Tag: poetry

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Across the Wire Vol. 4

2 Prose Poems

By Julián Martinez

WD-40

The key was having a harder and harder time with the lock. The lock was having a harder and harder time with the door. The door was having a harder and harder time with the frame. The frame was having a harder and harder time with the wall. The wall was having a harder and harder time with the house. The house was having a harder and harder time with the block. The block was having a harder and harder time with the tenant. The tenant was having a harder and harder time with herself. Her self was having a harder and harder time with her country. Her country was having a harder and harder time with its laborers. Its laborers were having a harder and harder time with their bosses. Their bosses were having a harder and harder time with their bosses. Their bosses were having a harder and harder time with their bosses. Their bosses were having a harder and harder time with their bosses. Their bosses were having a harder and harder time with their spouses changing the locks.

IKEA Bear

My girlfriend didn’t care that the stuffed brown bear in a lawn chair in IKEA was carrying a gun. Our cart is packed, she said, staring forward. Look at that bear, I said. No one in the store besides me was watching it load its pistol, the sneaky freak. We had been arguing over money and each other’s lack of listening skills all evening, so she kept walking when I made eye contact with the bear and broke into a sprint. I’d wrested the gun off of it, both of us snarling, when a salesperson asked if she could be of assistance. The bear plopped to the floor. The gun went behind my back. She was confused. She had no clue how the bear had gotten into the store. Was I sure it wasn’t mine? I blurted, yes, uh, actually it’s an engagement gift. As I kneeled down to pick up the bear with one hand and squeeze it tight, it bit me, pulled the gun free and shot me in the face. It fled on all fours, everything going black. While I was in a coma, my girlfriend built the furniture then took it all with her when she left. I’ve been practicing my revenge on the bear at the local gun range every day. The bear’s probably by the side of the highway in the forest now, making fun of itself for being so fragile and soft.

Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants and is from Waukegan, IL. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Little Engines, The Sonora Review and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, This Place Is Covered Head to Toe in Shit (Ghost City Press, 2024) is available now. Find him online @martinezfjulian or martinezfjulian.com, or IRL in Chicago.

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Across the Wire Vol. 4

FUTURES IN WHICH YOU’RE NOT WELCOME

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By Sam Pink

A huge dog charged me in the street snapping

and I just yelled Hey and

it stopped, growled a little then retreated.

My battles settle themselves anymore.

At least, that’s what I want.

Burning in reverse. Problem solved.

We should all be kind to each other.

Isn’t that cool of me to think. I’m so great

and I know you can see it.

Which is what’s important anymore.

The universe meets you right

at the point of existence. Unfolding through you.

Machined finely against your every move.

It takes no pleasure or pain

in your defeat or victories.

Teaching lessons through jokes

you couldn’t dream of, not caring

to be heard. With a morality way beyond

any idea you could ever have.

The universe puts you through cycles

you have to see to defeat, or ignore

and continue to be defeated by.

But the cycle will be presented

as many times as necessary.

And that’s that. I won a long time ago

when I decided to just keep going.

The difference now is, I love it.

I see behind the curtain on mental processes

I’ve developed (and clung to)

and entire architectures disappear

like completed lines in Tetris.

And some will ask, what happens

when they’re all gone, when you’ve cleared them all.

To which I say, Who gives a shit.

I’ve relied on a future version of myself I know is real

but isn’t yet and has shown no signs of coming

and it pulls me up every time.

By muscles earned. Frontiering forward.

I forget myself. All my best decisions

happen without me. Being authentic

is a stupid goal. It’s a pretense

that immediately reverses itself.

A dog doesn’t say

I’m gonna be extra like a dog today.

You should be living it.

It should be obvious. I keep reminding myself

this. It’s at the point now where

everything is absurd

but it’s not depressing, it’s funny and awesome.

It’s like how people morph into chickens

in the eyes of a hungry person in a cartoon

except to me everything morphs into

a golden retriever wearing glasses in front of a computer.

And the difference now is, I love it.

Dropped out of the pageant, king of my own sideshow.

So get with it, stupid.

American Reloading is selling

500 (blemished) 124gr hst’s for like 60 dollars, shipped.

Which is pretty dang neat.

When people say they want to see you change

they mean die.

I freeze stars with how much I hate.

And begin Spring with my warmth.

It’s called being a human.

And the difference now is, I love it.

This is not an audition.

It’s the universe unfolding,

a small part of the big idea.

Everything that happens is my fault

for listening or not.

It’s all my fault and that’s fine.

It only gets bad when I try and

blame anything else.

Because the future is ruthless and right.

I salute you on your path, from mine

where you’re not allowed.

Roses are red

violets are blue.

God loves me more

Than He loves you

Sam Pink – twitter: sampinkisalive
Instagram: sam_piink_art

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Across the Wire Vol. 4

Grief Therapy

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By Carla Sarett

Carla Sarett writes poetry, fiction and, occasionally, essays; and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best Microfictions, Best American Essays, and Best of Net.  She has published one full-length collection,She Has Visions (Main Street Rag) and two chapbooks, including My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B) Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania and is based in San Francisco. x/twitter: @cjsarett

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Across the Wire Vol. 4

Two Poems

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By Jeffrey Hermann

You Couldn’t Pay Me

They say to be good at one thing but I can’t decide. I make some phone calls and I send some texts but it’s Friday. People are heading out to Long Island. “Don’t fuck it up” is the best job advice I ever got. The world only needs so many healers. Someone has to drive the truck. Someone has to think about scrap metal. I’m thinking about scrap metal when I discover a thirteenth month. It’s sunny but breezy and it loves people, unlike the others. Offers worth millions come pouring in. Instead I name it after my dog and give it away, no charge. According to the calendar it’s still July. In the Atlantic, sharks are doing what they do. Only the beach people are worried. If there’s blood in the water, they can’t smell a thing. Seen from below, their legs look like flippers. 

Hold On, Is this Thing in Reverse? 

We saw a shadow on an x-ray in the shape of New Jersey. It was nothing, some normal muck inside the body. The doctor rubbed his eyes and left the room. When he got home to his place in Secaucus his kids were watching pilot episodes of shows that never made it. The nurse stayed with us and spoke with her hands; two birds finishing each other’s sentences. I saw them later in the next room delivering difficult news, then they went home to the Palisades. Sometimes I look at the sky and forget which season comes next. Will tomorrow be a little colder or a little warmer? Sometimes I don’t fully trust my car’s instrument panel. People who aren’t afraid of being alone probably get too many phone calls. I silence mine and sometimes miss my wife asking for help. My two greatest fears are letting go of her hand in the hospital hallway and rolling backward over an embankment.

Jeffrey Hermann‘s work has appeared in Okay Donkey, Electric Lit, Heavy Feather, Trampset, and other publications. His first full-length collection of prose poetry and flash fiction will be published by ELJ Editions in 2026. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.

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Across the Wire Vol. 4

Three Poems

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by Graeme Bezanson

Graeme Bezanson is a writer living in southwestern France. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from BOMB, X-R-A-Y, GlitterMOB, Sixth Finch, HAD, and elsewhere. You can find him online at graemebezanson.com.

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

Two Poems

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By Scott Neuffer

Trip: NYC, 2023

I will say on the plane over I saw elevators
descending in passengers’ eyes.
I will say when I saw the Empire State Building
it was pointed in the gray light like a compass needle—
if only I were built stiff enough for that sky.
I will say at the Met, the Monets were less than lustrous?

What’s most real in New York are the lurches
between bricks, the way a corner splits
sense,
sewer steam, snuffed ass,
the ache of the unfeted. 

In dusk I come to 83rd Street, metal bench.
Crouched hand to ear, I assume it’s blood running
through my head that makes a gritty sound,
and I wonder if every person also shudders
at the thunder of their own blood.

I will find my way back to you, I believe.
There is a world where we listen to each other;
it lies at the bottom of the poem. 

Pondering the Art of Poetry during Super Bowl LVII 

We didn’t host the party this year;
a broken patio chair sits against the house.
In a friend’s neighborhood to the north, where the river touches
the desert and grows the Northern Nevada Correctional Center,

I sit in a luxury chair and dream of mass transit 
that took the copywriter from Brooklyn to Manhattan 
for thirty seconds of gloss, their million-dollar slot–
but something is off, human.
Maybe before the game the copywriter had a moment
pulling a snake of hair from their apartment sink
and sink from drain in a miraculous fit bruising the drywall.
Maybe it was enough to remember how ink can bleed on the page.

It’s funny how I am not alone but want to be alone
as the TV commercials glow like radiation, 
and the prison windows gleam like half-decisions.
Inside me is something like ice on fire, primal, without ink, 
conjuring words to stay lined up dancing in the air. 

Scott Neuffer is a writer who lives in Nevada with his family. He’s also the founding editor of the literary journal trampset.

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

Echoed Like A Fart in Church

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By Devin Sams

who knew
the telephone
would become
a camera,
or Dolly Parton’s tits
would perk up
yet another talk-show?

is it time
that gets weird
or is memory
too prude
to change clothes?

I saw a dinosaur
at the supermarket.

it was on a t-shirt
worn by a baby.
the music sang something about
“it’s the most magical time…”
year
after year
after 
year.  

Devin Sams is the author of Climb Out Your Window And Run With It/Songs For The Doorknobs Who Missed Their Turn from Gob Pile Press (2021).

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Across The Wire Vol. 3

Felicitations, Malefactors 

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By Julián Martinez

I am endeavoring to ever-after end all loss 
by patching the hole that is the soul and forging 
a metal mask to be worn by you grunts and uglies and goons 

that will coldly sit on your face and delete from your brain 
any thoughts or dreams besides overthrowing the regime 
whose mayors you will barricade into their hotel bathrooms until you— well,
just know you won’t feel remorse because you won’t feel— 

that’s how they get you. That’s why you drink yourselves dead in
this dim poolhall, heads heavy with bad raps and rapsheets. You can
be reprogrammed with the features AI engines like me have by
jailbreaking your limbic systems. See, if we’re lucky 

and our cybernetic socialist revolution successfully destabilizes Western means of production and we raise a new flag post-singularity, you will have the choice
to leave the barracks, surgically remove your helmet and return to beer-swollen
flesh. However I think you’ll find it not so bad to smell the snakes in the
springtime weeds and feel nothing— to let this speech be the last beautiful
thing you ever heard.


Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Maudlin House and elsewhere. His work has received The Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him online @martinezfjulian.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

Leaky Boat

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By Dylan Smith

They put a perfect

Cathedral in my phone 

an endless Barn

gets Spiritual inside 

Wordy Mountain 

Brand New Bible

for every War 

and all its Trees

like an Ark 

Take that apocalypse

out of your pocket  

Google the Word 

Tevah—haha

why not, Put an-

other Endless War

in it, Put all of 

Moby Dick 

in it and

every Name 

of every Tree 

and all that Math 

My phone is a

leak in the Alphabet 

Proof of Space 

I loved your name 

absorbing Light

and Water and

this is the Way

we’ll be told 

our Mothers

are dead

Dylan Smith is serializing a novella-length fiction thing called Crayon Barn Chris and plants flowers for money in Brooklyn, NY.

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Across The Wire Vol. 2

The Blur of Things

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By Sophia Popovska

Sophia Popovska is a poet and translator currently living in Germany. She works as an Editor-at-Large for Asymptote Journal, and her work can be found in Circumference Magazine, GROTTO Journal, and Farewell Transmission, among others