SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS STILL ON THE GLIDER ON THE SCREENED PORCH by Lyn Lifshin

before traffic was no
more than a soft lull
beyond the elm trees,
ice clinking in frosty
glasses, my mother
still in 4 inch heels.

Willie Lepers by Norman Ball

Funny Music Video

The Baby by Jeff Crouch and Christopher Woods

Artwork/poetry

1 out of 6 by by Rob Plath

bukowski said
he punched out
one great poem in
every six

those are pretty
good odds

that means you gotta
keep banging them out
shitty or not to
get to that 1 in the 6

suffering and its proximity by David Mclean

they write that our awareness of the suffering
of others is deadened by distances
and i agree, you really have to see it
for it to be funny, that's why we have
TV

The Recipe by Emme Hor

1. keep on my knees
2. look him in the eye
3. rub his ego all night
4. cook up his soul

Sometimes Suicidal by Aimee DeLong

SPIDER BITES

I am Spider.
In 1960 I learned
to crawl.
In 1940 I woke up
with spider bites.

Last Night at Southport by Justin Hyde

tell her i'm a butterfly
with sixteen wings
beating in
succinct
anarchy.

microwave popcorn haiku by Pete Lee

pop. pop. pop, pop, pop,
poppoppoppoppoppoppop
pop, pop, pop. pop. pop.

 

Library Rules

Do not sleep or snore at the library for
a library lady will wake you and
warn you. Also, the library is
no place for surfing porn.

Do, and a library lady will make you go.
Case in point: an Eskimo, his left boot
red, his right boot yellow, stares
at a girl on her knees, her
mouth a crimson basin for the gold he
never gleaned. He watches and
he dreams, he smiles. She
helps him forget the
soggy blankets, the
buckets of rain

He sleeps in or the miles of road he
never took. Her long black hair
is the world he’d like to live
in, the answer to his grief;
but the library lady is
beside him, standing there in white
hair and gold-rimmed glasses.
“I've warned you. Now
you're going to have
to leave,” she says,

And the Eskimo, his left boot red, his
right boot yellow, says, “Go fuck
yourself, lady,” and oh, the
library lady is no bright
example of compassion; in fact, she
embodies the squat creature
of joyful censorship and
chastisement, the what
tried earnestly and
chided the child

Who abided, tried earnestly to destroy it;
what lingering vestiges could survive
its golden rims and sulfurous
breath? But library
lynch-monger or
no, can anyone
claim the
fault is

Hers alone? This daughter of the
colonizer, she is brave in Puritan
clothes, and though I may have
hated her kind, I've betrayed
my own, and want her to
know I've got her
covered should
the Eskimo,

His left boot red, his right boot
yellow, get out of hand and
attack her. “Please close
out the computer now,”
the library lady says.
She is the head
librarian, she
informs him,

And the Eskimo says, “Always
bothering me, won't leave
me alone. Don't you
have nothing better to do than stare
at my hard cock? You just can't
keep your eyes off my hard
cock,” the Eskimo says,
and alas gets up, the
head librarian
mortified

But holding her own. “If you return
to the library you’ll be arrested,”
she says, and after the fun is
over I'd like to tell her
she's done good, but
she doesn’t care
what I think,
After all, another man who grew from
rocks, drank milkweed and crested
the peak for the finest angle.
From the alpine the
world is a beautiful circle, the gaping
mouth of the child she
tried to strangle

 

---

Biography

John Oliver Hodges lives in Oxford , Mississippi where he attends the MFA program in writing at Ole Miss. His poems have appeared in Rattle, nth position, and Zygote in My Coffee.

 

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