featured – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/26/24

July 26, 2024July 26, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Insomnia

As opposed to counting sheep,
I visualize Vanna White flipping over the letters
G-O T-O S-L-E-E-P
on a continuous loop.

This is just a small facet,
a peek into the room that hosts the rack that binds me,
the torture of insomnia.

Of course I push Vanna aside most times,
provided I can still make her stumble 
on cold stilettos for a while,
while I, half-lucid, point, laugh desperately and smile
at my own restful mind’s demise.

I then spend time counting faults,
failures, and life’s mysterious pranks
that have so fooled this April.

For instance:
    Why did I not speak to peers in school?
          The fear of rejection, or acceptance, or both?
    Where did my parents meet?
          Where was I conceived?
    Who was the first person to sigh “Awww” when I first breathed?
          What such deceit brought me to these streets?
    How bad did he beat out her teeth to make her want to retreat,
          to flee from the terror that contained a tease of release from 
                   the solitary life that single parenthood leaves?
    How did he handle this defeat when she left him to save my sister and me
          from the life we’d have to meet in staying in that shitty scene?
    The bastard probably didn’t eat for a week
          replaying the violent ways he chased her away.
    Blaming Daddy’s belt and the way he was raised
          for those lonely, crazy days when I was just a babe.
    And will my daisies return next year, are they worth the trouble to save?
          Will I ever graduate?
    Am I slowly going insane?
          Or do you think like I do,
                feel like this,
          the same sleepy desperate shame that makes me 
                switch the light on, 
                      so all these words are saved?
    Will I get back the days of smiles that hurt your face,
          because they refuse to stay away?
    Will my family finally call one another
          and find the right words to say,
                not simply point their fingers pettily at who is to blame?
    Will Vanna please do her Miss America thing and wave?
          My brain really needs to lay down 
               like a good dog and play dead for the treats it craves.

April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendor of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/24/24

July 24, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Poet Staggers Cancels Out the Dark

There is a poem in my heart
a stop-gap love that cancels
the chamber beats.
I can’t dismiss the cane I walk with
or the heavy, pounding heart, missing breath.
There are prayers of my past etched
in abuse that I delete pictures about—
my brain recycles ruminations.
I can’t delete beats or add them.
I’m waiting for the final fall—
when the gym whistle around my neck
from grade 8 basketball class squeals
out an Amber Alert for a dying old man.

They say I’m a poet, a word dabbler
dripping sap from an old maple tree—
tin can worshiper catching leftover sins.
I face the world left, head-on.
A shot of cheap vodka
drained from an 80 Proof-1.75 Liter—
lemon and lime juice mixed in reminds me
of Charles Bukowski’s mic and desk
beers lined up for consumption elongated
in order, on the table—
those L.A. Street whores, bitches,
fantasies of men past 60.

I can’t delete past swear words,
rearrange old events, distinguish
melody from harmony notes
at the Symphony Orchestra echoes
of poor past performances.

Let me gamble what’s left: aces, spades.
Joker is bankrupt, my crucified self.
Silence over spoken reflects
quietness nibbling of self.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 313 plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 553 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/22/24

July 22, 2024 James D. Casey IV

hypocrite

me
judging
the
woman
buying
lottery
tickets
buying
my
third
gallon
bottle
of
vodka
this
week.

mr. popular

today
the phone in my office
rang off the hook

i swear it was a new record

people needing me for this
people needing me for that

for a second
i felt important

like mr. popular

…until i remembered
where in the hell
i was.

that hunger

they aren’t lovers yet
but they will be

you can tell by how close she sits to him
talking her poetry

a little work romance
that they’ll have to hide from the world
for a while

with her garbo eyes
and his clark gable moustache

they look timeless
and in time

two kids figuring each other out

while i sit there
and watch them

like a fat relic
who’s had his passions plucked

wishing i was young again
and could saunter over there

starving
with that hunger

to eat her words.

John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections, three novels, and the novella Wolves of Berlin Headline Amateur Night at the Flute and Fiddle Pub (Alien Buddha Press 2024). He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Cajun Mutt Press FeaturedWriter 07/19/24

July 19, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Hope is

a broken bullseye,
but I keep arrows
in my quiver anyway.
That bright target,

so near I can
almost touch it,
spins like
a neon kaleidoscope,

but I slide
further and further
from light.

Each backward step
takes me deep inside
my forest of self,

where the center
rests: motionless,
unruffled by dreams.

Leah Mueller’s work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions and was nominated for the 2024 edition. Her two newest books are The Failure of Photography (Garden Party Press, 2023) and Widow’s Fire (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Website: http://www.leahmueller.org.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/17/24

July 17, 2024 James D. Casey IV

3 A.M.

Deep inside the Texas night
a window shatters.

A thief — burglar,
or rapist —
intrudes a leg into our home,
booted foot
grits down on broken glass.

“Dad!”
I whisper-shout.
“Dad! Someone’s breaking in!”

“Jesus Christ, Christophah”
he replies,
his voice cocked at its New Hampshire angle
“I’m a bunch’a ashes
in a jah
in Illinois.”

In life,
he was no help either.

I grab my pig spear
that stands bedside guard,
slide one naked foot free of the bedroom,
then another,

as I move quietly
toward the creak on the stairs.

Christopher Jones founded Lost Prophet Press in 1992 and published the literary magazines Thin Coyote and Knuckle Merchant: the Journal of Naked Literary Aggression for many years. His most recent books are the poetry collection Swamp Yankee: A Book of Verse, and Exploding Fellinis: Chronically Distrubed Tales, a collection of stories co-written with Kelly Green. After many years of dire servitude in the Southwest, he now lives with his family in West Saint Paul, Minnesota.