Roasting the Pig

Their family cookouts could
last weeks, the wild boar slowly
roasting over a low fire as the men
folk drank shine fresh from the still
and the women corralled the wild
ones with clothes lines fashioned into
lassos they could use to bring down
even the fastest of their kind.
The talk around the pit was tinged
with nostalgia for the old days
as they recalled how their spawn had
been killed in bar fights, gunned down
in illicit lover quarrels or robbing
the credit union, five and dime,
post office or package store…
or killed in the decades long feud,
shot while taking a dump by the crick or
pissing on the grave of that other
family’s kin. The history of the clan’s
carnage was endless, Homeric, epic
in their scope and the telling of these tales
wonderous to hear though no one thought
to write the cantos down, not that any of them
could actually read or write, school
teachers had a very short tenures in those
parts, either scared off, run out of town
on a rail or left for dead by the county seat,
to be found, repaired, or not, no one
really cared which. None of these obvious
assaults were ever reported. What would
be the point of that? Only heavily armed
Feds ever ventured onto their land and then
only under duress. The Law’s general
opinion about being getting involved in an optional
shooting war was more trouble than it was
worth. They were inbred mean and touchy
about who was related to who and how
but man, that slow cooked pig was the best anyone
had ever tasted and the shine was out of this
world, worth the casualties that were sure
to occur when old grievances arose.

She has one

of those white
N-95 surgical masks
turning yellow
where the hole
was cut dead
center in the cloth
where the cigarettes
went and a Big Momma
at home with an O2 tank
one Lucky Strike
from ignition

Stairwell to Nowhere

They call it halfway
house but not what it
is halfway to or from

Everyone involved knows
it’s the last stop
before the end

heating grates, park benches
is the end

unless, of course,
you try suicide

and fail

Alan Catlin has dozens of full-length books and chapbooks of prose and poetry. Most recently his poetry books include a trilogy of retrospective work reflecting his thirty odd years in the bar business, the Carpe Diem series. A book of thematically linked stories narrated by a cynical bar man was published by Anxiety Press as The Naked City. As has a fictional Memoir, Chaos Management by Alien in a NYC hotel from Cyberwit, His most recent books are Unattended from Cyberwit, Landscape of the Exiles from Dos Madres and Work Anxiety Poems from Roadhouse Press.

Disorganised

Uterus, ovaries, cervix.
Removed. Sitting too near
end of endometriosis so SOS!
Recently, treacherous gall bladder,
went over to other side for
thirty pieces of cholesterol,
blabbed until it stabbed.
All betrayed her – her being
my feisty Sicilian ‘girlfriend’
who, remarkably, seems
undiminished, fecund and
fierce as ever. Traitor organs
paid with their lives,
vanished into graves
unmarked. Note to self :
Remain Useful.

Gold Medal Girl

She seemed to have no digestive
system during courtship. Not so
much as a stifled audible blip.
We ate and drank (nothing stank)
kiss-kissed and breathed in bliss.
I never imagined what lay in store,
didn’t know it possible to pass such
gas but my girl’s foul farts have
become poisoned olfactory darts.
Out of her lovely bum they come
now when we share limited air
in one very small home. Bravo!
Encore! (as he opens the door)

Allan Lake is a migrant poet from Allover, Canada who now lives in Allover, Australia. Coincidence. He has published poems in 24 countries. His latest chapbook of poems, entitled My Photos of Sicily, was published by Ginninderra Press. It contains no photos, only poems.

CASH JUST FALLING FROM THE SKY

I was at the gas station
observing a slot machine
that wasn’t being played
a video came
on its screen
of all this money
just falling from the sky
like it’s that easy
like I would just be showered
with cash
I mean how dumb
do they think I am
I thought to myself
as I slid a twenty in

Derek Chauber Blues

I’m naming you Derek
with some stupid ass
made up last name
that sounds like you
and your stupid ass

I’m about the same age as you were
when you started dating my mother-
single mom with a son
who was just a little smarter
than you cared for

but anyway you’re mine now
and the substitution of your real name to Derek comes
because Derek was the
first name of a
bully in my
shit show youth
you came on your limp horse to save

but you were an adolescent in adulthood and I was a grown up in a kids world
couldn’t understand that shit could ya?

I’d been through too fucking much
to just piss it away
on some tennis court
with you
spending “ quality time“
what the fuck did two strangers need to spend quality time for?
no wonder I destroyed all my racquets

what the fuck are you even doing here? was my preeminent thought at the time

you’d pick on me you fuckin bully
you’d brag about your intelligence
whip out words you thought I didn’t understand
when it was just you and me
your
jackass farted on my face
with
cutting undermining
words
cutting the cheese
of your childishness

and pathetic you
at my mother‘s bedside pleading
what can I do to please you
what can I do to please you
you had your manhood taken
and you looked at me
to do something about it

your comic book collection couldn’t convince me you weren’t a conman at heart always putting yourself first

yeah I’m your age now
but I must say I learned much from you
I’ll never have my dick cut off by a woman
I’ll never whine to another person‘s child
I’ll never have the nerve to show up in somebody’s life
that I don’t belong in

​FUCK

I was sitting at this metal picnic table
and there it was
scratched onto the top
the way it was written
was like it was slurred on there
the embodiment, the meaning of my life-
FUCK
scrawled in giant letters
it wasn’t original but neither is life
it was crass but so is being alive
FUCK- the world’s last words on the matter
FUCK-all this suffering subconsciously uttered
FUCK- no wonder the word is defiling
public property everywhere

Dan Flore III’s writings have appeared in over a hundred different publications. His books are Lapping Water, Humbled Wise Men Christmas Haikus, Home and other places I’ve yet to see, Pink Marigold Rays (Gen Z Publishing), Written in the dust on the ceiling fan, (Dead Man’s Press Ink), Hospital Issued Writing Notebook (Querencia Press) APARTMENTALIZED (Impspired), Everything Must Go (Cajun Mutt Press), and asphyxiation (Crying heart Press).

i will fully exist

i may not be your cup
of tea,
and that’s okay;

i’d rather be me
than the watered down
version you’re looking
for who swallowed herself
down for your comfort—

i’m not hiding my
weird, my magic, or
myself any longer;

i will take up space
and step into my power

my anger will loudly roar
when i have been
disrespected—

i have every right to exist
as you do,
i will do so fully
even if you never find the
courage to;

but i hope one day you do
i know hiding hurts.

peter pan is no good

wendy darling,
be careful
when you wish for
never-never land;

don’t you know
peter killed the lost
boys and hook is
one of the few able
to escape the immortal
curse of his fangs?

don’t you know
vampires can fly even
without faeries?

that’s why his
shadow always tries
to flee,

guard your brothers;
wendy darling,
peter pan is up to no good.

what it is to dream

you tell me
i have scars,
that the past
haunts me;

true, on both counts—

but at least i still
remember what it is
to dream,

and when i reclaimed
myself and refound myself
after you shattered what was
left of me;

i found my magic
and new growth and flowers and
new birds—

i will never thank you
for your unkindness,

but i’m glad
i recovered me
so i can stand in my full
power and shine bright enough
that your nightmares lose their sting.

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has seventeen published chapbooks the latest being: only the future knows (Alien Buddha Press, November 2025).

ON THE ANALYST’S COUCH

Forgive me –
the books under the pillow weren’t weapons,
just misplaced intents.

She asks about my father
before the cigarette has finished its slow ash-fall
onto the floor.

I answer by diagram: a sign – airborne boy,
the descent, caught. How memory seeps into muscle memory.

I do not mention the basin, porcelain, speckled –
my cheek’s blood dissolving like belief
or how the table, heavy with loss,
accompanied my mother and no one else.

Do boys grow old before their fathers do?
Psychology claims I’m split:
half inheritance, half accident.
Butter-slicked. Lemon-singed.

Three nights back, halfway between pain and alcohol,
I carved myself into the past. Still sleepless, still asking:

What else do you need me to say to be believed?

Humor elbows me. Tells me:
ghost stories belong to the living.

FINDING A MATE

No one speaks of the wayward chick.
The discarded. The unfavored.
Not a single call from the nest.

Wind. Only that. Brief as breath.
Silence, a kind of milk.
He came feather-first.
Fact, not metaphor.
The world insists on balance –
yet we teeter.

The story turns here:
how another chick was born.
In a loosened self,
tumbling.
Sky as mirror, split open –
water climbing upward
as if summoned.

Between one bird
and its listening mate,
a pause, a pulse—
then airborne.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.