Failed Poet Theater

You stared out at our radiant world with an intense, even belligerent, expression. A ratty top hat, at least half a size too small, sat on your head at a treacherous angle. Your gaunt, wrinkled cheeks might have come from having lived on the street or being tortured in some foreign jail for political crimes, but didn’t. These were the years you renamed yourself, smoked a white clay pipe, worked in a carnival of night sweats and empty thought bubbles. Sometimes the stock market cratered. Other times you just wished we each could experience the irony of posthumous cult status.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of What It Is and How to Use It (2019) from Grey Book Press, among other poetry collections.

Last Dance

Rain blackens the windows, dime-sized water balloons of toxic ash. We haven’t had sun in months, and now this. You look up and say, Think it’ll stop? I love how you still look up, that instinctive angle of hope, of God.

It doesn’t matter since ration deliveries have ended, but I don’t say that.

We stand on the porch and watch the rain. Our last neighbors emerge from their house, wave, then slow dance down the street. By the time they reach the corner they’re convulsing like punk rockers. I ask you to dance but you pull me back inside.

From Guest Contributor Charles Duffie

Requiem For The Unappreciated

“Did’ya hear blah died?” the barman had imparted, rather than asked, punctuation notwithstanding.

“Names don’t stay with me,” I’d admitted, and lifted my pint – eyes pointedly on the telly.

“Used to be regular – face all scarred.” Hint not taken.

I’d shrugged and adjusted my angle to him.

“You know him.” It was a slow day ­– the other customers had wisely chosen not to sit at the counter.

“Probably,” I’d ceded, thrusting my annoyance deep beneath a façade of affability.

It must have leaked, for the subject was dropped.

Two weeks later I noticed that an acclaimed local poet had died.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid