Where's Frank?

It was 2:30. AL'S BAR opened at 3:00. Al, sitting by the counter, squinted at the door.

“Is that you, Edna? We're closed.”

The place was poorly lit.

“I know. I just wondered if Frank was here last night. He found some money I hid. I figured he must have gone out drinking.”

“Maybe he went to the track?”

“Nah, not enough money.”

“I didn't see him. Did you try THE TOP HAT or LEO'S LOUNGE?”

“No.”

“How about TED'S PLACE.”

“No way, Al. It wasn't much money, and you know Frank. He only goes to crummy places like this...”

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

Lights Out

I heard the news today, oh boy. The sun has gone supernova and in six hours the earth is a cinder. Judy and I broke up, so I went to Henry’s Bar in the hopes of being some woman’s last chance. The one woman there was working her way through the guys. Her "dance card” was already filled. With time growing short, I’d give Judy another chance. She told me “Duke you should have gotten the message. I’m not going to waste my little time left with you. I’m in Jason’s bed making the best of the end of world.”

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

Flowers

All I must do is deliver the package. I am told he’ll use the code “flowers”.

I flirt with the guard. I compliment his uniform and touch his shoulder and that’s all it takes to get through the checkpoint. The paper is hidden in a secret compartment of my compact mirror, but I didn’t want to take a chance.

The bar is busy, and I see the man the agent described to me sitting alone. I casually walk over and sit next to him.

“The flowers are in full bloom,” he says.

I slip the paper in his jacket pocket.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Weightlifting

When he first started pushing barbells, he did it to get his anger out, throwing the weights from his body, stressing his tendons as he exhaled sprays of spit with every red-faced repetition, every sweaty pump. He realized his joints wouldn’t last long hurling metal, so he calmed his approach, traded manic intervals – of fighting gravity with fury – for calculated precision, and he’d demonstrate, lying down on a chair with an invisible bar connecting his fists, showing us the proper form of a barbell press, his big forearms and biceps flexing and twisting slowly as his muscles contracted, then extended.

From Guest Contributor Parker Wilson

Parker is a writer and editor living in Highland Park. He is a recent MFA graduate and spends his free time running along the Detroit River. He’s published in Bristol Noir and is a founding editor at DUMBO Press.

Instagram:@parkerreviewsbooks

Portmanteau

My parents named me Heaven, a combination of their names, Heather and Kevin. They said it meant I was the most special parts of both of them.

They got divorced when I was twelve, and split everything between them, including me. They never understood the irony.

One time a guy tried to pick me up in a bar by asking if my name was Heaven. When I told him yes, he was too surprised to tell me I was the answer to his prayers.

Lucky for him. His name was Mel, and that would have made for one lousy portmanteau.

At The Bar

Drunk Joe asked the man next to him at the bar “Do you believe in flying saucers? I think they are a crock.”

“No it’s absurd. They have it all wrong. Our ships are triangular.”

”Huh?”

“Aliens aren’t little green men. We come in many colors. You get light and dark ones here.”

“Where do you get these ideas?”

“I’m a triangle pilot. They are half as wide as they are long. Don’t believe me? We look mostly like humans, but” it pulls up its pants and takes off its shoes “see – four legs.”

Joe goes home and quits drinking.

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

Dead Flowers

I was still in my twenties. A woman at the bar grabbed my arm and asked for my help. But I also would have rather done the tying than be the one tied up. Faraway in time, my doctor was phoning me with the results of the biopsy. I had what he called “an oddball cancer.” Of course, I did. What other kind would a poet have? The woman, her back now to me, was singing along with the jukebox about all the lonely people, a small, crumpled sound like foul dead flower water at the bottom of a vase.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, is available from Laughing Ronin Press. He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Standish

Tyler unfolded from the blue compact. His knees hurt. He had suffered this torture for one reason: to keep Standish quiet...forever.

Ten years as a bartender at the Capital Club, the city’s most prominent private club, provided Standish with enough knowledge to end important careers, marriages, and lives. That knowledge became an opportunity. It needed to be stopped.

Tyler walked in, silenced gun in his coat pocket. Standish was behind the bar. A shot rang out. Tyler crumpled to the floor.

“Thanks, Joe,” Standish said, smiling. A man at the end of the bar nodded, finishing his bourbon.

“Anytime.”

From Guest Contributor Gary M. Zeiss

Career Day

“Good work today, Boys,” Bud Peptide said to his sons, Spud and Pud. “We finished plowing the back 40. You fellas deserve a reward.”

Bud pulled some bills from his wallet and handed them to Spud.

“Head into town and buy yourselves your first drink at the Short Twig Saloon.”

The brothers rode into town, burst through the saloon door and bellied up to the bar.

“Two beers,” Spud said to the bartender.

The bartender looked the boys over.

“Can’t you read?” he said, pointing to the sign on the door. “NO MINORS!”

“We’re not miners,” Pud said. “We’re farmers!”

From Guest Contributor Lee Hammerschmidt

Lee is a Visual Artist/Writer/Troubadour. He is the author of the short story collections, A Hole Of My Own, It’s Noir O’clock Somewhere, For Richer or Noirer, Flash Wounds, and Pulp Stains. Check out his hit parade on YouTube!

Country Noir

A B-girl with sleepy, mud-colored eyes slipped onto the stool next to mine. “I am here to entertain you,” she said and then added as a tease, “but only during my shift.” At least she wasn’t the kind of woman who would refer to poetry as “verse.” I conspicuously returned my attention to the ball game on the TV over the bar. She leaned in closer and started to stay something. I cut her off. It’s not that I wasn’t tempted; it’s just that I’m cautious. Prison workshops and small rural cemeteries are filled with men who should have been.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication this summer.