Old Ken is crying. The tears roll down his wrinkled cheeks into his grey stubble. His misty green eyes are reproachful. His head sinks into a mountain of pillows.
This isn’t the Ken I used to know – proud of his toughness, assertive, and loud. “No one gets one over on Ken,” they said. The dodgy car salesman, the insurance twister, even the girl in the café who fiddled his change -they all got their comeuppance. Not that Ken enjoyed being nasty. Only the bad guys got the wrath of his tongue and more besides. Fairness was his guiding light. He’d misquote Marx: “From each according to what he can give and to each according to his needs.” He’d mumble this as he wrote another cheque to pay for clean water in a far-off country or a children’s playground nearer home.… ...continue reading
“An able-bodied man must put in his forty hours a week minimum. It’s called working, also known as making a living. Doesn’t matter what your chosen profession is, every day you go out there and perform to the best. And remember, there’s no such thing as a humiliating job, only humiliating salary. You’re a young guy, healthy and strong. Can’t just walk away from your responsibilities for hitting an occasional hurdle here and there. It happens to all of us, and more frequently than you think. Ups and downs is the way of the world. But a guy who gives up and refuses to carry his own weight is a skiver who invariably becomes a dreg of society, a boozehound, a junkie. I understand if you want to skirt the issue and don’t want to talk about it, but as a friend I beg you, don’t go down that road.… ...continue reading
Those lovers’ stains
will soon coalesce
on the burgundy flannel
sheet like old Polaroids.
But they needn’t breathe on it,
timing the minutes. Their fixative
might just be the moonlight going
down across the tarred road.
*
In the turquoise Android photos
taken around the pool
last July, you can almost hear
a belly smacker but this one,
developing where they laid,
whimpers into the box springs: Oh
man. Oh God. And later: It feels
so cold. Let me stay
over on your side.
– Christopher Dungey… ...continue reading
First: she sat on the floor of the shower thinking about soft flesh, all the places she could grab and bite.
Then: he sat in the passenger seat of her car wondering if she’d ever gotten in an accident, all this weaving and speeding.
“If you would shut up about the moon, I would love to have sex with you,” she said.
He leaned against silence.
She turned her eyes back to the road in front of her.
First: she explained to her six-year-old niece what a clitoris was and got in trouble with her sister.
Then: he was trying to remember if he still knew the taste of communion wafers. How long had it been? He felt like a sin.
She liked when they were walking down her narrow, brick-laid street and he would let go of her hand for someone to pass but wouldn’t stop touching her.… ...continue reading
I stood in the middle of a footbridge facing the Las Vegas strip and lazily watched the shift change. My heavy head drifted backwards until I was looking up at an amber tide that slowly started to flood the sky. It was soothing to watch the dark blue sky fade away even though the neon lights never changed. I drew heavy on a cigarette that was closing in on the filter and leaned up to the glass on the bridge. Watching dealers walking out with loose neckties and showgirls with headdresses under their arms slowly staggering about. There were trash men furiously working up and down the curbs of the street, harvesting the plastic cups and bags that grew in bunches every twenty feet or so.… ...continue reading
my heart keeps monitoring the precious memory
from when your eyes first met mine.
my arms are now full of your phantom
presence, as I attempt to bargain with you, telepathically,
to join in recovering every missed opportunity to
have been brave enough to go at our own speed in
finding what true love is all about,
rather than rushing
to each milestone, rather
than holding onto each other
so tightly from being afraid of
our passion resting, even if only
for a little while.
I mourn you and I,
and the wisdom that evaded us in
those early teenage days.
just the mere thought of your face, or the slightest utterance of
your name, sets the flame in me fully ablaze.
– Tony Nicholas Clark
Author’s Note: I wrote this poem while reflecting on teenage love and how, while often brief, it can leave an impact on us that never fades.… ...continue reading
My body
not her choice
Her body
not his choice
Not my body
it was his choice
His choice
not her body
not really
– R.A. Murphy
Author’s Note: This is my first published piece and I have hopes for many more. I worked for a year and a half as a social worker for a sexual violence resource center in my college town. I only worked there for a relatively short time, but that type of work stays with you forever. Nothing will wash away the feeling of someone holding your hand while they’re getting a rape kit completed in the emergency room. And I think it’s supposed to be like that for a reason.… ...continue reading