Michele McDannold
Author's posts
Mar 19
Eat the Rich by Leah Mueller
Eat the Rich My mother always said “He thinks his shit doesn’t stink” and I thought about her words dozens of times, wondering if a posh guy stood above his toilet, smiling with satisfaction as he thought, “Why, my shit has no stench at all. In fact, it smells intoxicating.” Perhaps he lingered for a …
Mar 19
Rabbit Season by Hiromi Yoshida
Rabbit Season Rabbits scamper across gravel and grass, dodging beneath expensive SUVs, hoping not to get hit, and flattened out on asphalt roads like hairy pancakes sizzling in 90° F heat— rabbit after rabbit appearing (then disappearing) to the invisible chorus of raucous birds. “They all look the same,” the birds squawk (like …
Mar 18
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER: A Tale of Two Idiots, My Ten-Year Friendship with Brian Fugett
A Tale of Two Idiots, My Ten-Year Friendship with Brian Fugett Before Zygote In My Coffee, there was Babel. Babel was a monthly online literary journal edited by Victor Thorn. Victor Thorn you may not remember was a bit of a wild man, himself, a man who never met a conspiracy theory he couldn’t connect back …
Mar 17
Chet Baker’s Embouchure by Kevin Ridgeway
CHET BAKER’S EMBOUCHURE No longer able to hit notes without a set of natural teeth— but he kept at it, didn’t let it silence the golden sound within him, and, in spite of his demons, he learned how to play again. Music elevated him above a self-imposed gutter, who left wrinkled valleys across his dented …
Mar 17
Valentine’s Day 2024 by Lorhenz Lacsa
Valentine’s Day 2024 The only company I had on Valentine’s Day was a pack of cigarette with a dead baby on it. The lifeless body lies still, a blotch of blood, brown, and beige, with black boxes on its dead eyes and unformed genitals, and big bold letters above its dead, bulbous baby head. As …
Mar 16
3 poems by Richard Vargas
keeping the peace i’m doing my laundry listening to mp3 music through my earphones as i try to lessen the dull pain of wasting 90 minutes of my life i’ll never get back i notice a middle aged black couple nearby doing the dance couples do when they fold the sheets always a sexy combo …
Mar 15
2 poems by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Motor Oil Through the Lemonade There is motor oil through the lemonade, razor invasion piranhas enter my field of vision, the floodlight metropolis and payola queens atop the charts – Francis Bacon spectres streaking down a treacherous canvas, that red-eyed seagull flock of swarm. Two rings of twine for a tail-eaten snake. There are craters …
Mar 14
Crackhead with Saxophone by Jon Bennett
Crackhead with Saxophone There’s a crackhead saxophonist at the hotel for indigents now we’ve never had a jazz musician on or off crack on the block I hear him at 3 a.m. playing Ornette Coleman then he mimics an ambulance that passes and goes into Taps Up and down the street he carries his golden, …
Mar 14
Devoured by Karen Cline-Tardiff
Devoured You ate everything I lay before you, Plucked my eyes, licked your fingers, and waited for me to give you more. As I smelled your musky scent, you played games and stole my nose, refusing to give it back, choosing instead to nibble on it while I slept dreaming of you. Next you devoured …
Mar 13
Raindrop by Bruce McRae
Raindrop The wolf has tamed its hunger and the hour unfolds its tapestry. Winter is devolving, the forest muted, the same raindrop falling again and again, making the sound of seven whispers, a six-fingered rain among velleities, rummaging through the vagaries, in the thrall and throes of gravity, swirling among uncertainties . . . See …
