top of page

Concrete Meat Press Recommends

Here are some samples of work by some of our favourite poets writing today.

All poems are copyright of the authors and are used here with their kind permission.

John Yamrus

Since 1970 John Yamrus has published 25 volumes of poetry and 2 novels. He has also had more than 1,800 poems published in print magazines around the world. Selections of his poetry have been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Swedish, French, Japanese, Italian, Romanian, Albanian and Bengali. His poetry is taught in a number of colleges and universities. AS REAL AS RAIN is his newest book.

His website is: http://www.johnyamrus.com.

Here are 3 poems.

this chair

 

where i sit

and write my poems

is beat up and scratched,

held together with wire, tape and hope.

 

you figure it out.

-------------------------------------------------

she said

 

you

think

that silly,

stupid grin

makes you bulletproof,

 

don’t you?

 

then,

just to be

 

a

bitch,

she went

and proved him

 

wrong.

-------------------------------------------------

it’s time

 

to

name

 

the

cliff

 

that

i am being

 

held over.

Catfish McDaris

 

Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. He has read in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy"the ghost of Hendrix"Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Main St. Rag, Café Review, Chiron Review, Zen Tattoo, Wormwood Review, Great Weather For Media, Silver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, 2014, and 2016 he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. He was in the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ. Press, and New Coin from Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto. 

New Mexico Blues

 

 

Spaniard just finished smoking

some good cheese and sipping

Thunderbird, he was almost

finished reading LeRoi Jones’

 

Preface to a Twenty Volume

Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka had

signed it for him, he heard a tap

at the door, it was one of his gal

 

Pals, she wanted to watch tv and

get laid, she took a shower and

came out in a white silk negligee,

Spaniard said, “I don’t know what

 

To do first, lick you or dick you,”

“Take your pick Slick,” She turned

on NYPD Blue, “How come those

dudes can piss without holding their

 

Peckers?” Spaniard just shrugged,

he wrote: You got me on fire baby

like parakeets in Marakesh I’ve

been in the dog house all my life

 

Bad people come in all flavors from

Placitas, Tijeras Canyon, Jemez Hot

Springs, Tucumcari, Raton, Santa Fe,

she pressed against him, they smiled.

Kent Taylor

A legend of the Cleveland mimeo scene from the 1960s and author of a number of chapbooks, Kent Taylor now resides in San Francisco. Here is an unpublished poem:

For John Burroughs
 
the fault lines
fracturing your
heart
trace old

scars
in mine

Ryan Quinn Flanagan 

 

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his other half and mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, and The Oklaho Review.

Miracles and Accidents

 

When I was four years old

my mother told me

I was a miracle.

 

When I was eleven

my father told me

I was an accident.

       

If I had to choose

I’d be the accident

with nothing expected

        

and leave the miracles

to Christ.

D. A Pratt

D.A. Pratt “continues to continue” in a comfortably conventional community in Canada ... he is genuinely concerned about the burgeoning stupidity that seems to be virtually everywhere ...

 

As the Road Gets Slippery

 

There’s a storm approaching

and the road gets slippery when wet.

In these times, it’s getting genuinely difficult

to be a middle of the road type of person:

the ugly gully on the political right

has an impossibly deep drop-off,

endangering everyone

on the highway we call life,

while the loose stones

all over the place

on the political left

are also distressingly threatening

since their bumpy consequences

are utterly unknowable today ...

As the road gets slippery,

we seem to be speeding up

but touching the brakes

is not an option ...

Dave Roskos

Dave Roskos is the editor of Big Hammer & Street Value poetry magazines. They are print mags but can also be found online at www.outlawlibrary.blogspot.com

He founded Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books in 1988 and has published approximately 50 books and chapbooks by other poets and writers including Harvey Pekar, Tom Kryss, rjs, Bertha Sanchez Bello, Michael Pingarron, Bob Rixon, Joe Weil, Hal Sirowitz, Donald Lev, Linda Lerner, Matt Borkowski, Ken Greenley, John Lunar Richey, Mark Weber, Chris Stroffolino, Kell Robertson, Todd Moore & many others. His own work has appeared in Home Planet News, New York Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Long Shot, Lummux, Mas Tequila Review, Temp Slave, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry,

& elsewhere online & in print. His Selected Poems, Lyrical Grain, Doggerel Chaff, & Pedestrian Preoccupations was published in 2016 by Cat in the Sun Books/reDux Consortium.

Earth Day

 

convicts

picking up garbage

on the side of the road.

 

every day is Earth Day

on the chain gang.

Victor Clevenger

Victor Clevenger spends his days in a madhouse and his nights with his second ex-wife, together they raise six children in a small town northeast of Kansas City, MO.  Selected pieces of his work have appeared in a variety of places online, and in print.  Victor is the author of several poetry collections including, Come Here (Least Bittern Books, 2016), The More Exciting Side Of Death (Epic
Rites Press/Tree Killer Ink, 2016), SOULWHORE (Svensk Apache, 2017), and his latest poetry collection is titled Congenital Pipe Dreams (Spartan Press,
2017).  

i’m a writer, not a fighter
  
  & on the nights when 
my busted lips
    tint the ice cubes red 
 

  & she sits there for an hour 
letting the melted water
     run down 
her soft cold fingers

 

i tell her    
   “even superheroes take a few
  good punches, darling, 
nobody can dodge them all”

 

she always laughs kindly 
then reminds me
“sweetheart, i have yet to see 
            you dodge one”

Kevin Ridgeway

Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.  His Pushcart-Prize nominated work has appeared in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Big Hammer, San Pedro River Review, Drunk Monkeys, Spillway, Lummox Press, Cultural Weekly and The Mas Tequila Review, among many others. His six chapbooks of poetry include All the Rage (Electric Windmill Press), On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco Press) 66 Lines on Your Soul (w/Catfish McDaris and Subhankar Das, Graffitti Kolkata) and Contents Under Pressure (Crisis Chronicles Press).  

My California State Identification Card

the photograph looks

like a David Crosby

mug shot, and the confused

look on my face suggests

I wandered into the DMV

randomly off the street

and just stood in line

until I was called up

to a desk and logged

into the system so

that when they arrest

me, they'll recognize

the handlebar mustache

and unmistakable

layer of chins

and when I buy

cigarettes or want

to drown in the ack

of Night Train, they'll

see the photograph

of me on the

do not serve list

pasted along the

bottom of the overhead

cigarette trays

and hand my ID

back with their

shit eating grins

and send me on

my way back into

the wilderness of

anonymity

(Originally Appeared in Bicycle Review)

Damian Rucci

Damian Rucci is a writer and poet from New Jersey whose work has recently appeared in Beatdom, Rusty Truck, Indiana Voice Journal, and Eunoia Review. He is the author of The Former Lives of Saints (EMP 2017 w/ Ezhno Martin), Tweet and Other Poems (Maverick Duck Press 2016), and A Symphony of Crows (Indigent Press 2015). He performs his poetry across the country and is the host of the Poetry in the Port reading series. 

All of My Ex Girlfriends Are Martians

 

 All of my ex-girlfriends are martians

in the pictures buried on Facebook—

their eyes are black orbs

like little black holes

like the thousands of black skies

we've forgotten

and within them if I look hard enough

I can almost see us there— old memories

like a VHS tape that's been played too much.

 

How can we be judged

for what happened then?

We are actors who played our parts

and have since forgotten the lines

 

I am now.

I was born an instant ago

Life is a procession of births

and deaths until the curtains close.

My break ups are choruses of

you've changed

 

I am the caterpillar

that never leaves the cocoon 

the rebellion you could never muster

I am the fire your father sold

for a safe house in the 'burbs

I am changing tides.

I am a dry-erase board that's never filled.

I am the tape that you keep

shooting new video over.

And we were a scene scratched

into the black tape.

 

The universe will bring us together

again as strangers in convenient store lines

and we won't recognize each other.

We are destined to be unread credits

in each-other's movies. 

Merrit Waldon

Merrit is 42 and has been writing since he could hold a utensil. He was born in Madison, Indiana, USA. He lives in Austin, Indiana, has a family and is constantly waiting for muses ...

Blurry eyes

Starry lines

Porch light

Music crawls slow

Like invading

Inch worms

Here goes the 

Brutal pint

Of shadows

The silence

Between warm embraces

The silence between songs

The silence between jovial faces

Or even between bombs

Where are we

All really

Going here?

Dianne Borsenik

 

Dianne Borsenik is active in the northern Ohio poetry scene and regional reading circuit.  Her work has appeared in The Offbeat, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Rosebud, Slipstream, and others; new work is forthcoming in Chiron Review.  Lit Youngstown printed her poem "Disco" on their tee shirts, which makes her feel like a rock star. In 2011, she founded NightBallet Press. Find her at www.dianneborsenik.com.

Paradigm for Unraveling

— after a photograph by Timm Wherry

Morning is a backstory,
already shared;

afternoon lies,
threadbare and wanting,
on the garden bench.

The day unravels
a little at a time,

until all that’s left
are the wings, hungry for
the canticle of wind,

but uncertain how
to go about finding it.

 

 

Originally appeared in "Recession in Neverland" (Paladin Knight Publishing, 2017)
 

Juliet Cook

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

Un-sided Self Portrait

My red yarn brings all the boys to the yard
and then sinks them down under the buoys.

My dark crystals are hidden inside
sunken ravens.

Just because I sink down
doesn't mean I still can't swim
in my own directions.

Doesn't mean I still can't maneuver up.
Maybe I just don't want to
with you.

Some of you take sides too quickly,
as if there are only two.
I'm a many sided protrusion.

Sometimes I like to keep
the positive parts to myself
and only release the negatives.

I can sink myself, keep my own
glitter under wet ashes,
until I decide to rise it up.



Originally appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos

Lorraine Cipriano

 

Lorraine Cipriano has just written a steampunk haiku across your heart and it is starting to infect you with its poison-laced octopus tentacles. She can be typically found hanging out in a whimsical world of haiku, tanka and poetry where she is the gatekeeper to a large collection of Buddhist, feminist, steampunk and horror filled imagery scrolled in sparkly shades of angst.

She has been published in Writing Knights Press, Prolific Press, The Poetry Barn, Crisis Chronicles Press, NightBallet Press, Toledo Streets Newspaper, Maura Dauterman, and Poems for All. Find her latest book "On Pointe" here at  http://www.lulu.com/shop/lorraine-cipriano/on-pointe/paperback/product-23153695.html

On a Sunflower Vibe

 

In the midst of bohemian poetry

guitar drenched androgynous girls

belting out Walmart-stained blues

with a theme of woman filled art

a pair of eyes looking at her

canvas painting of a gypsy dancer

half-opened fan pressed against lips

body-hugging traje de flamenca 

wondering, “¿Dónde estás ahora?”

all of the sweetness brings it

delicious blood orange sunflower

lotion lingering in the air and

hair twirling on fingertips gently

skirts of bangles and mystery

enticing like the summer night

sounds of katydids and baby owls

so soothing while reminiscing

about the feel of shoulders

the taste of lips that are ready

to explore the unknown

tu eres mi alma gemela

knowing this will one day be

all the realness between us

Originally published in "On Pointe" published by The Poetry Barn

John Burroughs

John Burroughs is a poet, playwright and publisher based near Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. His published works include The Eater of the Absurd [2012, NightBallet Press] and a dozen-or-so sundry chapbooks. Since 2008 he has run Crisis Chronicles Press, publishing fine writers from around the world. Find him at www.crisischronicles.com

Dish Work
recalling Columbia Hills Country Club, 1986



Geri was a waitress
served me a stiff drink called a screaming orgasm
vodka, Irish cream, amaretto and coffee liqueur

While soaked in steam from the dishwashing machine
I scrubbed dried hollandaise sauce
from some would-be PGA star's lunch plate
and waited for our lunch break
in the basement storeroom where we'd covertly
wash down the day's eggs Benedict with another

But this time no screaming



 

Jake St. John

 

Jake St. John writes out of New London, CT and is the author of several collections of poetry and pamphlet poems including, Rotations (Night Ballet Press 2015), Looking For Sunflowers (Good Cop/Bad Cop, 2012), and Change of Address (Unarmed 2010).  His work has appeared in numerous literary and arts magazines such as, The Blue Collar Review, Big Hammer, and The People’s Tribune.  Since 2007 he has served as the editor of Elephant and co-editor of Flying Fish. 

for Li Po

 

On this boat

watching

the sun set

on my youth

ten thousand

memories

shine like stars

in my heart

drunken moon

I love your smile

take me away

to lonely mountain

to cry in the arms

of trees

but here

on this river

the water kisses

constellations

and seems to whisper

farewell

Charles Joseph

Charles Joseph lives and writes deep in the heart of New Jersey. He is the author of NO OUTLET (a novel),five poetry chapbooks, and Chameleon a collection of poems and short stories that will be released in 2017. His poems, short stories, and creative non-fiction have appeared in various literary journals and online magazines. Visit him at www.charlesjosephlit.com and https://www.facebook.com/charlesjosephwrites

The Wind Carried Away the Cotton Wool

For Federico Garcia Lorca

 

When in Spain I touched a cobblestone

touched by the blood of martyrs

and never did I imagine 

that the work of a bevy of bullets

could strike my soul with so much force

traveling all the way to me from the past 

but it did, and it still does.

 

So since I can easily be erased

and you can easily be erased

I’m sure we can all agree

that a poetic death doesn’t really exist

regardless of how much a country

tries to whitewash their history.

 

Because sooner or later

a beautiful museum will be erected

and it will be filled with all of

the bones they’ve collected

and tickets will be sold by the pound

because a good old fashioned 

death is a joy forever —

until you are the one who's been 

blindfolded and murdered.

Brenton Booth

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. Writing of his has been published all around the world and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection PUNCHING THE TEETH FROM THE SKY is available from Epic Rites Press. To read more of his work visit brentonbooth.weebly.com

Searching For Hemingway

 

The taxi arrived at the

hotel in Havana at 8pm

it was raining though he

still recognized it from

all the pictures he had

seen over the years

he paid the fare and

stepped out of the taxi

3 porters ran for his

luggage

he was already carrying

it but the strongest of

the bunch eventually

wrestled it free

he wasn’t sure what would

happen

at the front desk he asked

if Hemingway’s room was

available

100 dollars, said the clerk

with a big smile

(he later learned that was

more than 3 times what it

was worth)

the room was quite big for

a hotel room

with a small balcony with

a view of mostly rooftops

the porters wouldn’t leave

he gave them each a dollar

note

Eat! eat! they said

No, no, drink! Get me drink!

he said

they quickly scattered like

insane rats

he looked around the room

he thought about his trip

from Sydney to here:

would it be worth it?

the porters all ran in at the

same time

each one with the same bottle

of rum

he made them sweat a bit

then took all 3

he paid each of them then told

them to leave

he locked the door behind them

took off his shirt and shoes

and stood on the balcony with

an open bottle in his hand

had his first hit

and waited.

Matt Borczon

 

 

Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy sailor from Erie, pa. He is the author of two books, A Clock of human bones from the yellow Chair Review press: and Battle lines from Epic rights press. These poems are from his next release Ghost Train coming out this summer through Weasel press. Matt is a nurse for a social services agency and is still a member of the Navy Reserve.

Sounds

 

my wife

says her

favorite

sound is

the squeak

of sneakers

on a

basketball

court

 

my son

says its

the click

and hum

of turning

on his

guitar amplifier

 

my daughter

loves the

sound of

babies laughing

or sleeping

equally

 

when asked

I always

say I

like the

sound of

nothing

 

its easier

than trying

to explain

that after

almost 5

years I

still hear

the sound

of screaming

soldiers and

detainees

 

the hum

of suction

pumps and

wound vacs

 

the rumble

of helicopters

and artillery

near and

far away

 

the screams

of children

crying in

pain at

the loss

of their

families

 

I hear

this

on city

street in

empty rooms

everywhere

every day

awake and

in my

dreams

 

so I

long for

the absolute

quiet that

so far

I can

only find

at the

bottom of

my whiskey

bottle or

at the

maximum

dose of

my medication

and it

is so

elusive as

to be

imaginary

 

not half

as real

as these

sounds of

a war

I am

still fighting

inside my

self

day after

day.

K W Peery

Prolific Americana songwriter and poet, K.W. Peery, is the author of 'Tales of a Receding Hairline” “Purgatory” “Wicked Rhythm” and “Ozark Howler”. 'Tales of a Receding Hairline' was a semifinalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards - Best in Poetry 2016. 
Peery is a regular contributor in Veterans Voices and the Australia Times Poetry Magazine. His work will be included in the forthcoming Vincent Van Gogh Anthology “Resurrection of a Sunflower” and the Walsall Poetry Society Anthology “Diverse Verse II” He writes about personal life experiences. Grappling with morality and mortality, the unvarnished truth is breathtakingly obvious. His unapologetic vulnerability is neatly embedded within each work. He has an innate ability to dig up his past and offer it to the reader as if they were sitting across the table having a beer with him.
Peery is most well known as a founding member of the Marshall/Peery Project. This collaboration produced four critically acclaimed studio albums from 2005 to present. 
The Marshall/Peery Project frequently appear on the Roots Music Report and Americana Charts. Their songs are in regular rotation in the United States, Germany, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Credited as a lyricist and producer, Peery's work appears on more than a dozen studio albums over the past decade.

Rattlesnake Bones

 

Coyote tracks
in the creek bank mud

A bellyful of 
Old Overholt

 

Down to my
last few doses

Still searchin' for salvation
in the Triplett Timber

 

Where sun-bleached 
rattlesnake bones

And petrified 
morel mushrooms

 

Know more about sufferin'
than they'll ever tell me

Ron Whitehead

Poet, writer, editor, publisher, scholar, professor, activist Ron Whitehead grew up on a farm in Kentucky. He attended The University of Louisville and Oxford University. As poet and writer he is the recipient of numerous state, national, and international awards and prizes including The All Kentucky Poetry Prize, The Yeats Club of Oxford’s Prize for Poetry, and many others. In 2006 Dr. John Rocco (NYC) nominated Ron for The Nobel Prize in Literature. He was recently inducted into his high school’s (Ohio County High) Hall of Fame, representing his 1968 graduating class. 

 

Ron has edited and published the works of such luminaries as His Holiness The Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, John Updike, Wendell Berry, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, BONO, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs, Rita Dove, Douglas Brinkley, Robert Hunter, Amiri Baraka, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and hundreds more.

 

Ron has produced over 2,000 Arts Events, Happenings, and Festivals throughout Europe and the USA. He has performed thousands of shows around the world with some of the best musicians and bands on the planet. He recently returned from a Scandinavia Tour with French rock band Blaak Heat and from New York City where his new book "blistered asphalt on dixie highway: Kentucky Basketball is Poetry in Motion" was released at the historic Poets House.    

Ron's work has been translated into nearly 20 languages. He is the author of 30 books and 40 cds. We've published several Ron Whitehead titles and we're sure excited to publish his newest book, Quest for Self in the Ocean of Consciousness: Ibsen, Hamsun, Munch, Joyce: The Origins of Modernism and Expressionism 

 

Ron Whitehead's official website is www.tappingmyownphone.com

Shithouse Manifesto

 

poets come out of your toilets

you've been holed up too long

 

playing with yourselves with

your wastes you're wasting away

 

all olfactory sensations dead

what with your head now situated

 

on your posterior one eyed cyclopian

peering down into midnight bottom

 

of the outhouse and it's time to

throw away the corncobs and Sears

 

catalogs and walk back out into

the barnyards the open pastures

 

of the world where animals and

people and flowers still bloom

 

where the sun still shines through

the moon at midnight in that other

 

world you've lost until now it's

high time to wake up pull your sad

 

face and every other hanging down

part of you out of that stinking

 

forlorn lost world you'll be fertilizer

soon enough for now it's time to

 

reconstruct who you are your life

time to check out of the amnesia

 

motel and get back on the highway

61 or 66 or 69 and finally say

 

goodbye to those lonesome lost

blue pieces of who you used to

 

be and say hello to this yellow

sunrise post-world where the crows

 

are grinning and the morning glories

sing

Christina M. Brooks

Christina M. Brooks is a poet from Ferndale, Michigan in the USA. Her book 'A Thousand Voices. A City Shamen's Book.' has been published by The Poet's Haven.

Shadows of Life and Death
 

it is a strange harmony
that life reveals itself in death
that the future is affirmed in memory

in tragedy lives are deeply cut by grief
hearts are seared with sorrow
old wounds are re-opened by the press of stones

there is no satisfaction in retribution
merely a release in moving forward
our futures are watered by past tears

life re-blooms from the ashes
this is nature’s deepest wisdom
that the shadows of life and death
are linked and round.




 

Heath Brougher

 

 

 

Heath Brougher is the poetry editor of Five 2 One Magazine and co-poetry editor of Into the Void Magazine (winner of the 2017 Saboteur Award for Best Magazine). He has published three chapbooks, “A Curmudgeon Is Born” (Yellow Chair Press 2016), “Digging for Fire” and “Your Noisy Eyes” (both by Stay Weird and Keep Writing Press 2016). He is a Best of the Net Nominee and his work has been translated into journals in Albania and Kosovo. He was the judge of Into the Void Magazine’s 2016 Poetry Competition and edited the anthology "Luminous Echoes," the sales of which will be donated to help with the prevention of suicide/self harm. His work has appeared or is due to be published in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Of/with, Chiron Review, 13 Myna Birds, Main Street Rag, Mobius, Blue Mountain Review, Gold Dust, Third Wednesday, Cruel Garters, Glom Cupboard, X-Peri, BlazeBOX, andelsewhere.      

 

 

Karma’s Superglue

 

Your lovely Karma superglued it’s teeth shut

so it would have a permanent Pearly smile

though Karma forgot it would no longer be able

to talk. This grew frustrating and eventually

after enough time and anger had built up

Karma screamed so loud that it cracked

the it’s glued-shut teeth and now

wears the jagged teeth 

like some kind of monster.

Jason Baldinger

Jason Baldinger is a poet hailing for the Appalachian hamlet of Pittsburgh. He’s the author of several books the most recent of which, the chaplet,Fumbles Revelations (Grackle and Crow) is available now, and the collection Fragments of a Rainy Season (Six Gallery Press) which is coming in September. Recent publications include the Low Ghost Anthology Unconditional Surrender, Uppagus, Lilliput Review, Rusty Truck, Dirtbag Review, In Between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Anti-Heroin Chic, Nerve Cowboy and Heartland! Poetry of Love, Solidarity and Resistance. You can hear Jason read some poems at jasonbaldinger.bandcamp.com.

Al’s Bar

 

one am

drunk

corner

of

Sixth

and

North Limestone

hoping

each

street

light

is

the

moon

John Dorsey

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015,) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017).  He is the current Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com

Spiders the Size of Dogs

 

a dead hawk lying in the sun

 

in this heat

it’s hard to remember

where you left your heart

 

& nobody is going

to draw you

a map.

John D. Robinson

John D Robinson is a UK poet: hundreds of his poems have appeared in the small press and online literary journals: His latest publications are: ‘These Poems Stole Your Lunch Money’ with Bradley Mason Hamlin(Holy&intoxicated Publications 2018) ‘The Pursuit Of Shadows’ (Analog

Submission Press 2018) and he has a chapbook 'Echoes of Diablo' forthcoming from Concrete Meat Press.

Nails It Dead

I know life can be cheap

precious,

fragile,

even with love;

time is a chain of

wasted moments,

thrown to obviousness

like scattered bird-seed

without thought,

footsteps trodden into a

world of blandness

and dead-ends,

love doesn’t save your

ass, sometimes it

nails it dead,

you can’t love all

the fucking –time,

repulsion and

rejection will ease its

 way in like a silent

moth,

love won’t save your

ass from yourself.

Stitching

‘This is the best Vodka that

money can buy and I’m

drinking it with the best

fruit juice money can buy’

he told me;

‘This is the best Blue-

tooth speaker money can

buy’ he slurred:

I asked for Sibelius,

Finlandia; I turned up

the volume and closed

my eyes:

it was painful to look

at my friend, I didn’t

want to look at him,

playing suicide and

killing himself with the

best Vodka money can buy,

I kept my eyes shut and

became submerged in

the mighty Sibelius and

the images of the Finish

mountains and swans in

flight and cigars and

cognac and I could hear

the small song-birds in

the trees above and it

was beautiful and then

I opened my eyes to the

best tragedy money can

buy, trying to stitch a

sentence together.

bottom of page