VERSE – JUNE 2020 – versification has moved

an open letter to (FUCK) you

by MEH

for making me add another body

to the list poem of hashtagged names

shot, choked, and strung together

in Emmett Till infamy.

HAD ENOUGH by Andrew Velzian

I neck another valium and lose count

Of how many

And how much

I want this.

BRITTANY GETTING DRESSED TO GO OUT

By John Grey

what looks

sexy in the bedroom

feels so vulnerable

in the street

UNTITLED

By Lindsey Heatherly

you confess you’re full of shit

that truth is relative to yours and mine

so you cut off your pinkie to prove a point

and tap it over the pile in the ash tray

yet you wonder why I keep silent

A Banned Poem

By Clayre Benzadón

Child, phones will always look like guns

when they blend into the black ground,

where you’re always chalked into sidelines, near walls rebounding

unmap, rewrite resurrection—

home can only exist skyward.

BUZZKILL

By Scott Manley Hadley

Sometimes

I would almost cry

Because Toy Story 2: The Game

Was just too hard.

UNTITLED

By Michael McGill

New York cars at dusk;

a debutante on Cunt Mile;

lust in concrete slabs.

MY DAD NEVER TELLS STORIES ABOUT WHEN HE WAS YOUNGER

By Charlotte VanWerven

Some mothers and sons have Nerf gun

fights between chili pot barricades and

warped Tupperware shields,

but my grandma’s last son took out a 9 mm

in her kitchen.

BLUE LIVES MURDER

By Leah Mueller

The police are here to preserve disorder.

Power concedes nothing to reasoned complaint.

Justice won’t come without violence, and probably

not even then. No one has anything left to surrender:

no job, no home, no future. Everything stolen.

Might as well burn the motherfucker down.

UNTITLED

By Chris Prewitt

Who am I to speak of love

when I’m a chainsaw

floating

through a house of mirrors?

LIFE IN CEDAR PLANKS

By Michael Luketich

“Virtual reality” is only virtual because we

cling to the hope that reality is more than our minds

deluding us into believing that we’ve moved.

SHITHEEL

By Alane Ford

Having done many a thing for no good reason,

with no good outcome, and nothing to show

was the preamble to this godawful love.

If they ask why I’m with you,

I’m just working on the scar.

PAUSE

By Dave O’Leary

Swarms of mosquitoes swirl and buzz

in my living room. They dive bomb

me and I swat, miss, hit myself in the face.

But I do not curse the goddamned things. I breathe,

sip my beer, ready for one more pass.

CHECKING THE COUCH CUSHIONS FOR SPARE GOD

By Prewitt Scott Jackson

pocketed alms slip into the tiny canyons

of your latest Ikea

the holy trinity divided by the fuckery multiplied by the treachery

equals

sheer terror squared

MINNEAPOLIS

By Chris L. Butler

tear gas consumed our lungs as we cried for justice

we are fighting a war against corruption and constructed lies

the people are tired of suffocating and no longer can be silent

Molotov’s whiz by my head as we fight for the right to exist

this was the day the city burned to the ground

**“Righteous Anger, 2020” By RODERICK CURRY**

BBQ

By Arel Kassar

They ran out of whole chickens at the store so I got a turkey instead and traded the six pack I had in my cart for two forties.

At the house I opened one of the malts and drank half, then I covered the bird in salt and pepper and shoved the bottle up its ass.

VANCOUVER SPECIAL

By df Parizeau

I had to get physical with him
because he was so good with his mouth—
like a Vancouver Special.

I felt like I was hallucinating.

It’s the kinda thing my mom would find sexy.

TWO POEMS WHEN WE KNEW IT WAS OVER

By MacKenzie Moore

I left, you left, we

nudge the knob louder, you, my

LA turnaround ||||

Pushing down and out

crumpled receipts, and the part

where we named the dog

CALL IT

By Jessica Frelow

cradle your breath in curves of my body

drown me in the rap of your words

mystify the passion trapped behind foul lips

rattle open waists, in the will of your infatuation.

It’s yours.

LATE NIGHT CALL

By Jasmine Flowers

I done told you. America’s made of blood.

Let them make a hard-ass bed and lie in it.

I know this: I love me, and God loves me.

They can keep that hate right on outside.

You can’t put your knees on God’s neck.

AFTER THE END COMES THIS

By J. Bradley

Rapunzel strokes what remains of her golden stair;

the prince left a month after her diagnosis.

Build a tower to live in, she says to her visiting granddaughter.

Keep your hair short. Give no man the chance to disappoint you.

two viruses too deadly

By Laura Owens

commuter fumes recede

to make way for those

meeting a premature end

at the hands of “our protectors”

at least the air is clean in heaven

WATERBOARDING IN THE WATER CLOSET

By Jay Miller

we’ve been up 4 days straight now i can’t look you in the eye

this squatter’s lifestyle and failed music scene

ain’t cuttin’ it for me last week i found secret gospel

and bled myself dry eating my heart out because

god is dead i’m dead broke and poverty and godlessness is punk

Hands

By Sean Cho A.

Eleven is imaginary.

See?

There’s no fun in logic.

WHEN WILL WE

By Q.M. Hall

say fuck the American Dream and allow our hearts to break for our brothers and sisters

around us

their homes are burning.

when will we weaken

our selfish, white walls

and be held accountable for Destruction

we continue to cause

FATHERHOOD

By Eric Lochridge

is performance art—

bold actions, no explanations

shoot a pheasant in the yard

say nothing

finish breakfast

(This poem was inspired by an anecdote in Episode 193 of The RobCast.)

May 28^th, 2020

By Wilson Koewing

I fell asleep watching Minneapolis burn on my iPhone screen.

Black smoke billowed from the Auto Zone; flames reached from rooftops like pleading hands.

As I removed my contacts in a dream, my fingernails became sharp and scratched my eye.

Puss oozed out and when I looked up into the mirror, my blue iris had turned pallid white.

Despite the fear and pain I knew was coming, I repeated the process with the other eye.

UPON REFLECTION

By Lisa Lerma Weber

Sometimes I say fuck you to the girl in the mirror

and sometimes she gives me the finger and

sometimes we get drunk on vodka and tearfully beg

forgiveness for the fucked up things we’ve done

to each other in the name of love.

TENDER OBJECTS

By Olivia Braley

in the kitchen i tenderize the steak mechanically / the mallet connects with the flesh in cruel smacks / the meat gives itself to the force of my blows / like i give myself to the man / flattened under the weight of him / there is the same violent sound / of hard on soft / the same methodic rhythm / of two bodies brutally colliding

FOUR QUESTIONS

By S.T. Brant

Shall such immortal harmony in Being be silenced by a mortal rage?

Shall it be untuned through false conduct?

Shall the infinite within go fightless to a cage?

How can any flesh make peace while a god dies inside its breast

That challenges it to Life?

Cimmone (no animals were harmed for the sake of this photo)

WHAT DO WE OWE YOU

By Justin Losey

We don’t owe you our lives

Down to the last drop

We don’t owe you our dimes

Fuck you and your shops

We don’t owe you shit

WHAT STARS ARE MADE OF
By Mileva Anastasiadou

That’s how life must be, she said, as they made love, up and down,
back and forth, always, until the swing crumbles down and it all ends.
That’s how they spent life, on a swing, up and down, back and forth, falling and rising,
pulling and pushing, until they jumped high into the night sky and became stars, that is life,
until it all ends, not with a fall, but with a blast, remnants of life orgasms hung bright in the sky.

TOO SOON

By Roger Li

As his pancreas weeps, he smiles:

for he had been a wheelchair pusher to his wife and

had sold his house to pay off the debts of his greedy children and

had dropped talk of seeing the world so that she could bear the pain of old age.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t ask for help. His children cried. Only to fight over the measly inheritance.

PINS IN AMERICA

By Kenleigh Gilbert

I will stab pins into America
in hopes it will not spread to the rest of the world
Each marks the grave of a life lost
They have lied to us about freedom
It has never been free