The Factory of Your Lungs
Every exhale is counted, weighed, and sold to someone who doesn’t live here—
someone who has never woken to the rattle of dawn
shaking the dust from its pockets
like a tired god clocking in for another shift.
In this town, breath is a currency.
The children trade theirs for recess,
the elders for a quiet afternoon without coughing up
another gray feather of the sky’s exhaustion.
We are paid in particulate promises:
tiny specks of maybe, someday, almost.
The smokestacks rise like stern foremen,
tall as verdicts delivered without trial.
They do not blink.
They do not bargain.
They take their tithe of oxygen
and leave our chests echoing like half-collapsed warehouses.
Still, we show up.
We shoulder the sun.
We lift the morning until it glows faintly,
a lantern swaying above the picket line of our ribs.
Some nights, a breeze sneaks in—
an outlaw wind slipping between the factories
with news from somewhere greener.
It whispers: breathe deeper,
your lungs are not a ledger.
And we try—
inhalation as rebellion,
exhalation as prayer—
each breath a small strike
against the empire of smoke
that believes it owns us.
Subway Graffiti as Prophecy
The train rattles past midnight slogans,
each one a warning written in neon dust.
Letters drip like fresh constellations
on the ribs of silver cars—
WE WERE HERE, NOT YOUR CITY,
EVERY WALL HAS A PULSE.
Beneath the murmuring advertisements of tomorrow,
a sharper gospel flickers in unauthorized color.
The tunnels memorize it.
The rats translate it into twitching scripture.
Even the conductors read it with their eyes closed.
A crown made of spray caps rolls along the tracks.
A halo of sirens hums in the distance,
late as always, faithful as gravity.
Someone has stitched a future into brick and speed,
a prophecy that refuses to wait for permission.
We pretend not to see it,
eyes trapped in glowing rectangles of curated hope,
while the walls scream in wild typography:
THE CITY IS A DREAM EATING ITS DREAMERS.
BREAK THE SPELL.
By morning the messages will be skinned raw by cleanup crews,
bleached into respectable silence.
But the night will remember.
The tunnels will rehearse.
And the next train will arrive already whispering
what the daylight is afraid to admit.
A Brief History of Sidewalks
Concrete remembers the soles it carried,
the faces erased, the corners abandoned.
It remembers the soft geography of need—
bus tokens warm in palms, the choreography
of waiting, the loose change mooning in cups.
Once, this block spoke in many tempos:
domino slaps, arguments, laughter stitched
through open windows like second curtains.
Then the paint arrived first—
that clean lie of renewal—
followed by names no one here could pronounce
without learning new mouths.
Rent rose like floodwater without rain.
Porches narrowed. Lives folded.
Now the coffee costs more than the day’s wages
of the ghosts who still cross here at dusk.
Dogs with better health plans
tug silver leashes past the places
children learned the art of swerving traffic.
Even the weeds have been rezoned.
But listen closely at night
when the foot traffic thins to memory:
the sidewalk exhales names it is blamed for losing.
Each crack’s a ledger.
Each stain, a stubborn footnote.
Progress keeps receipts in erased feet.
And still—
the pavement waits, wide and patient,
for the next unpermitted story
to step back into the light.
fiction
Peter Mladinic
Collaboration
I woke this morning in the dark with a face
in mind: a senior citizen wanted to reach out
and, I suspect, apologize for a wrong done
some sixty-five years ago. Sorry, no thanks.
I too have been tempted to reach out, even
atone. “Let sleeping dogs lie, let the dead
bury …” I think there’s an animal buried
in my back yard. There’s grass and then
an area, a sandy rise, like a pitcher’s mound,
and, here and there, patches of black plastic,
like those thick trash bags, little triangles of
black plastic sticking up. Part of me wants
to start digging, but I might have to call
the city health department or animal control.
What if it’s a person, a human corpse?
I doubt that. I woke with that boyish face
and a thought of buried things. Some people
have gardens. My friend Bob’s sister scattered
his ashes in her garden. Some people have
watch collections, others coin collections.
My DVD collection I got rid of. I replaced it
with, I’m proud to say, being somewhat tech-
challenged, digital movies! This morning
I thought Ray, I should go to Amazon for Ray.
The click of a button. Taylor Hackford’s film
starring Jamie Fox as the great Ray Charles.
In one scene Ray’s sitting at the piano and
the guy who plays the great Ahmet Ertegun
comes up to him. “Hey, Ray, I got this song …”
Ahmet sits at the piano, in a little whiny voice
sings “You can talk about the pit, barbecue.”
Suddenly Ray’s banging away at the piano,
singing, screeching, shouting, the camera’s
whirling, the moviegoers in the theater, ones
not dead from the neck down, at the edge
of musical greatness, are out of their chairs
at “Now this band’s going to play from nine
to one.” The camera’s whirling, “the house
is rocking.” Jamie Fox nails “Mess Around.”
When The Buffalo Springfield sang, “Hello,
Mr. Soul, I stopped by to think up a reason”
they were singing about the great Ahmet
Ertegun, the son of a Turkish ambassador.
I love that part in Ray, where, at the piano
he kind of mumbles, then Ray takes it, letting
us know it’s great to be alive, not ignoring
the buried things. Keep them in perspective.
Alan Catlin
Mister Lucky
When he was in Nam
got transferred
from Danang to some
dinky dao airport down South
in east jesus on the coast
of nowhere.
He was short, but, pissed,
thinking they needed an
air ground controller there,
like Custer needed more Indians,
and he was stuck all by his
lonesome with a bunch of strange
hand jobs he didn't know from shit.
Two weeks later,
he was sucking in the smoke
of many dreams,
trying hard not to cry, or
be as paranoid as he felt,
trying hard to feel lucky,
being the only guy in his
former unit left alive after
that base at Danang got overrun,
and some serious shit hit the fan,
"Jesus, fuck, Man, shit……"
was all he could think to say since
he heard the news, and he felt as if
he'd been fucked royal up the ass
in the jungle by Sir Charles himself.
Hadn't slept in four days,
'cause every time he shut his eyes
the screams of the dying men he knew
at that base, woke him up into this
place that was so much worse than
bad dreams.
Guys who saw how he was sd.,
"He was a walking Section 8
waiting to happen. As good as dead
as far as the army was concerned."
"He was better off dead.
At least then it would all be over
and he wouldn't have to think about it
anymore.”
Unknown Soldier
He was born on the Fourth of July
beaten at student demonstrations
in Madison
Chicago
Columbia
He was shot at by national guard
troops at Kent State
arrested and confined in solitary
after Jackson State
Bitten by police dogs at civil rights
marches in Alabama
Mississippi
Georgia
He was Vietnam Veteran for Peace
at anti-war marches
well into the 70’s
Was tear gassed
billy clubbed
pepper sprayed
But he never gave up
and he came back
and you can see him marching now
He is your father,
brother
uncle
cousin
on crutches
with prosthetic limbs
riding in a wheelchair
Follow him and
shake his hand
if he has one
Flashback
"I beat the bottle but
I can't beat the war"
after an acrylic on canvas
by Ron Mann
30 years after
the fact a lawnmower
two yards over
backfires and just
like that I'm back
in-country sucking
in lawn chemicals
instead of air,
all that fertilizer
for a mind on a
perpetual edge
recalling an agent
orange dawn that
colors all the jungle
a dark unnatural
light like the hand
of death pressing down
the sharp, bladed
grass next to a
recently roto-tilled
garden plot, that
graveyard for lost
crops, plowed under
plants, dead soldiers
composted a dark, rich
loam thick with earth
worms fattened on
the rotting skins
of the dead
Adam J. Galanski-De León
COME SIT BY THE FIRESIDE
Rosehill Cemetery gates across the street
barroom, front patio, back patio, dining room
one bar back. Career alcoholics,
a sea of pony and half barrel kegs
lining the floors of the basement
change the sanke, wrench the nozzle, Co2 tanks
hissing beer pouring from brass taps
pint glasses sweating in the heat
bouncing, Latin Kings smashing bar stools
on my back, people stomping on heads
on the sidewalk
shot glasses thrown in my face, pint glasses
coworkers fucking each other in the bathroom
biker lady wielding a Billy club at my head
ex-girlfriend crashes my van out front
CPD extorts me for four hundred dollars
run to the 24-hour Jewel to grab cash from the ATM
homicide detectives next to drug dealers next to
Pakistani cab drivers and service industry regulars
and sex workers, cockroaches crawling out of our food
they are in my clothes, fall of the ceiling into my hair
I ladle one out of the ranch dressing, one crawls out of my salad
Juan fucks up and is attacked by a woman clicking a taser
Tommy scales the wall to break in and cooks himself breakfast
and is knocked out with a punch to the face
then scales the wall and does it again
my Tai boss takes me from my shift in the middle of the night
to bring me to her Lady Boy Show in a closed off
Tai restaurant in an empty neighborhood
people are slipping twenties into thongs while the
Lady boys dance seductively and sing karaoke
7 AM, we are shotgunning Strongbow in the parking lot while
cyclists go by to start their day
boxes fall over int the beer cooler, our glug wine container
is filled with trash, spit, and germs, and we microwave
it and serve it to customers
a terrible man asks me to phone him a cab to Rogers Park
I send him to 95th and Halsted, his wife is in the hospital dying
and he is here hitting on 21-year-old girls. Leaving,
a coyote follows me down the street by the train tracks
the street is covered in mist, unseen birds singing.
I walk a mile home
in silence.
Danielle Hubbard
To you who stole my bicycle
We used to tackle Knox Mountain together, me
and Knoxy, the trails criss-crossed like scattered
spokes, Lake Okanagan flaring
around each hairpin, each blind turn, blinking
between the scrub-trees, bright
as titanium rims. My Knoxy
was a humble Trek Marlin, but fine
fine fine to me. I stabled her in my living
room and never went to bed without patting
her handlebars goodnight. She carried me
sweating and elated to the library, swimming
pool, the scrabble-trails of Rose Valley
before they burned. Knoxy was marigold
red, the color of the Okanagan
on fire. She bounded sure-wheeled
over boulders, bracken, down inclines
steep as stairs. But here’s the thing – it wasn’t
the fires that got her. It was you.
An August Sunday, I glided
downhill to the pool, locked
my Knoxy safe to the bike racks, snug
among the Schwinns and Huffys, all
wagging their fenders, catching
each other up on the gossip.
I remember the smoke that day, thick
as rubber mesh. Across the lake,
Rose Valley candled in the wind.
The crown of Knox Mountain dissolved.
At the end of my swim, only a Knoxy-shaped
gap remained at the racks.
My helmet quivered on the asphalt
like a severed skull, or an eggshell kicked
from the nest. The other bikes cowered
as I gathered the remains, the lock
clean-severed like a vertebrae
when you land a jump dead-wrong.
What can I say to you – you
who stole my Knoxy? I want
to tell you to clean her chain, lick
each link until your tongue
gums black. I want her gears
to crush your knuckles if you ever
– I mean ever –
frame her as a getaway
accomplice on your next
dumb heist. You better
ride her heroically or bring
her home, you fuck.
Why I covet the color magenta
Because fireweed is a voyeur,
flocking to the site of a blaze.
Magellan’s armada was the first to claw
its way around the globe – magnificent!
Magenta is an extra-spectral color,
not derived from visible light.
Extra-special, extra-terrestrial.
Magellanic Clouds turned out to be galaxies,
gyroscoping out of grasp.
Magellan’s crew died of scurvy
and hallucinations – spectres, spooks,
tug-of-war with tortoises.
Ladies of the night wield magenta parasols,
garters, all those trappings of want.
I covet the color magenta
because of arterial maps, oddly faded.
Because of charts and magnetism,
chalk drawings, compasses,
the all-encompassing gravity of space.
Placentas, placebos, and magic.
Magenta is the patron saint of escapism,
the magenta sky orchid a symbol of wealth
and admiration. Magenta neckties
stand out in a crowd. Magenta lipstick
is only for special occasions – a trip
to the planetarium or a certain rendezvous.
I crave Crayola markers, cartoon dragons,
flying saucers. All the conspiracies of childhood.
Magellan himself was speared to death
half-way home. The Jovian gas giant Gliese 504b
shows up as magenta in the radio images.
I want to bounce it like a rubber ball.
If I could choose a color for my breath,
I’d choose magenta.
If the Magellanic Clouds could rain,
we’d all go up in star-fire – marvelous!
Alan Catlin
New Amphetamine Shriek I was young & invincible like you once too Took handfuls of pills just to see what would happen. My favorite song of the late 60's was Over Under Sideways Down Clapton cutting riffs before he was Clapton. The band was the Yardbirds David Hemmings steals the guitar fret from in the movie “Blow Up” but you wouldn't know about that either I would have tried anything twice back then, hell, you could get handfuls of high grade speed for less than 20 beans, do triple doubles and not even think about sleeping, Man, it was wild having to drink a fifth of Scotch just to even out & sex, Man, well all I can say is all that rocket fuel makes you Strong Like Bull… coming down though was a drag but who thought about that? when you're young you can conquer anything, but Man, crashing was like waking up as Frankenstein's monster with the peasants all around you in revolt bearing torches, trying to burn you out & all you can do is scream your ass off because no way were you going to escape slum goddess Maybe she thought that if she main- lined enough stuff, dressed like some kind of resurrected Warhol star and strutted her stuff up & down McDougal Street, she'd be anointed the Official Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side, or maybe she'd get so strung out, so hyper no one would notice or care what she did until she dressed up as some low budget super girl, and did a swan dive from the top floor of some closed-for-the- duration tenement high rise to see if the stash of super balls sewn into her garments and bundled in her cowl would make her landing soft make her rebound as high as she felt, as high as the moon.
Orman Day
In a Raspy Voice
origin of my blues poems in 2018
On a sultry day waiting in the Honda
while my Muse shops in Trader Joe’s,
hoping she doesn’t forget my soft licorice,
sweating cuz the air’s turned off
and she didn’t leave the keys, admiring a gal
bending over to shove grocery bags in her trunk,
suddenly my dry mouth dropped open,
out rushed a raspy voice I didn’t recognize,
“I got the blues.” A deep breath. “I got the blues.”
Over and over, I repeated the oracular words.
As Sonny Terry has crooned, I was a white boy
lost in the blues, though I was six decades away
from being a lean pimply kid, dateless,
singing loud and off-key in the church choir.
Needed to figure out what I was bluesy about.
Couldn’t duet with John Lee Hooker
cuz I don’t have the house rent blues,
or with Etta James misty about lost love,
or with Trixie Smith or Sonny Terry
cuz I no longer sprint beside lonesome tracks,
leap into the frigid box car of a lonesome freight.
Even beside Muddy Waters, I’d be nobody’s
Hoochie Coochie Man with mojo, a black cat bone,
making pretty women jump and shout.
Back in ’02 paddled a canoe with my friend Paige
the Big Muddy from St. Paul to New Orleans,
reminded of Leadbelly as we passed Angola Prison,
Son House as I climbed over a levee to fetch water,
Robert Johnson as we rambled through Rosedale,
Earl King as I glided at last into Audubon Park.
But now I’m a tourist, no longer a traveler
who lifts a thumb, waves a hand-drawn sign,
converses with drivers who want to laugh or confess.
B.B. King could sing the blues after paying his dues,
lying in a ghetto flat numb and dusted with rime,
turned away at the welfare office, staring in a mirror
at the lined, slackening truth wrought by Father Time.
Cataracts clouding my eyes, got mobility issues
so I shuffle to avoid tearing soft tissue.
Prick my figure every morn, swallow pills
I don’t wanna take, remember and rue
every time I try to snooze. Google ex-girlfriends,
sorrowful to find them dead. Sometimes dizzy
when I clamber outta my bed. Are these my dues?
Not sure how I’m gonna do it,
but I’ve gotta take a deep breath, bellow my blues.
Robin Shepard
The Trouble with Men and Monsters
Hard not to love the creepy, uncanny and scary,
the spin tingling and disturbing weirdness
that raises hair and unsettles the nerves,
darkness that drifts under the chamber
door, howling under a wounded moon,
half-human wails of nameless nightmares,
organ music of a hundred missing souls,
butler who locks the lost travelers inside
a room of old smoke and dusty tapestries.
In their cold and drafty laboratories, madmen
mix volatile chemicals in boiling beakers
of luminescent liquid. Lightning caught in coils
of tension arc through the dark ether of night.
The hunchback assistant cries out, Master,
you promised me a new arm! For the love of all
that is holy and good! A lobster’s claw droops
from his shoulder. His left eye opens in an empty
socket. The scientist keeps his girlfriend
in the dark, but she’s annoyed by his inattention,
harboring suspicions about his solitary pursuits.
So, she goes downstairs. Don’t open that door!
I try to warn her. But that’s the trouble with men
playing God, creating the monsters they become,
ignoring women who love them for cellars
of high stone walls, conducting symphonies
of flesh on full moon nights, conceiving damaged
humanity and a new kind of beauty. For this,
women suffer for love and the madness
of genius, even as it manifests itself in men
and monsters, and the faint cry of creation.
Or Die Trying
Always the weather. The seasons sliding off
the table, leaving crumbs
for the dog. The whole of it passing away,
receding like water,
then turning toward the land and the blue hat
it wears in summer.
I consider my prospects. Always something
to complain about, living
like an earthquake, dying like the unfurling
hand of a newborn rose.
What more to come of it? The air is yellow.
The grass is yellow.
My words are yellow, though the syntax I use
is blue. My blood is thick
with envy, riding through elastic tubes tied
off at the ends. I look out
my window, see it approach. It knows my name,
knows I’m a coward.
My blood is thickly luxurious, will take
a long time to drain.
Parousia
After the arrival of the lawless
breed, ancient unholy ones,
empty eyed and silent, seducing
the daughters of men, we forgave
the devil and forgot the details.
Emperors of dark places, gods
come down from ships of clouds
to deliver us from all goodness,
these giants among us, Nephilim,
fallen angels living among sinners,
dancing in flames. We wait weary
and awake, gazing beyond
the window pane, candle calling
back night. Return of one god
or many, it doesn’t matter.
We shall greet them with praise
and honor, our daughters throwing
flowers in their path, rolling their hips
and sighing as the sun sings.
Randall K. Rogers
Evil, Old and Ugly
I first saw her in the elevator. It was just her and I. It was hard to believe my eyes. She might have been a good person, I don’t know. But it didn’t look like it. She had a glazed-over look. Her eyes were cloudy. She wore an unfocused blank stare.
What’s more, she was horribly old. Furthermore, sorry to say, she was hideously ugly. She looked like she’d die any moment or was already dead. I nodded hello but there was no recognition. She had an angry cast to her leathery, much wrinkled face. She stood there, hovering over her walker. I didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, yet.
There was no question: she was beyond evil.
The next time I saw her it was again in the elevator. This time there were other people. When people got on, the expressions on their faces, shock. There she stood, blank milky stare, looking like the wickedest, darndest, most vile, harridan, dead-looking witch ever.
We were all scared. Some shuddered. Right out of a horror movie, she was. Frizzled long unruly hair. Some, I thought I did well, for one, tried not to have a conniption. A moment of shock, but standing there, as the elevator moved, some could not recover, could not stop their staring. Others came into the elevator, gasped in shock. Some threw their arms out, jumped a bit, maybe juggled whatever they held, eventually calmed down.
The lady stood there, hunched over her walker. She appeared blind but she wasn’t. She stared straight ahead and was silent. When it was her floor, she got off, walked with her walker like a perfectly ordinary old person. She liked our terror, we surmised. Just evil, she was. Probably a too real apparition. Somebody ought to do something. Out of the elevator she walked, smug-like, down the hall toward her room.
She wore old clothes. A nineteen twenties or thirties dress, lacey in design. I didn’t get a whiff of the old girl, but after she exited the elevator, one woman said, “Does she have any family?” The rest of us geezers didn’t know. “Never seen her before yesterday,” I said.
It was uncanny. If she tried to, she couldn’t have frightened us more. She was a vision of terror. Was she trying to appear like that? Dead, a cadaver? Nobody knew. Nobody knew where she came from. She was frightening. We all were old, dying was something that regularly happened at the home, weekly if not daily. Looking at her, it was hard.
She looked dead. Unkempt. Washed or not we didn’t care. She didn’t respond to anyone’s entreaties. She scared us, she reminded us of the dead we’d soon be. I mean, she was scary. One woman, “Is she gonna die?” she asked. Nobody knew what to say. She reminded us of our own short future. And, oh Lord, dead, we’ll look like that!
Yet she was alive. She should have been hidden. Or hidden herself. Her appearance was horrible, ugly, and deathly. She had to know her effect on people. “That’s why her family abandoned her here,” the people said.
Nobody liked her. We feared for our lives. She was too ugly, too hideous, to live. Was she the living dead? She looked it. She didn’t respond like a human. I thought about the crones of old. How often their surliness, bolstered by their old ugliness, nose warts, for example, their supposedly lascivious bewitching of young men, often sealed an old woman’s fate.
I thought, wow, that might happen here. History repeating. Naw….
Nobody saw her. After those few days on the elevator, she seemed to vanish. Nobody appeared to know where she had gone. We breathed a sigh of relief. No one could find her. That night, however, a spontaneous bonfire appeared in the landscaped back area behind the home. Flames leaped among the stacked wood. Woodsmoke smell, screaming, crackling and cackling, was heard all night long.
“Don’t rub it in,” scoffed a longtime resident, watching the old woman burn.
Previously published by Mad Swirl
The Beatnik Cowboy 