Mama Wouldn’t Listen, So I Told The Bees by Angela Readman

My mother wouldn’t listen, so I told the bees,
lips an inch away from a hum, buds, stinging
to be kissed into bloom. I didn’t sort cans
for the poor. Everything I wanted to ask
Mama stacked into crates labelled in red pen.
I told the bees about my friend on the swing,
skirt lifting air. I was lost as a bee in a rose,
aching to crawl in, live on her perfume
of petals and dirt. The soft bash over my heart
was an insect of urge wanting in. There are places
for everything, a honeycomb under our ribs
stores people in small boxes like trinkets.
The walls dissolved, I felt a girl smash her cell
and climb into the box called Love. I ran
from a cut on her finger begging to be sucked,
leapt into the arms of boys with split lips, needing
an imperfection to kiss. On his pick-up, I stared
my underwear slipped aside like a bandage.
I grabbed the splint in his jeans, any jeans, to fix
a broken bone.  I tell the bees I’m a whore
who looked at the stars over a shoulder, sticky,
between my legs an apiary after the queen has flown.

Angela Readman’s poems have been published in journals including The Rialto, Ambit, Magma, and Popshot. They have won The Mslexia Competition, The Charles Causley, and The Essex Poetry Prize. She also writes stories, her collection Don’t Try This at Home won a saboteur award, and The Rubery Book Award in 2015.

Linked books: for Dominique Carton by Sally Evans

When I learn of Dominique’s death
I am reading books that are linked.
I realise that Wittgenstein
is like my husband, leave the novel
on a heap for him. I am trailing
the Highlands with two ponies and a journalist
In 1983. Here is Rosemary Sutcliff’s
supposedly children’s novel on the Ninth Legion,
the legion that disappeared in the mist.
From the mist the Staffordshire Hoard assails me,
better on the internet than in this booklet I was given,
and better still in the display case,
red enamel on gold.

Why were the Roman villas abandoned?
Why did life abandon Wittgenstein,
to his satisfaction after it had abused him,
never giving him the opportunity
to be worn down and partly tamed,
to look back with weakening powers
on the solutions that did not come,
the books that could never now be written?

But now I am interrupted.
My friend in Glasgow has gone,
and with him photographs he will never take,
and with us all, the landscapes,
empty or peopled, captured
with the mind of an émigré,
one who knew the hardnesses of life
and its peoples and politics,
who throve on portraits of writers
in France and Scotland, who wove
through new photographic practices
and yet could spend three days in the wild
collecting a half-dozen images of Glencoe,
seen as few Scots have ever seen it.
The book of Wittgenstein
and the book of the Ninth Legion
hover in previous moments
where eagles are real,
there are peoples we will never know
who hammered the Staffordshire Hoard,
scholars whose lives overlapped with mine
were dragged away by illness and history
and a great photographer I knew for a number of years
died quietly, alone.
I know what is great because I have identified
the greatness in a philosopher,
the greatness in a friend.

Sally Evans lives in Scotland and has Welsh connections. She has had several books of poems published including Poetic Adventures in Scotland (2014) and the Bees (2008).

Mac & Me by Kevin Ridgeway

My brother and I stood

in the steam-battered,

chain-linked fortress of our

local junk yard, waiting to

get paid for hauling in some

bags filled with aluminum

cans that were emptied of

their Diet Pepsi. A wrinkled

little man dressed in an

oversized parka during a

summer heat wave asked

my brother for his name as

he filled out the receipt,

and before my brother

could say anything, the

geezer called him Mac:

said he looked like a

Mac, even talked like a

Mac.  He dispensed our

meager earnings and

I studied his writing on

the yellow customer’s

slip that he handed us

along with it, and under

“name” he had scribbled

“Mac,” which infuriated

my brother, and I tried

hard to stifle a laugh that

I’d been holding in ever

since we started talking

to that old cus when a

dribble of piss splashed

from my bladder and I

proceeded to lose control

all over the passenger’s

side of my brother’s

hand-me-down Toyota

shit wagon, compliments

of the Pepsi Cola Company.

Kevin Ridgeway was born in Bellflower, CA and raised in nearby Whittier, where he currently lives and writes. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Re)verb, San Pedro River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Bank-Heavy, Misfit Magazine and The Mas Tequila Review, among others. His latest chapbooks of poetry are On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco Press) and Riding Off Into That Strange Technicolor Sunset: Dallas-FT. Worth Poems (The Weekly Weird Monthly).

A Ten Question Interview With The Artist… J.J. Campbell

Why do you write?

I think writing is the easiest way for me to get my demons out. I think most people think I’m joking when I say I write so I don’t have to kill people. the older I get, the more I feel that is slowly becoming the truth. also, writing is one of the few things I have done that has actually impressed people. so it’s one of the few ways I can successfully feed my ego. and it is cheaper than drugs and therapy.

 

What books do you read?

I am a sucker for anything history related. I love reading biographies. and I will read any poetry book I can get my hands on. I tend to be reading more erotic books here lately. I’m also trying to read books in Spanish, just to see how much of my high school education I still remember.

 

What inspires you?

Ignorance. stupid people. how people act in grocery stores. beautiful women. loud music. I look for anything that will spark my imagination. it can be art, nature, just everyday life at times. I love being able to take the mundane and turn it into a poem that can either be funny or sad. sort of like creating art where there is no art.

 

How did you know you wanted to be a writer and when?

I was a sophomore in high school and we watched Dead Poet’s Society in class. that certainly got the juices flowing. a friend of mine, Jack Hott, was writing at this time. I started to dabble in it and about a month later, I actually wrote something that he thought was decent. Jack also exposed me to the Beat Generation and I was certainly thinking I wanted to be the next Kerouac. then one day, I was sitting on my porch smoking a cigarette and Jack brought over Love is A Dog From Hell by Bukowski. I read 30 pages and looked at him and said, “holy shit, you can write like this and get published?” after that, I knew I just wanted to write poems that were like conversations; real, natural, the guts of life without the flowery language. from that point on, that was all I was put on earth to do.

 

How Do you deal with rejection?

Poorly on some days, better on others. I often think of the submission process like working at a factory. I’m the worker trying to find the right poems to go in the right box. they don’t pay me enough to be right all the time. so, often I will just think of rejection as I need to find the right box for this poem. now, when I write a poem with a certain place in mind and they reject it, I will get a little pissy. but that’s nothing that a tall glass of something strong and some loud music won’t cure.

 

Who are some writers you admire?

John Sweet, Debbie Kirk, Alan Catlin, Don Winter, Doug Draime, Mather Schneider, Ally Malinenko, Charles Bukowski, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, James Babbs, Justin Hyde, Rebecca Schumejda, Hal Sirowitz, Maggie Estep, Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, William Taylor, Jr., Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Dylan Thomas, David McCullough, and probably about 50 others I could mention.

 

Is writing the only artistic medium you do?

I play the guitar and bass guitar poorly. I do dabble with watercolors from time to time. I also tend to think I’m a photographer. I have many interests, mostly because I have a brain that won’t shut off.

 

What would be some advice you would give to your younger self?

Stop worrying that your father doesn’t love you. have the courage to say yes when a strange woman asks you for a ride home from the grocery store. choose comic books over baseball cards. get in a car and just drive. eat a salad every now and then. learn how to dance. choose wine over beer.

 

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Never limit your imagination. keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. remember every name that said you couldn’t or wouldn’t. always question authority. dance with the devil every chance you get. and pick something else if you want to make money.

 

What is your writing process?

I have no set process. I like to write at night mostly. I tend to always write with some music playing. I don’t have to be in the mood to write, but I like it more when I actually have something to say. that being said, I will force myself to just sit in front of a blank page and come up with something every now and then. I tend to write in a notebook on my bed and then type the poems up later in the day or week. a good writing session gives me anywhere from 7 to 10 poems. after the poems are typed up, they go into a file and then I try to forget about them. that way when I start picking poems for submissions, I have a “fresh” set of work in my hands. once the poems get sent out somewhere, for the time being, my work is done.

Blackberry Stains by Jay Passer

I got the weirding way
off my old Grandpa
at the old folk’s
Jewish home for the Aged
back in the 1970s
he was all alone
looked like a baby elephant
with black horned rim glasses
he couldn’t talk right
it was Parkinson’s that gripped him
he smelled of disinfectant and old people
he had to be translated by my father
he doddered and breathed hard
whispering to us kids
I was weird in the way that
I wanted to play baseball instead
even though I sucked at baseball
a liability in right field
an easy out and 9th in the batting order
closer now ear to Grandpa’s halitosis mouth
what’s that? said my dad
he asked you, kid
have you got a hit yet this season?
the near smile on the shaking head
still a sparkle behind the palsy
I was weirdest at the summer camp
forgot the toothbrush
played best in cow fields
unsupervised and Sundays now finally free
but when the old man picked me up from the bus station
to go home in late August of 1976
I already knew
I already knew Grandpa was gone
condolences I kept
to myself and the grieving
kept to the weird way I seemed
to hasten death
the monster child shaking
in a field of poppies
a letter from back home clutched in hand
hand stained with blackberry
pickings
a letter from the first girl
I ever asked
to go steady
the old man didn’t have any idea
my old man steeped in wonderment
when I asked without any prompting
how exactly did Grandpa die
“How in hell could you possibly
know?”
I couldn’t explain at the age of 11
I was labeled a freak alright
but even so
community was tight back in those days

Jay Passer’s work has appeared online and in print since 1988. He lives and works in San Francisco, the city of his birth. His latest chap, Flower Omelette, co-authored with Misti Rainwater-Lites, is available from Lulu.

When You’re Not Hungover by Jennifer Lagier

Evan is always remorseful.
Beats himself up after drunken explosion.
Apologizes, sends his battered wife
romantic cards, Godiva chocolate,
expensive flower arrangements.
Behavior that lasts less than twenty four hours.

It’s a temporary, resentful détente.
Prolongs unhappy cohabitation.
The thought of breaking up,
filing paperwork, dividing assets,
finding separate places to live,
leaves them exhausted.

Easier to look the other way,
immerse herself in work.
Have discreet affairs.
Apply heavy makeup.

Jennifer Lagier has published nine books of poetry as well as in a variety of literary magazines. Her latest book, Camille Vérité, was published by FutureCycle Press. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, co-edits the Homestead Review, maintains web sites for Homestead Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Ping Pong Literary Journal and misfitmagazine. She also helps coordinate monthly Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium Second Sunday readings.

The Weekend: The Same Damn Thing by Alan Catlin

Everyone an auteur, a street
shooter like Winogrand or Macker
in an airport, instant cinema verite
ten minute tracking shots on cell
phones, no editing necessary;
nothing escapes the wandering eye:
young men  expressing themselves
with guns, Molotov cocktails, every
street gathering a confrontation in progress,
a riot about to happen, only an audience
lacking, who needs a cause, when you
can go viral on You Tube?
The plots are all the same: traffic
stops escalating to Murder 1,
irrational man tased by an ill-trained
army of distress-call-responders,
EST on main street, sometimes lethal,
sometimes not, choke holds are
illegal but when the perp is dead,
all the arguing after is useless,
legislate all you want: dead is dead.
All of it live, all of it happening now,
every day, the same damn thing.

Alan Catlin is a widely published poet in the US of A and elsewhere. His most recent book is “Books of the Dead: a memoir with poetry” about the deaths of his parents. He is a retired professional barman and the editor of the online poetry zine misfitmagazine.net.

Making Chutney by Mercedes Webb-Pullman

The baby died two days after birth.
These green tomatoes will never ripen, Jessica.

CT scan’s topography, fingerprint maps.
Onion rings. Here in the apple’s star core
the heart excised, sliced.

Love turns all at once – milk in a thunderstorm,
throat-choking vinegar. The salty crystals
of your kiss, sugar-aching.

Simmer gently, until you can’t tell things apart –
everything’s the same fucking metaphor.

Mercedes Webb-Pullman graduated from IIML Victoria University Wellington with MA in Creative Writing in 2011. Her poems and short stories have appeared online and in print, in Turbine, 4th Floor, Swamp, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, poetryrepairs, Connotations, The Red Room, Otoliths, Cliterature among others, and in her books. She lives on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand.

Learning That Madness Is The Sane Thing To Do by John Alwyine-Mosely

We laughed about the misty weather
it was Cornish sunshine we said

The Sunday lunches
and the truth not noticed
stayed as ever unspoken

I admired how well you were looking
you joked about eating for two now

Once you screamed,
saying it was a nightmare
when I woke you with a kiss

You were something big in publishing
and I pretended to be jealous like old times

To stop love
becoming sex you
once pissed over me

We said we must have a coffee at the new café
as they do such lovely fresh things with chocolate

In the end,
you ran out naked
to become catatonic

We kissed on the cheeks to say goodbye,
you barely flinched and walked away straight-backed

I wish his death had made you free
but as you would have said
so does the lie

John Alwyine-Mosely is a poet from Bristol, England who is new to published poetry. Recent work has also appeared in Stare’s Nest, York Mix, Clear Poetry, Nutshells and Nuggets. Three drops from a cauldron, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Street Cake, Screech Owl, The Ground, Aphelion, Uneven Floor,The Lake, Morphrog and Yellow Chair Review.

A Ten Question Interview With The Artist…Kate Garrett

Why do you write?

Because my head and heart are full of observations, curiosities, ideas, synaesthetic impressions juxtaposed with emotional responses, and things I just need to get off my chest. And because narrative – however disjointed – can help us process our experience, and actually give meaning to any bullshit. I create art from words when faced with the mundane, the sublime, and the horrific, and sometimes it’s all three at once. I write because there is no other option for me.

What books do you read?

Everything – poetry, folklore, horror, thrillers, magical realism, gritty realism, existential novels, chick lit, lit crit, philosophy, maritime history (especially pirates – I have a ridiculous collection of pirate histories and biographies), occult history, mediaeval history, mythology, classics, true crime, fictional crime, YA fiction, fairytales, pop science, pop psych, dystopian sci fi, fantasy… if it has pages (or works on a kindle), I’ll read it.

What inspires you?

Life. Death. Finitude. Music, love, sex, wine, loss, forests, anger, walking, motherhood, the sea, urban decay, interactions with other human beings, being removed from other human beings. Stories, folklore, history, the unfathomable size of the universe. Doubt. And everything in-between.

How did you know you wanted to be a writer and when?

I always say it was in the spring of 1984, when I was almost four years old, and I wrote a Care Bears fan fiction on some scraps of leftover wallpaper. It kept me occupied while my grandma redecorated. What I usually leave out is that one of the Care Bears had a knife – but this is important, as I realised they didn’t have to be caring bears in my story. I could change it. (My then-teenaged aunt, who was more like an older sister, was fond of showing me film adaptations of Stephen King stories.) But I learned to read when I was two and made up stories before I could write them down, so it’s difficult to remember a time when words, books, and stories weren’t my life. It’s who I am. I mean, on some spiritual or philosophical level, it probably isn’t who I am, but in any other sense it would be difficult to see myself as anything other than a writer.

How Do you deal with rejection?

Very well. Every editor has their own aesthetic vision for their publication. If my poems or flash fictions aren’t right for them, cool. I’ll send elsewhere. When a poem is accepted, I’m well aware not every reader will feel my work even if an editor does. It’s too subjective to worry about. I’d write whether the work was published or not, but I wouldn’t be answering these interview questions. I’ve thickened my skin over the years. People digging my work, that’s why I continue to submit to journals, because art does make human connections. But rejection is necessary; it keeps us balanced.

Who are some writers you admire?

Daniel Defoe, I have a real soft spot for Daniel Defoe novels. It’s the picaresque, that journey through so much crazy life. And in no particular order, dead and alive, poetry and prose, famous and/or who I know personally, or otherwise: Stephen King, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Gillian Clarke, Sharon Olds, Mab Jones, Haruki Murakami, Sarah Thomasin, Sally Goldsmith, Sylvia Plath, Bethany W Pope, Greg Graffin (singer-songwriter from Bad Religion), Evangeline Jennings, Albert Camus, Angela Readman, Neil Gaiman, Steve Nash, Anna Percy, Bob Dylan… there are far too many, because I admire anyone who writes, puts the effort in, and does it their own way.

Is writing the only artistic medium you do?

I like making visual art (but I’m not very good at most of it), and I love taking photos and singing as well. I used to think I wanted to be a singer professionally; my voice is strong, I took voice lessons in my teens, been in bands – but for me, making music was always second best to writing the words.

What would be some advice you would give to your younger self?

It’ll all work out in the end, even though it’s painful. There’s nothing you can do to change it, because it isn’t you, it’s them. But don’t be so solitary – join a writing group or something in London. Go to more open mics in Cincinnati. Wherever you live, there will be scribblers. But even if you don’t find them, the trap you’re in won’t hold forever.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Read as much as you can, live as much as you can. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try not to fear change – in life or in your writing.

What is your writing process?

Scribble a bunch of unintelligible crap into notebook. Scribble some more. Type up anything that might be salvageable. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Look at poem / story that now looks nothing like the original pages of longhand. Edit some more. Fin. (Or not, because nothing is ever finished, we just stop staring at it and accept what is.)

Kate Garrett writes poetry and flash fiction. Her pamphlet ‘The names of things unseen’ is part of Caboodle, the six-poet collection from Prolebooks. She is a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the editor of Pankhearst’s Slim Volume anthologies, and the webzine three drops from a cauldron. She lives in Sheffield.