Farewell TransmissionBy Benjamin Niespodziany
Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer whose work has appeared in HAD, Fence, hex, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. His chapbook manuscript was recently awarded the 2025 Poetry Prize with Gasher Press. Along with hosting the Neon Night Mic reading series, he runs the poetry publication Piżama Press. You can find more at neonpajamas.com.
By R. Gerry Fabian
3:45 am and I am finally home.
Four trailer loads and a bonus
leave me flush for a while.
I am on Red Bull overcharge
and three steps beyond hungry.
The hall light is off. Odd.
I call your name.
At this hour of the morning,
I recognize my error immediately
and tip-toe to the kitchen.
Opening the fridge, I take out
the egg carton with three eggs.
I check the bread for possible toast.
Each slice is green with mold.
Grabbing a non-stick pan
I break the eggs and scramble them.
There’s beer in the fridge.
I open it hoping to dull the Red Bull.
Sliding the eggs onto a plate
I take a small swallow of beer
and begins to eat the eggs.
The carton is on the table
and the expiration date
confirms the obvious.
R. Gerry Fabian is a published writer and poet from Doylestown, PA. He has published seven books of poetry: Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts, Wildflower Women, Pilfered Circadian Rhythm, Hidden Danger, including his poetry baseball book, Ball On The Mound. Web Page | X | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook | BlueSky
By Saba Zahoor
It rained in Kashmir again
and I dreamed once more
of turning into its soil,
waiting to receive the diaphanous, fertile rains–
ripe with the smell of bulbous fruit pulp
that coax the rivers awake.
I would weave myself
roots and rain’s silver threads
into lush green carpets.
How I long to be the earth sodden with rain–
to hold close every drop of goodness offered.
I have moved far from home
dwelling in fossil aquifers.
Here, rain falls obliquely, fitfully—
flash floods, ephemeral streams
drowning the sinful dust devils.
Each sudden downpour weighs
heavy on the soul like a debt.
And every attempt to repay
falls short of the favor.
The realization is a callous bone
wedged between my teeth:
For all my intentions to receive
like my home soil–
I am the baked sand that cannot hold–
yet there are rocks through which springs gush forth.
*The final line is adapted from Qur’an 2:74.
Saba Zahoor is an engineer, born in Kashmir and currently living in Saudi Arabia. She is a self-styled peasant poet who views poetry as a portal to alternate realities.
By Anthony Ikeh
Anthony Ikeh is a Nigerian writer & self-acclaimed cinephile. When he’s not writing or reading, he spends his time searching for bliss that exists between numbers, particularly between zero and one. His work are on or forthcoming on Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, The Shallow Tales Review, Yugen Quest Review, Metaworker Literary, Eunoia Review, The B’k Magazine, Afrohill Press, African Writer Magazine, The Mixtape Review & elsewhere. He tweets @lanalovesbooks0
By Paul Smith
In physical therapy
we learned the difference
between pain and discomfort
Jessica spread my legs apart
like I’m a rotisserie chicken
and I felt it in my hip
the one they redid
but I said ‘No’
when she asked if it hurt
I liked saying ‘No’ to whatever
that burning was
then I cancelled then rest of
my sessions with her
because at some point someone
said
stop when there is discomfort
and I thought it and pain
were one and the same
we are expected to know
the difference
like we are supposed to know
the difference between
lots of things
but between all the things
we can choose is us
we are a pivot point
a fulcrum
that can go one way
or the other
especially when Jessica’s eyes implied
I should push through the pain
and just call it discomfort
because pain is just a thing in my head
and it gets murky
Dad said there wasn’t
much black and white
out there but a whole lot of gray
and Dad said
he could always beat a zone defense
Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has travelled all over the place and met lots of people from all walks of life. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. He is a featured poet at Mad Swirl.
By Liz Falco
Liz Falco is a poet and high school English teacher from Provincetown, MA. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (as Liz Bergman), antiphony, Cape Cod Compass, Do Not Submit, bethh, GROTTO, and Looky Here Magazine. Her chapbook, NO WAKE, came out in December 2025. She co-hosts Morning Shift at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA, where she now lives.
by DS Maolalai
A Trip
I’m somewhere in Meath or Kildare with a man to assess an insurance claim.
we’re discussing the injury – somebody walking apparently tripped.
the drain has been patched over since.
with cement to stop anyone tripping.
he wants to know why, because that’s evidence.
I have nothing to say except “somebody tripped” so we look at the path and repairs. around us.
it’s a housing estate out in Newbridge and never not raining.
there’s guys up on ladders, clearing the gutters of caked-earth.
Joe says hello and curses the damp in his gloves.
the insurance man doesn’t comment.
he is no mystic – no mind toward the future.
he jigsaws together what has already happened.
and who should have known it might.
Solstice
standing in sunset
behind the brick back wall of maintenance dispatch
on saturday.
the motorbikes are stacked in the bay
like teeth on an old five-comb.
we take a minute
while the phones at our desks ring other emergencies,
and talk about what we would rather
be doing.
matt offers cigarettes to each of the boys
and to ciara.
I hurry one down.
you can almost tell time by the shadows of buildings.
light between stones at a neolithic solstice
the staggered approach of shift-change.
An unpolished shoe
they work together
carefully, cutting up weeds between cobble
like surgeons attacking a tumour.
fresh, healthy sunburn has thickened their cheeks
to something approaching the toe on an unpolished shoe.
I meet them onsite – ask what they’ve done
and where they still have to get to.
I don’t like to criticise their work.
they do it better than I ever could,
these healthy young immigrant men.
felipe’s getting married this summer.
we have to find someone
to take over his round for the week.
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)
by Conor Hultman
#000000
logical heart
precious hoped gentle wind
me finger I my
#029CBC
parallel so not
return grace silly trunk
livid sang ran
Conor Hultman lives in New York, New York.
by John Grey
staggering down
the middle of Main Street
red-eyed
dress torn
one arm tattooed
the other bleeding
not holy
not clean
just another ghost
from the dead side of town
in the courthouse square
screaming out a name
and what he did to her
no stars out
moon hiding
behind a cloud
and the whole damn town
pretending not to hear
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Writer’s Block and Trampoline.
by J S Khan
Here’s some saliva for a blind eye:
on Christmas Day, 1560, Peruvian natives
invented El Dorado, the City of Gold,
die Fabel vom Goldland El Dorado,
(as Herzog has it, or to quote precisely),
and Aguirre went mad on the river as a caravel
crucified itself, a jungle came unfleshed,
and monkeys invaded the Spanish flotilla,
overrunning the last refuge of white men
and their daughters, laughing, or else,
seeming to laugh, which is just as bad.
Despite this, sperm banks still seek
a few good men, only check the ads.
Powerful—but in the wrong context.
On the other hand, flattery is nice.
These days, no sharp delineation of void
and land remains, thanks to the cunning
of resentful savages, but educated idiots
chatter on my stairwell too. Can you believe
blurb is a word? The coffee pots breathe
like Darth Vader in my kitchen, and I ponder
ancient moralities carved in their usual
binary codes. Lexicon is not even in my
lexicon. Wake me up on Judgment Day.
J S Khan’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in MQR, Fourteen Hills, Post Road Magazine, BRUISER MAG, BULL, and Burial Magazine.
By Lana Valdez
Reminiscing on a Prosperous City You Once Ran Away to
You drank Bellinis at hardware stores with crystal chandeliers and
tried not to get him in your photos,
the gluttony on both your faces,
marked. You had no predecessors,
only ancestors laughing at you,
at your silk scarves from the vintage store,
the cheap wallet, a prop.
A prosperous city, a pseudonym for your socials,
but he’ll find you anyway, you should never worry, he says.
By Cristal and candlelight
you take your steaks medium rare,
the ones that will be his ruin.
You used to come here with your mother, now it’s a hideout.
How did you come to own the shelter, you ask,
the luxury homeless shelter for young girls?
In the Middle of an Impossible Summer
where your gums stick to the roof of your own mouth,
you have a choice.
Don’t tell me about poison
when all the lizards are hiding, when no one
rises in the dark to feed the ocean,
to clean the heaps of trash from her banks.
There are rocking chairs in the swamp
eaten up by the storm and this town was never small.
A sleek slight of hand, our backyards up to our temples.
Tell me this is true in your mind,
tell me you understand, it was never your poison.
Debating on Whether or Not I Should Buy Groceries
on the first of the month when I still haven’t rewired my brain from last month, a spectacle of sleepless eyes like saucers, of oyster dinners on the bay and dry nosebleeds. When you’re living out of a suitcase you have nowhere, nowhere to put your vanity- tracing lipstick on perfect skin, searching for the perfect spot to sit with your shadow, the shades odd and drawn. If I was worried about buying eggs, I didn’t show it, busying my mind with my reflection, burying the rampant gray hairs down, down, down the drain, shards of glass and pulp gathering at the bottom.
LANA VALDEZ is a poetess and thought daughter currently living in New Jersey. Her debut collection, “I Rot,” is available via Filthy Loot, and her work also appears in Spectra, Expat, Dream Boy Book Club, and others.
By 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.