I was drinking on Tuesday (Edmund Sandoval)
I was drinking on Tuesday. I was dedicating myself to it. Tall glass of whatever. Then another. I was sitting on the couch in the office, the spare bedroom. My wife was gone. But she’d be back. In her own time. I didn’t have any say. Though I could speak. Outside was winter. The nighttime…
Magnolia S-10 (Joseph Daniel Duffy)
I threw out two bad oranges I listened to John Prine I packed a month of clothes up I felt just like you I hid my love I bought a new truck to soak in the small town bliss my life is an awful mess in the love is on a roll years at twenty-three…
passing the King Cole Bar (Adam Berlin)
since i stopped i see not-shed tears of unused blue at the King Cole Bar i stole 2 bottles of champagne and laughed when they caught me they couldn’t hit me martini-tough/i did pull-ups hungover sometimes i called 1 when i was with another sometimes i rubbed toothpaste against my gums and left before they…
You Heard Me Howling in the Dark (Amy Lyons)
Three bottles of pink wine a day, rocks on the beach like fists, the Mediterranean Sea as warm and salty as the bath my mother ran when I caught the flu at five—the shake of the Epsom carton a calming shush, the ubiquitous pocks on the water’s surface when the thick grains struck, the tickle…
Janice’s Son (Emma Burnett)
“You know Janice’s son, Taylor, who used to be Parker?” Mum always does this. It’s like she has to qualify that she’s hip, cool with the new gender flexitarians, cool with her friend who has a son who used to be a daughter. But she’s not because she needs to tell me all about it…
Heavenly Contest (Colin Punt)
God was working at his desk, reviewing plans for evolving more sea creatures into crabs when the intercom clicked on and his secretary announced that someone was there to see God. God pushed the button to reply. “Have them sit down for a minute. I’ll get to them momentarily.” A few seconds later the intercom…
Wedding Speech : LOVE WINS (Z.H. Gill)
It’s the speech—here in its entirety—which I gave at my father’s wedding, which was held in a rented-out bowling alley in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California. I was drunk. I’m sure you can tell. I’m only able to recount this now because my roommate Joe, my plus-one, recorded it with his Voice Memos app—the year…
limelight (Sofie Wise)
the lime was stuck in your glass that first hot day of spring even though functionally it was not working, this lime, with its exposed pulp, rugged rind, translucent insides, a facsimile for the way you were speak- ing, sucking down your gin and bubbly as the fruit floated stagnant in the middle of your…
Lost and found (Edward Anki)
Getting lost driving along narrow cobblestone roads in Portugal we arrive at a dead-end what looks like a dead-end what isn’t a dead-end rather a small cement lot harboring a small supermarket where the proprietor directs me to cold beer before I ask about Port oh yes he smiles plenty of Port! Real pride…
A Night to Remember, Forgotten (James Callan)
One. Nothing like that first drink. When it hits your belly. That splash of fire. The ease of tension. The lift of mood. The day, hard or easy, behind you. Don’t stint on that first. Get off to a good start. Attaboy. Two. What’s good just got better. Now it’s what you’d call a buzz.…
Shark Dive (Melissa Flores Anderson)
A breeze darted up from the water below as the sun settled down into the ocean. Bradley and I sat outside on an upstairs patio at the Waterfront. I wanted the atmosphere to be romantic, but it never quite was with him. The weather cooled more and I shivered in a sundress, the only nice…
Girl’s Night (Brooke Mackenzie)
I’m going to have a glass—no, a bottle—of wine and watch Love Island. Nick won’t be home for hours. It’s girls’ night. I have no girls here, no boys either. I don’t even speak the language. Not that it matters. The Chinese man at the depanneur down the street is the only person I have…
I’m Glad We Didn’t Go for Italian (Maria Poulatha)
“Let’s order Bloody Mary’s.” Claire winks mischievously. “Ok.” I was going to order one anyway, as a vegetable. Claire usually orders sparkling water at lunch with a wedge of lemon. It looks like a cocktail but it tastes like water with a doorknob dipped into it, but I don’t say this to Claire who is…
Why is the God of this poem drunk? (Chrissy Stegman)
*** Chrissy Stegman is a wife, mother, poet, and forest nerd from Baltimore. Her work often weaves in religion, myth creation, cultural obsessions, and the intersection of grief. Her work often showcases the comfortable ambivalence of poverty and violence. She loves reading and writing poetry, the faces of strangers, finding forests, and holding her husband’s…
idle chatter on a summer afternoon (RC deWinter)
it’s a nondescript day in an all too describable life but i won’t bore you with all that i’m not in the mood to undress and who knows your horrors may be more spectacular than mine let’s talk about the sound of bells during an earthquake their frenzied clanging awakening every fear you’d like to…
Trumpet Tits (John Milas)
The story I was told after the party was that I had beaten up my friend and then thrown him out of a window. Glass showered the parking lot below as Lyle tumbled from the second floor. He survived because—as I was told—he landed upright in the passenger seat of a convertible. But I would…
Worked (Rob Yates)
I realize that Frostis fine and that oneshouldn’t be a Kant,but I prefer Carmelitato getting blood on the tracks. A cigarette and a love poem is cliche, but half an Ambien and a bottle of whiskey washed down with year-old hashoil from a bong will write three chapters for you. A great poet shoved her head…
Film Scene in my Head (Ledya Khamou)
I see you at the bar. It’s a fancy bar, trimmed with gold overhead lights and black surfaces. You’re wearing your white Nikes and cropped black hoodie, back hunched, repeating your habit of correcting your posture then giving up and slouching over again. You flex the reflex once, and that’s when I recognise you. I’m…
Sometimes You Want To Go Where Nobody Knows You’re Gone (Hunter Gardner)
The most wonderful bar in the world is in Charleston, South Carolina. Cutty’s is, affectionately, a dive bar. It’s tucked squarely in the Elliotborough neighborhood, where the food and beverage industry workers somehow find landlords who take cash and charge half that of the rent-gauged college students next door. In perhaps the greatest business strategy…
ancient olive oil jalopy (Clem Flowers)
Not a soul at this swarm of neon with soup- stain walls seems to say a word while I watch my lonesome emerald walk off into the Werewolf fog out by the gnarled railroad bridge. High art pity parade, complete with Confetti off so many picked at beer bottle labels, weak pyrotechnics from a sea…
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