Broken is Beautiful Falling by A.J. Kaufmann

in unconscious fascination
while floods go planting the city
and girls hum themselves as hope
pulling in small street tails
west-end truths
intervals of the homeless
and damaged deals
take the cabman where
consternation creatures
wild on the road
involuntarily
attach agonized tears
of neglected, vanished
blocks
to illustrated
remains of eyes
taking the city
by hurt
where broken
is beautiful
falling

Impact by Mike Meraz

those who are afraid of love
are the ones
with the most ability
to love
for they know
the height and depth
of love.

those who do not know
how to love

get married.

Leaving Galveston by Len Kuntz

We could hold our breath for hours, lifetimes it seemed.

Throughout the short sprawl of our youth we’d practice,

goofing beneath the canopy curled like a cocked trigger,

our eyes popping light bulbs,

tears running jagged down our chins.



That trick won me a way out, a swim scholarship.

I medaled and majored all because I never had to come up for air.

Now, I’ve sunk under the warmest water

and I can see through the thin-sheeted surface,

watching you color your lips and flip your hair,

knowing where you’re going

but not when you’ll return,

if ever this time.

Nanoville Altered by David S. Pointer

Nostril bound
nano-particles
crossing blood
brain barriers
wandering the
stress cracked
streets of her
thoughtshop
polluting invisible
head highway

Loitering in Front of the Microwave by Chris Butler

Loitering in Front of the Microwave



The answer to all of life’s dumb questions

radiate against my brain;

while I loiter in front of the microwave.



I stare vacantly at the sixty-seven cent

frozen pizza insistently spinning

in inconsistent, unceremonious circles,



perturbed to observe the plant and animal

byproducts combust, by

counting down for something to change,



still envisioning thermonuclear waves

undergoing similar molecular

decompositions upon the human skin,



as I stand in a stranger’s kitchen, questioning

the act of fasting a starved artist,

as I loiter in front of the microwave.




Chris Butler is a twenty-something nobody shouting from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut.He has previously published two chapped books, Emo (2010) and The War of Art (2010), and the upcoming collection Black Tits, co-written with the beatnik poet laureate of Cambodia, Randall Rogers.

Alone by Paul Hellweg

Alone



Sometimes I wonder

why I feel so alone

when really I’m not.

Each and every night

my demons show up

to haunt and tease,

chide and ride.

There’s enough of them

to drink all my beer,

play all my music,

ransack the cupboards

and freezer too.

Demons never clean up,

they always leave

trash on the floor,

dirty dishes everywhere,

movies, books, poems

strewn here and there.

They’re definitely callous,

these demons of mine,

they don’t leave till I collapse,

they never say goodnight

or goodbye,

they don’t say, “See you again,”

but they’ll be back,

and I know when.



Sometimes I wonder.