Issue 1
Claudia Wysocky – Unfinished Exit
Richard Milne – On the arrest of a grandmother by Scots speech police
David Scott – The Dalai Lama smiled at me
Claudia Wysocky
Unfinished exit
I keep thinking
about the time in high school
when you drew
me
a map of the city,
I still have it somewhere.
It was so easy
to get lost
in a place where all the trees
look the same.
And now
every time I see
a missing person's poster
stapled to a pole,
all I can think is
that could have been me.
Missing,
disappeared.
​
But there are no
posters for people
who just never came back
from vacation, from college,
from life.
You haven't killed yourself
because you'd have to commit to a
single exit.
What you wouldn't give to be your cousin Catherine,
who you watched
twice in one weekend get strangled nude
in a bathtub onstage
by the actor who once
filled your mouth with quarters at
your mother's funeral.
The curtains closed and opened again.
We applauded until
our hands were sore.
But you couldn't shake the image of
her lifeless body,
the way she hung there like a
marionette with cut strings.
And now every time you try to write a poem,
it feels like a
eulogy.
Claudia Wysocky has been crafting fiction for over five years and has published several poems in local newspapers. Writing has always been her passion, and poetry is one of her favorite forms of expression. Claudia is an immigrant from Poland but currently resides in America. Her poetry is influenced by her heritage and her experiences. She believes that her unique perspective can offer a fresh take on familiar themes.
Richard Milne
On the arrest of a grandmother by Scots speech police
Looking back through centuries of genealogy
there’s a kilt and Highland roots in the family tree
but the rugged stock built on the moors, fields and lochs
is being castrated for fascist ideology
How could a people pursuing freedom for a thousand years
succumb so willingly to self-imposed tyranny
the legacy of William Wallace, Robert Roy McGregor, Robert the Bruce
be bought off so easily
Stalwart bravery, defending rights, willingness to challenge authority
all cast aside, thrown away in support of delusions, perversity
abiding thought crimes, snitching on neighbors
betraying what’s left of your humanity
Give it up, Scots
you should be better than this shit
brave men and women who came before
would never stand for it
Richard Milne is a former newspaper reporter, speechwriter and communications consultant living on Whidbey Island in Washington, USA. A graduate of Western Washington University with a degree in journalism, he is also an avid gardener, fisherman and photographer, and lives with and receives inspiration from wife Lisa and mother-in-law Margaret.
David Scott
The Dalai Lama smiled at me
'The Dalai Lama smiled at me,'
my mum said over a supermarket scone
'I’d just popped out the washing
when his car drove past.
He likes Scottish rabbits I hear'
'I thought I was Jesus once,'
Sarah told me in a Soho bar
'Ecstasy in Leicester Square:
I still think of what might have been,
before they took me back to Wales'
I took my lover to Mount Kailash,
the centre of the earth.
He carried our crumpled prayer flags,
tied them at the highest point.
My face wet with his tears, he said
The worlds are thin here, take care.'
David Scott moved from Edinburgh to Swindon in 2023 and works as a counsellor, using creative writing in therapy. Passionate about poetry’s ability to heal and connect, he enjoys exploring language’s emotional depth. He lives in a cosy end-of-terrace home with his husband and a cat, always finding inspiration in everyday life.
Ben Nardolilli
Calming the Monochrome Masses
These computers will get us through
to the other side of the currently burning level,
where it will be spring again,
once there, we will laugh while looking over
images of the destruction we avoided
Now, the screens are shining with calculations
designed around us and our needs,
they will find a path out
towards the optimum escape, do not worry
if all they can come up with is a dance
Ben Nardolilli writes poetry, prose, and the occasional political flotsam and jetsam. In his spare time, he likes to go to a law firm and edit documents related to asbestos litigation. Occasionally they pay him for this. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com
Bart Edelman
Moolah
Make it while you can—
Hand over fist over glove.
Disposable income at best.
Fluid spending, and then some.
While it may not be enough
To purchase a yacht,
Properly invested, in time,
You should do just fine,
Unless it’s wasted away,
On a song or a few toots.
The means to an end?
An end to all means?
If you cash in your soul,
What does it matter?
How much loot gets left behind?
Stock whatever exchange remains.
Play the market one final time,
Until the only option trade
Bottoms out before your eyes.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023. He lives in Pasadena, California.
Paul Hostovsky
Trick
Pick a disease, any disease.
Memorize it. Now put it back
with the other diseases. Shuffle them,
put them in separate piles,
the corners loosely interlocking.
Square them. Fan them out,
splayed and facedown like
so many bodies. The trick
is recognizing your disease
isn’t yours. It could have been
any of them. But this is the one
you were dealt, so deal with it
and when the time comes to fold,
fold. Forfeit. Because you lose
everything. Everybody does.
There are no winners. There is only
this dream. This game. This trick
of making the whole thing disappear.
Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. Website: paulhostovsky.com
Louis Faber
1827
The pounding echo of the bell
rang off the tattered walls
and the carrion smell
seeped over the town
The cart bearing the corpses
straining under its burden,
rolled slowly through puddled alleys
and the same hollow voice
screeched
"Bring out your dead".
The rats ran from a doorway
followed by a new body.
The bell held forth
its pounding echo
It was 1827 in the back streets
of London that Blake died
and the bell still pounds.
Louis Faber’ work has appeared in several anthologies and in Cantos, Alchemy Spoon, New Feathers Anthology, Flora Fiction, Dreich (Scotland), Prosetrics, Atlanta Review, Glimpse, Rattle, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Simon Collinson
Somebody
The figure lives a quiet life
lonely as a shadow
Silently tucked away
Ignored like a nobody
But sometimes
It comes across
Someone
Who asks
Ever so politely,
“Didn’t you
Used to be
Somebody?”
Simon is a writer from England. He seeks solitude, sorrow and shadow.