Gigantic Tentacles #3
Backseat
by Billie Dean
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You,
the passenger in his
rear-view mirror,
watch him imagine yesterday
where he will fondle his memory
of your attractive youth—
knowing he’s cheating
on the woman you are
with the woman you were.
As you lose your footing
on the steep, slippery slope
of his attention,
you imagine tomorrow
where you will go with alacrity,
alone.
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​Billy Dean is a retired technical writer with degrees in English and Engineering. He has been a newspaper columnist, performed poetry at open mic events, and had his craft articles, personal essays, how-to guides, memoirs, poems and short stories published in magazines, e-zines and self-publishing platforms. His goals are to craft prose and poetry loaded with clues for shaping and navigating the sticky web of real life. Below are links to some of his work as a free-lance writer.
Banished from Eden » a personal memoir May 23rd, 2017 in the Infidel kiosk.
Dear Andy » a personal essay published in the 2018 Fall issue of Sky Island Journal that shows and tells how tragedy compelled me to face the world as it really is.
My Walk on the Beach with Anton » a craft essay published in the January 2018 issue of Cleaver magazine to help writers discover the connection between their body and their brain.
Seven Ways Writing Can Breath with Showing and Telling » a craft essay published in the 2018 March issue of Cleaver magazine.
The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence… article published at Survival Monkey site that explores reasons why we are not alone.
The Sixth Extinction » an article published at Survival Monkey site that describes 12 ways our exploitation of Earth’s resources could bring an end to the world
Things that Matter » a collection of essays published in September of 2024 on the Amazon Kindle Direct platform to help readers get beyond personal and professional success to a wise, enlightened sense of self.
Why I Like to Do Things with Words » an article published in the January 2025 issue of Authors Magazine to help writers transform their writer-centered motives into reader-centered outcomes.
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​Circle of Perfection
By Robert King
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​Let the cycle return
skeletons of stars
and faces of the dead,
show the past as the next step.
Let spiderwebs of galaxies
tangle in arms of light.
There in the mirror, circles
show the future behind us.
For a cycle’s nanosecond,
the short life of perfection
arrives where it began,
leaves where it ended
to seek itself again.
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​Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA. He is a cofounder of FutureCycle Press. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published nine poetry collections, most recently Developing a Photograph of God (2014), Messages from Multiverses (2020), and Selected Poems (2023). His personal website is www.leftypoet.online.
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I̶ w̶r̶o̶t̶e̶ ‘B̶e̶s̶t̶i̶e̶’ i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶ o̶f̶ ‘B̶e̶s̶t̶’ a̶t̶ t̶h̶e̶ e̶n̶d̶ o̶f̶ a̶n̶ e̶m̶a̶i̶l̶
By Ewen Glass
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Mortified, I hoped Liam wouldn't respond.
But he did.
And not with lolz or it happens,
but a confession that
he sees me that way too;
did I want to go to lunch?
I wanted nothing less.
It has been 28 difficult years.
Still, I'm honoured to be delivering this eulogy today.
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Ewen Glass (he/him) is a screenwriter and poet from Northern Ireland who lives with two dogs, a tortoise and lots of self-doubt; his poetry has appeared in the likes of Okay Donkey, Maudlin House, HAD, Poetry Scotland and Ex-Puritan. His debut chapbook ‘The Art of Washing What You Can't Touch’ is published by Alien Buddha Press.
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Exactly How Much I Care About Your Suffering
By Elizabeth Loeung
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​Your pain is worth
Fifty-seven cents in
Monopoly money, an apple
Slice, twenty-three gray
Carpet fibers, my favorite
Tissue, a gram of
Asepsis, two pieces of kitty kibble
A cliché insult, six scratched
CDs of the Muppet movie
A stale burnt caramel, half a
Dust bunny’s ear, one
Ounce of llama
Spit, and the three
Minutes forty-two
Seconds it took to write this poem.
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Elizabeth (Lizzy) Loeung is an English Major at Corban University. She's originally from Gresham, Oregon where she lives with her many chickens, cats, and singular dog. She enjoys all forms of art, most forms of reading, and some forms of exercise. You should also be aware that if you ever meet her, she will likely not introduce herself and will instead jump into conversation about opossums.
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Broken Wings
By Rachel Turney
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​Typewritten pages are sprawled around me folded like the dead doves I saw in Poland when the temperature dropped to -20 fahrenheit in 2006. Their bodies rigid on the ground, wings akimbo. The folds of paper with ink from my typewriter shows all the times I have failed to capitalize, typed too fast, or pressed too lightly. These are my primary issues with the typewriter. I will try again tomorrow.
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​Rachel Turney is an educator and artist located in Denver. Her poems, research articles, drawings, and photography can be found in a few publications.
Blog: turneytalks.wordpress.com Instagram: @turneytalks Bluesky: @rachelturney
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Installation
By Colleen Addison
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on every winged dove a prayer is written and I can see the words, scrawled in blue or black or grey with pencil, spinning as the birds spin on their strings: for what do we all wish? love or money or health but I want none of these; now in this decorated hall I want nothing more than the scalpels to cease; I want no more operations. the doctors have pecked at me like they were real doves, scrambling for the last specks of seed or in this case, tumour. I turn my head, and true to form, even these false birds twist beaks in my direction, cardboard straining towards me, scrambling too if they could, with their fake feathers flapping white like a doctor’s coat. I am reaching my fingers for my scars when through the sculpture strings I see my friend, one of those out of so many newly tumour-ridden; I have forgotten this, what her prayer would be. for what does she wish? a surgery, swift and smooth as a dove’s wing
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​Colleen Addison completed a Master's degree in Creative Writing, followed by a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes, and heals on a small island off the coast of Vancouver, Canada. Her recent work has featured in Halfway Down the Stairs, River Teeth, and Little Free Lit Mag. She has been nominated for a Best of the Net award and is writing a romance novel and a poetry chapbook, rather stupidly at the same time
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Old Men Talking
By W. Roger Carlisle
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Our group of men make our weekly walk through the azaleas,
around the roses on a familiar circular path
into the bamboo garden.
Creaky knees, grey beards, wrinkled
faces stop and stare at the
warm sun splitting the clouds.
Our polite, incomplete sentences confront
the same topics we have been discussing for
twenty years, the pain of divorce, the woman who left,
the failures of the voters and the government.
We relive the peak moments
when we made the winning basket,
look for words to convince us the spaces
between us can be bridged, hope that secrets will evaporate
in the light of our sacred chorus, that we can all move from
our isolation and find some kernels of shared truth.
But, today we are off center, our curtain of denial has fallen,
we see what’s always been there: restless death,
nearer by the day, making all of us wonder how and
when we shall die, reminding us we can’t escape.
We shudder together as we discuss the stark terror
of dying, that sure extinction following our every step.
There is no cure for this cold ending only the solace
of walking like a herd of sheep with your friends.
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​W Roger Carlisle is a 79-year-old, semi-retired physician. He currently volunteers and works in a free medical clinic for patients living in poverty. He grew up in Oklahoma and was a history major in college. He has been writing poetry for 14 years. He is on a journey of returning home to better understand himself through poetry. He hopes he is becoming more humble in the process.