Farewell TransmissionBy Ben Nardolilli
Ben Nardolilli is a theoretical MFA candidate at Long Island University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Door Is a Jar, The Delmarva Review, Red Fez, The Oklahoma Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Slab. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.
By Ewen Glass
Ewen Glass is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise and a body of self-doubt; his poetry has appeared in the likes of Okay Donkey, Maudlin House, HAD, Poetry Scotland and One Art. Bluesky/X/IG: @ewenglass
By Jack B. Bedell
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Brawl Lit, Moist, and other journals. He’s also had pieces included in Best Microfiction, Best Spiritual Literature, and the Wigleaf Top 50 long list. His latest collection is Ghost Forest (Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
By Chris McCreary
Chris McCreary‘s latest book of poems, awry, was published in 2024 by White Stag. He lives in South Philadelphia and on IG at @chris___mccreary.
By Guy Cramer
Guy Cramer is a medical worker and writer from the Ark-La-Tex region. He has been published in a number of online journals, including Vestal Review, JAKE, Citywide Lunch, and elsewhere. He is on IG: @guy.cramer
By Mitchell Galloway
Mitchell Galloway lives in Gainesville, Florida. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Forever Magazine, The Panacea Review, R&R (Relegation Books), and Subtropics. He can be found on Instagram @mitchellgalloways and on X @mitchgalloways.
By Ben Pease
The Steeple Bell
My father said it was nice, nice,
that we had a chance to ask
my mother what she wanted
a week before she died:
service at the church, no funeral
home, ask Gail about the song
about the eagles (we never did),
a simple meal, “Bury me next
to my first husband—but not until
you’re dead too, Rod—to mix
our ashes,” and then she pointed at me
from the bed in the living room,
(ghost bed I’d see long after
it was removed) from that quiet mouth
of hell, she said to me
“You’re in charge.”
I tried to stop him
but my father
insisted on asking,
“What do you want to be cremated in
the dress from Ben’s wedding,
or the one from our renewal of vows?”
The closet full of seasonal clothes
and the duck print sleeping bag
where we placed my mother’s ashes
on the high shelf.
What Comes First
There’s no space for warmth here
between the double-paned hospital
window and the drive to the gold coast
where I lay out a sheet of plastic
and cut out rotted windowsills
as the snow hastens and stops
once I’ve made it halfway home
from work early. More hawks
than there used to be however
harried on their watch, the camel
keeping the sheep, the draft horse
eating its grass among the mules.
My wife lets out extended notes
of labor and a handful of my shirt
and after twelve hours of it
the hospital becomes familiar:
a loved one immobilized
in an adjustable bed. Unsure
of the question, I watch
my wife riddle a physical
sphinx and come out of it
with not just her own life.
Once I get to hold my child,
her eyes grey blue, I observe
my mother rising out
of the unconscious, bewildered
by her son become a father.
Ben Pease is the author of the full-length poetry collection Chateau Wichman: A Blockbuster in Verse (Big Lucks Books), a poetry-infused Dungeons & Dragons adventure module called The Light of Mount Horrid (Ghost in the Forest Games), the hybrid illustrated edition Furniture in Space (factory hollow press), and a few chapbooks. He is a co-founder of the Ruth Stone House and Sistrum Books.
By Julián Martinez
Jesus
The Vatican’s senior accountant started locking her office door, ignoring emails. Calls. Knocks. From out in the hall, her colleagues of the Holy See heard sobs. Invoices needed to be processed. No one had any idea how much they’d gone over budget, if they’d gone over or if not, how close they’d gotten. When greeted on the stairs, she’d walk faster, graying head down. She’d jet out at odd times, once immediately after coming in and shutting her door behind her. “Boss Macabre,” The Pope dubbed her over coffee with a cardinal, according to a rumor. Dozens of theories proliferated. The HR director prayed for her before every meal. What no one guessed was that the sixty-five year old was months pregnant and suffering a nightly nightmare: Jesus enraged in Herod’s Temple, flipping the tables of the money lenders. Her child was obvious— his Second Coming had been prophesied. She’d never taken those stories seriously, but for the first time in her life, she surrendered to His power. She confided all this over the phone one night with her ex-husband, the con artist, the last person she’d been intimate with over a decade ago. He told her she should be institutionalized. That’s exactly it, she thought. I’ve become institutionalized. Her stomach sank. Then a kick.
Pussy
Wire taped to my chest, I stared at my crotch to avoid looking at the open shirt in the dresser
mirror’s reflection. Green boxer briefs with tropical flowers and flamingos on the waistband. The phrase ‘big pussy’ flashed in my mind. Imagining Big Pussy from Sopranos in the mirror instead of myself made it bearable to button my shirt— it wouldn’t be me kissing the neck of my crime boss wife, asking questions about slush funds pumped with funny money over slow jams at
Easter Sunday brunch. It’d be some other rat in my place. It’d be Big Pussy. I saw Big Pussy,
sauced on a boat, riddled with bullets that never paused for a reload by my towering wife. My dick stood up at the thought. “Wait, what the fuck? Why?” I asked my crotch. My FBI handler,
coming in from the bathroom, cleared his throat and tapped his watch.
Cleo
Her jeweled hands passed over the crystal ball like ocean waves. She told me exactly how I’m supposed to die— an infection in my skull after a fall from a stranger’s window. At one point, I asked her how she could be Miss Cleo when the Miss Cleo from TV had passed away. She froze, index finger tickling my palm’s heart line, candlelight painting the maroon of her nails a deep shade, and took a breath of the Nag Champa basement air. She exhaled with a chuckle and, dropping her Caribbean accent, she said, “it’s a persona owned by the company I work for, my dear.” I thought then that I’d fallen for a scam, but she proceeded to lay my life open like the tarot cards she had me shuffle. She knew me better than anyone ever had— every embarrassing habit, every good thing about me. She said I would soon go through tough financial times— this was a couple weeks ago— then yesterday my boss called me into the conference room and told me I was being laid off. Miss Cleo said I’d be falling in love sooner rather than later, which I found hard to believe, until the memory of her dark brown eyes and silky fingertips kept me up all last night. I came back for another reading this morning but the neon sign in the house’s window is gone. I called her company’s 24-hour hotline a dozen times but it was never her, the ladies’ Caribbean accents sounding forced and offensive coming out of them. They all said they were Miss Cleo, but the real Miss Cleo is out there. Not the real real Miss Cleo, but my Miss Cleo. I love her. I need her. I don’t care how I die anymore. I need her to tell me how I’m supposed to live.
Julián Martinez loves Chicago so much, he’s marrying her. Find him @martinezfjulian or martinezfjulian.com.
By Damon Hubbs
Brink
Gossiping with Alyson and Alys.
Fika, visiting cake.
Nobody is Swedish although Nadia is the type of blonde
you’d kill a prime minister for.
I read the papers and gamble on papal elections.
To think of all the beauty and bloodshed,
fuck it. I’m lying to myself and others.
Artifice in loud terms.
Nadia gives me a jagged hump
and I’m on the oozy brink
when she starts talking about Irish writers
and some esthetician
in Palm Springs
nicknamed Jack the Ripper.
It’s strange how people cling together.
Darling, don’t shoot until the subject hits you.
I’m barely awake when you call me Finnegan
stately, plump (picnic, lightning).
I mock the myths I help create
make faces in the surveillance camera.
Where we’re headed, where we are
halfway down the coast I lost the comic timing,
pick up the phone like a cold kiss—
yes, Nadia, the fire escape is burning
and I’m watching the deaf republic
under a wild pack of stars.
I’m thinking about the poet
who dropped an electric toothbrush into her cunt
and fried my cock.
Love after love after love
I’m pissing like the Colosseum in full view
listening to the pretty tyranny of the wind.
Patagonia Picnic Table Effect
Somewhere between night and the morning after
queer shades of future dusk
Berluti knot, orange wine, lips like an extra maraschino
we talk about art and Genet and the birdshit on the bench.
“You should write a poem about birds,”
she says, not knowing I’d sworn off bird poetry
preferring to write poems about petite mort and 21st century malaise
clubby androgynous youth, gobs of spit, vape girls, egirls
empty theaters and red latrines, Aslan’s pin-ups, lui magazine
desire that isn’t explained, desire with a mouth like a dirty rest stop,
Vogue Italia, dressing for the rapture, what it means to be exiled,
what it means to be stripped of happiness, what it means to be stripped
like a saint, murder holes, arrow loops, Divine’s funeral, my complete
fear of list poems, biographies, throat cancer, my complete fear of Kathy
Acker, Trazodone, nightstands, spotlights, Piss Flowers, the exquisiteness
of tiramisu, the slippage between desire and disgust, the foil to her
flamboyance, Stabat Mater, my complete fear of Connecticut, the
insurance man, the cricket-impresario, tennis elbow, preferring to
write poems about coupling, decoupling, parallelism, lines of influence
and what it means to find a rare species, and another, and another —
Yellow Grosbeak, Thick-billed Kingbird, a nesting pair of Rose-throated
Becards.
Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He’s the author of three chapbooks and a full-length collection, Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Recent publications include Apocalypse Confidential, The Crank, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Spectra, the engine(idling, Horror Sleaze Trash, & others. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.
By Tim Frank
My revenge will be to live well.
I’ll sink my teeth into slabs
Of steak,
Let the garlic butter ooze
From my lips
As Weiss beer bursts
Upon my eager tongue.
I’ll dream of ice-cold water
Pooling around my feet
And watch the evening game
While chaining cigarettes—
Blowing rings of smoke
At the waning moon,
Creating new plateaus
Of beauty
From my idle thoughts.
And yet, what good does living well
Really do?
We cruise
Through worlds aligned
But are judged by different gods—
Indifferent gods,
Not worthy of our prayers.
You’re a phantom figure
Beyond my vengeful reach.
So do your worst, my simple friend—
Set fire to your block
Make your children cry
Tim Frank’s work has been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Metaworker and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24) and his second chapbook of poetry is, Delusions To Live By (Alien Buddha Press, ’25)
Twitter: @TimFrankquill