friends – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 01/15/24

January 15, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Standing on The Corner

After dinner, we’d meet
on the corner to trade baseball
cards and talk about our heroes.

Most kids were Yankee fans,
and the Twins were a relatively new
franchise, with Harmon Killebrew
raising eyebrows.

It didn’t take long to switch allegiance
from one team to the next, and I had quickly
become a Cubs fan, sighting Ernie Banks
as the best ever.

In the life of a child, a year is an eternity,
and by the following summer
our baseball cards were shelved
or hidden away in shoeboxes.

We still met on the corner,
but we had new interests
like which brand of cigarettes
had the best taste, and the neighbor girls.

This was about the same time
our local policemen began to take notice,
they would pull up, and tell us to scatter
with hints of the Red Wing Reformatory.

Thoughts of the reform school
struck terror throughout our circle of friends,
and anyone connected with its history
which predated us by more than 100 years.

We had heard the conditions were harsh,
and they turned factual when one of our own
got caught stealing a canned ham from
a railway car; he was 12 years of age,
and sentenced to six years.

I had been out of the community
for quite some time when news of his release
landed near his 18 th birthday, and like so many
small towns, they can be unforgiving and
prejudiced toward previous offenders.

Upon his arrival, the town elders
and the police were quick in pressuring
him: you’ll never be employable;
we’ll be watching you; Saint Cloud
is a much worse lockup, and other horrors.

They convinced him to join the army
⸺a real break and a chance to succeed
in the world. He even received a police
escort to the bus depot.

He was sent to Fort Leonard Wood
for 8 weeks of basic training.

After graduation, he shipped out
to Viet Nam, and was never heard
from again.

Richard D. Houff is originally from Austin, Minnesota, and currently lives and writes out of St. Paul, Minnesota. A former magazine and book publishing editor, he has had poetry and prose published throughout North America, and Europe. His most recent collections are Night Watch and Other Hometown Favorites, from Black Cat Moon Press, The Wonderful Farm and Other Gone Poems, from Flutter Press, and Dancing on Rooftops, from Homage Press (Czech Republic).

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 11/17/23

November 17, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Teenage Diplomats

we slouch the hood of your shitty Sentra to get closer to the stars
listening to Manfred Mann’s Earth Band on WZOZ
Jason says he’s fishing but he’s just using carp as target practice
still bitching about how I slept with his sister at New Paltz
seduced her when I asked for a pen in Intro to Philosophy
I tell him it was the easiest way I could fuck him
and then you turn to me and say
I want to fuck Jason too, so we
spend the night blinded in the moonlight
shooting fish in a barrel

Damon Hubbs is the author of three chapbooks: Coin Doors & Empires (Alien Buddha Press), The Day Sharks Walk on Land (Alien Buddha Press), and Fly Creek (forthcoming from Naked Cat Publishing). His poems have been featured in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Roi Fainéant Press, Otoliths, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere. He lives in New England.
Twitter: @damon_hubbs

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/04/23

September 4, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Check out Brother Dan’s permanent AD spots on CMP!

Writer Page
Actor Page

Daniel S. Irwin was born, raised, and is back in town at Sparta, Illinois. His card reads: Artist, Actor, Writer, Soldier, Scholar, Priest. He has won awards for his art, acting (over 100 films and 30+ stage productions), writing (nine books and work published in over one hundred magazines and journals world-wide), retired military (Air Force and Army), graduate of Southern Illinois University/Carbondale and has attended four other universities), and is an ordained Dudeist priest with a Ph.D. in Divinity (not bad for a heathen). Once worked as a medic in an institution for the criminally insane…but didn’t notice anything strange about the inmates. Latest on-line work can be found on Horror, Sleaze, Trash Magazine and Beatnik Cowboy. He would love to move back to Europe but fears the plague.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 01/12/22

January 12, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Kid Sinister

You were a manic, frantic polyglot.
A sure shot in the parking lot.
Making sure the cops were not within
ear-shot as the deals went down.

You were a hundred-watt bulb in a
forty-watt socket.
You were the vapor trail fading from a hastily-launched rocket.
An alchemical explosion when lava meets the ocean and
that bigger than life sizzle going skyward.

We loved your unhinged ways,
The smoke you caused and those sudden flames.
The passionate action of earlier days when you held a match
to the stick of dynamite that threatened to blow us all away forever.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had his poetry, prose, reviews, and collages published around the world. Most recently in Punk Noir Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Piker Press, The Crossroads, Drinkers Only, 1870, Synchronized Chaos, Yellow Mama, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Literary Yard, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Medusa’s Kitchen.

He has edited his own poetry journal, FEARLESS for the past thirty years. He has authored sixteen chapbooks, including Incessant Shining (2011, Alternating Current Press). He received a BA in Liberal Arts from Union University/Vermont College in 2016. A new book, Just Another Small Town Story is available now from Whiskey City Press.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writers, Nov. 2021

November 1, 2021 James D. Casey IV

November reminds me of family. The Great Feast. The best part was my Nanny’s shrimp stuffed mirlitons (Chayote, the unofficial squash of New Orleans) I try to make them at home every year in her honor, but never quite hit the mark. Her name was Aunt Mary Jane, but she helped raise me, my cousins, and also our parents when they were young. Then our kids when they eventually came as well. So everyone called her Nanny. She simply called us Heart, we all had one collective name. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you’re celebrating this month/week/day or this very minute, love each other. Because we all have one collective name, Human. These moments and memories are all we really own in the end. Unless death goes digital.

Okay, enough squishiness, back to the business at hand. Y’all know what time it is! Below is this month’s lineup, and if you’d like to submit I’m about to start reading for February. Send 1-3 poems to cajunmuttpress@gmail.com with a bio and author photo. No simultaneous submissions, please. Still not taking manuscripts, but keep your eyes peeled for our next release, Somniloquy & Trauma in the Knottseau Well by Tim Heerdink! More info coming soon, awaiting the proofs.

Write On,
J.D.C.IV
🤟💀

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writers, November 2021

My Left Sock
by Aleathia Drehmer
11/01/21

Nowhere and Capitalism
by AK Cola
11/03/21

3 Modern Haiku/Senryu
by Lori A Minor
11/05/21

Frailty’s Baggage – Dreaming of Jim Morrison
by Theresa Gaynord
11/08/21

3 Surreal Poems
by Joshua Martin
11/10/21

Ley Lines
by Ferris Jones
11/12/21

Jenny shoots up
by Emalisa Rose
11/15/21

Breakfast at Lucile’s
by Robert Cooperman
11/17/21

No TB – Please
by Hugh Blanton
11/19/21

A Bowerbird Implodes Above the Bank of Whys
by Jake Sheff
11/22/21