it's all frescoes
and double-dutch
some panda-bodied byron freak
has acid and weed
and you get head
and aesthetic sympathy
from a blue eyed
plath scholar.

but on the third night
this yardstick-toed heron
from the northwest
says something about
arbitrary line-breaks

the experimental poet
with spina bifida
from tokyo
starts crying

quickly deteriorates into
full blown oboe-polemics on
textured metaphors
dissonance of compacted acoustics
and the role of spinach
in postmodern
haiku.

the albino negro
named horace
is a neruda scholar

he's also the ration-hack
for the stash of
canned tuna

the queer won't listen to reason
so you break his tibia
with a coconut and
pocket a single can

then you shimmy up into the canopy
with the bonobos

where you stridently
remove
the vacuum sealed top
and use it
to slit your wrists.

options

i could get drunk.

or i could skateboard down the highway stark naked
pregnant snapping turtle under one arm
kirby vacuum cleaner under the other
a crescent of fresh muskmelon
sticking out of my asshole.

i could drink this bottle of black velvet.

or i could sport a pair of wax lips
climb the tallest building in my city
with a boom-box blaring bobby mcferrin's greatest hits
and a sniper rifle
strapped to my back.

i could drink this bottle of black velvet
then work into this six pack of bud-light tall boys
until i black-out in the kitchen
looking for something to eat.

or i could stroll into a nursing home with seventeen blue roses
and rape an octogenarian
while eating a can of lima beans
with a spork.

the world

is my motherfucking oyster.

---

Justin Hyde works at a correctional facility. He lives in Iowa.