They came riding out of the woods tunnels of cigarette smoke piled in a July wind, fifteen, maybe sixteen— no helmets, no plans, just busted-up boots and bandanas hanging from their belt loops like blood-red flags of surrender they’d never admit to.
Mickey led the pack— a Marlboro boy with a devilish grin, his daddy’s denim jacket and a scar across his cheek from a chainlink fence and doing donuts in the mud. Said he didn’t care if the whole world went up in ash, just as long as he could spit on it before it burned.
They’d ride those dirt bikes up the gravel switchbacks, kick up gravel air and coal dust and deerbone— laughing like they’d just robbed God blind.
Then one night they caught wind of the girls down at the Catfish Pond, skinny-dipping under the sheen of lightning bugs and busted constellation dreams.
Mickey said, “They swim like they know somethin’ we never learned,” and hit the throttle as if it owed him a life.
They didn’t mean to scare ‘em, not really— just wanted to taste the rebellion of wet hair and watermelon lotion and the squeals of girls whose names they only knew from the yearbook margins.
But it all turned when Mickey hit that old rust pipe half-submerged in pondweed. Flipped like a bottle rocket— landed wrong, neck twisted Boys scattered like shotgun birds. Girls screamed through the cattails like it was 1969 and the war had come home.
We buried him three days later in his father’s flannel, right next to the VFW flagpole where drunk men told stories of someone they never really knew.
And now, some nights, when the moon goes cheap and yellow, we ride out to the edge of the pond— me, Brent, Lo-Joe— leave our smokes on his old cinderblock and swear not to talk about the girls or the sirens or how Brent cried when he pulled off Mickey’s boots.
No one swims there anymore. The pond’s gone still, like it’s remembering the Marlboro boys and the silence that follows the first time you learn you don’t live forever. Baby, you just don't live forever.
The Turnpike
I saw your light in the window, Flickerin’ like the past in a haze And I stood there in the rain, babe, Watchin’ nightlights move too fast. The engine kept on runnin’, And I knew I couldn't stay, My heart stalled out in neutral, Miles away many yesterdays.
And I know this road don’t turn around, And I know you’ve gone where I can’t follow, But I’m drivin’ like a wraith on the turnpike, With a tank full of bleeding fuel, with greasy hands.
We had nothin’ but the backseat, And a borrowed piece of golden time, You wore your mama’s jacket, And your name scrawled into mine. I said love ain’t made for leavin’, You said leavin’s all love knows — I'm trying to find your voice in this static On a late-night radio.
Yeah, I know I ain’t the man I was, And I can’t be the one I promised tomorrow, But I’m drivin’ like a wraith on the turnpike, With a broken dashboard and a broken jaw.
There’s a motel key in my pocket, Room 3 where you last cried — You said, “Don’t wait up for me,” But babe, I still try. I'm playing the odds.
I’d take you back, Through the fire, through the cold and the hollow — Still drivin’ like a wraith on the turnpike, Chasin’ this feeling I can't swallow.
The Pines Burn With What We Don’t Say
There is a woman in the holler who lights candles in the mouths of buck skulls— not to summon, but to remember what the flame won't burn away.
I walked past her cabin with a fever in my chest A prayer or creek water couldn't calm. The trees leaned in like they knew what I had buried beneath my silent tremors.
The heresy now is not disbelief, but the way we carry desire like a lit match inside our throat— pretending it’s just heartburn.
She said nothing. Only pinched my wrist like she was checking the time on my pulse, whether I was a dream or a curse. I did not speak either. My voice was somewhere between a wound and an inferno.
In the valley, a fox screamed like a woman left alone too long. Some nights, I can sound like that too. When my triggers hit and the unbalance that poisons bring.
The men in this town wear their guilt like cologne. They light fires in barns and behind wedding rings, whispering Lord, forgive me like it’s a spell and not an alibi.
But I’ve been forgiven too many times. It doesn’t take. All the mistakes, all the delays You're either the burn or the salve on the pain.
And what do we do with the things we want but dare not name?
We dream of locked doors. We sweat. We touch orbs in the dark and wake up smelling of pine and ash and someone else’s sorrow.
I’m not afraid of hell. I’ve already seen how quiet heaven can get when you call her name and she doesn’t answer.
There is fire in the stillness. And it hurts just enough to keep living.
The Gates of Midnight
We were shadow men, names scraped off rusty license plates, crawling past the bones of the border while the moon blinked drunk over the hills, and the dogs barked like broken typewriters.
Some bozo had a rosary of cigarette burns mapped across his forearm— each one a year inside, each one a vow to never go back, not for a woman, not for a steak dinner, not even if his mama rose up from the grave wearing a Sunday dress and forgiveness.
The wire cut clean through my shirt, and my chest bled freedom in Morse code —dot dash dot— while the sirens curled like jazz notes in the distance. We ran with our feet on fire, our eyes stitched to the headlights of a far-off car we’d never buy but always believed we would.
Kerouac once said the mad ones burn like fabulous yellow roman candles— we weren’t fabulous. We were filthy. We were bruised skin and stolen hearts and a pack of saltines between us. But we were burning, God help us, we were burning down that midnight gate line like it led straight into the basement of the singing church choir.
They all begin muttering guttered voices under their breath. like scripture, talkin’ ‘bout runnin’ till our feet felt free. rustin' and runnin' we dreamt grace and pulled out scribbled torn paper plans.
Behind us: the clang of a locked life. Ahead: a diner maybe, a woman maybe, a lie we could wear like thin denim.
The sky began to pale like a bruised cheek, we kept walking into the hush where the road forgets all sins, and the sun calls you by no name but man.
Raise Hell on a Friday Night
Well my old man’s shoutin’ from the porch again, “Turn that down, boy, it’s a quarter to ten!” But I just got off work from the midnight mill, Got a six-pack of liquid courage and the devil is crawling in.
My boots hit the ground startling a battle cry Me and the boys under a sickened red-ink sky. We ain’t got much, but we got this sound, Guitar and a prayer in our rust-belt town.
You gotta raise hell just to feel alive, Taking our dream out for a Friday night drive. They locked the gates, we climb the fences, Born in the dirt, not beginning to repent.
Jenny’s on the hood of her brother’s car, Lit cigarette and a wishing on a star. She says, “They make the rules to keep us tame, But every small town’s got a hunger flame.”
So we howl at the moon like a drunk wolf. Turn the radio loud, drown out some regrets. They say calm down, grow up, fall in line— But we’d rather burn than slowly decline.
You gotta raise hell just to breathe the air, Make 'em notice that you’re still there. Throw your fist at the cuss words and lies. Ain’t no sin in being wild and alive.
And when the night is gone and the we begin to fade, We’ll still be legends in this mess we made. Not stars, just kids with nothin' to lose.
The tides had turned and the Man in the Moon was bleeding, dissolving withering away as he melted down.
He cried out to Father Time hiding there on Earth but there was no help to be had There was no time for it, no hope left only deaf ears and everything in ruins.
Encounter here is scene I fear as globes or globules fight it out, disintegrate before our eyes, two worlds in tears as torn apart - or melting of Malteser fare - each ball consumed by those within.
Eye knows the mouth, creased facial skin, confronts hint contours, crusty map, as if those worlds too self-contained, destruction inbuilt within sphere; is this contention future doom, galactic, or quantum in zoom?
Collision, as kids fight for sweets, confection, jaw jaw turned war war? Confession being good, the soul, my sibling fought me, sherbet dips, the bit between his sugared teeth, consoled by liquorice at lips.
Are humour and our dreads conjoined, climactic issues of our age where inequalities pertain - or my agenda thus invades perception, how I see these worlds? I need see others poets’ words.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Fevers of the Mind. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com
-- Stephen Kingsnorth https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ https://www.poetswall.com/profile/slkingsnorth/profile Freeman of the Borough of Warrington, Cheshire
Gods and Monsters by Thompson Emate
Two worlds are emerging, An uprising of the mysterious, A clash between the gatekeepers and the invaders, A battle between order and chaos.
It’s a turbulent era; The monsters are pursuing the chosen ones. Darkness follows in their wake, The minds of the latter are like a tempestuous sea. An ark has set sail to rescue them.
Strange beings hide in the shadows, Emerging in the stillness of the night. They seek the souls of the gifted, Metamorphosing to inhabit the unseen world, Fighting and scheming to ensnare the chosen.
The gods are inflamed; Their rage has unleashed a magma of destruction. They have emerged from their chambers, Waging war against the monsters, Battling the dark lords. The chosen are on a path to redemption, Guided by spirits toward Zion's gate.
Bio: Thompson Emate spends his leisure time on creative writing particularly, poetry and prose. He has a deep love for nature and the arts. His work can be seen in Poetry Potion, Poetry Soup, Visual Verse, Written Tales magazine, Writer Space African magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Borderless Journal, Spillwords and elsewhere. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
Chaos of Creation by Kerry E.B. Black
A world within an eggshell, Caught in fragile walls Whirling with possibility A cosmos of creation Positive proteins paired With wise umbilicals Dripping daylight into An unsuspecting world
Kerry E.B. Black writes from an over-stuffed little house situated along a fog-enshrouded river in the land where Romero's Dead roamed. Her children think she's dull, and their dogs agree, but the family cats, Poe and Hemingway, feel differently. The felines find a kinship with their nocturnal buddy and encourage Kerry to write.
Myrtle Thomas has been published in several poetry journals such as Fevers of the Mind , Otherwise Engaged Literature and Arts Journal , Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Ink Pantry , Masticadores USA WordPress , Masticadores Latino WordPress , Chewers and Masticadores WordPress, Masticadores Canada , Sincere Dalliances , Readers and Writers Magazine , Ain’t no Dead Beats Around Here , Keeping the Flame Alive Magazine , Literary Cocktail Magazine , Poems , Art and Short Stories October Stories , Alien Buddha Zine # 71 , Rebirth Journal. She self-published four books of poetry and is a member of AllPoetry .com , her Penn name BlueBird 74 .
Hey Theres a Party Man
On a cow path road in Indiana where snakes refuse to slither and the wind picked up a flower I headed to the store in down town ( No Where) though I had no money because of tariffs window shopping was my only financing spree car radios were blazing in my ears and bees stinging my face - but this is the promise land so I weep.
Theres a bad dog on the corner trying to bite my feet so much to see and feel on the street corners that lead- to ( no where ) while I have blisters that the street wants eat but the streets call for attention ( man there's a birthday party ) A parade going on ! so much to feel in this so called promise land I had not a cent to spend nor a bite to eat - things get ugly on these mean crowded streets.
I tried to live the best I could without a church in sight but the songs and prayers of the destitute wailed even louder ! I had a craving for tacos- but the cooks moved away looking - for a promised land somewhere ( other than No Where ) but the guys who really matter get fatter every day it hurts to see the hound dogs beg for a stale crumb of bread but nothing else matters when you die without a doctor on the wrong side of the town.
Dancing in the Town Park
I go to bed each night without a word to say not a prayer or a song in my heart - it's sad to be this way every day finds a new thing to trouble my mind with pain my brain urges my body forward to dance and howl in the moonlight until my feet are blistered and my voice begins to fade.
I have no need for matches to start a fire and chase a flying spark but I can see clearly the people dancing in the old town park someone might know me if I begin to sing my favorite song maybe I should call my lover to say babe I won't be long.
Tonight I'll lose my shoes in the tall green grass of yesterday and smoke the smoke of the ancients or forget the noise today I'll think of all of the good times where I lived and loved you before even if the noise gets louder I'll still love you even more.
Maybe I'm a joke to everyone as I get older in my skin but baby I have no need for a gun nor a savior for my sin lets set this place on fire and cast the bullets in the air for now and if there are fireworks from our dancing baby we'll both bend and bow.
“Ethan McGuire’s Apocalypse Dance is a collection of poetry that uses all of history as its subject and all of humanity as its theme. We feel the cold and the warmth of his textured images and recognize the sentiment behind each word, whether he speaks of ancient times or of his American hometown. McGuire’s love of music seeps into his poems and gives them depth and dimension. His words read like lyrics—rich with detail, raw with emotion, and ripe with meaning.”
—Jeannie Zokan, author of The Existence of Pity
“Apocalypse Dance is indeed always dancing. It dances with Christianity, Taoism, and Buddhism. It dances through spiritual geography, through relationship issues (with God and others), through reworkings of song lyrics and translations from Classical Chinese. It is always thrumming with the passionate fascination McGuire brings to all he captures.”
—Aaron Poochigian, author of Mr. Either/Or
“Ethan McGuire’s debut work of poetry, Apocalypse Dance, is a beautiful collection of short poems that sings to the heart and soul of the human condition. A splendid book which features how poems of all sizes can be beautiful, the reader is entreated to couplets, tercets, quatrains, and sonnets that make the reader want to sing and dance with what they are reading. The gentle reader might just be welcomed into eternity with the poems that Ethan McGuire has decided to share with the world.”
Bio: David L O’Nan is a writer/poet currently in Southern Indiana, born in Kentucky with a stop in New Orleans in between. He has been writing/editing for over 20 years including this website “Fevers of the Mind” which has also put out collective anthologies of poetry & art. Inspired by Anthologies for greats such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joy Division, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Miles Davis, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Elliott Smith, Chris Cornell, Andy Warhol & the Factory, Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton, Jack Kerouac, etc. He mostly spends time trying to find time to write these days. Editing and posting for the Fevers of the Mind website. He also has several books self-published. “Before the Bridges Fell” “The Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and Whispers” “Cursed Houses” “Our Fears in Tunnels” “Taking Pictures in the Dark” “The Cartoon Diaries” “New Disease Streets” & “Lost Reflections” among compilation collections. I’ve had work published in Icefloe Press, Dark Marrow, Truly U, 3 Moon Magazine, Elephants Never, Royal Rose Mag, Spillwords website, Ghost City Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cajun Mutt Press, Punk Noir, Voices from the Fire, featured on Wombwell Rainbow, The Poetry Question, Grains of Sand, The Poetry Life & Times, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal and is a 4 time nominee for Best of the Net throughout the years.
Flight Logs
It was pale night down on the tarmac in an imperfect eyes it was a midnight fog, Private jets humming like a preacher's lie. Names in a notebook, smiles that looked dead inside. Another meeting under the blood-red sky.
There is a man from the island, king of the dirt, Wore a tie like a leash, smirking through the hurt. He brought silence and sin and gold and lace. All his secret's locked behind a child's face.
Oh, they must have gotten the lady Satan's prophecy wrong— The devil wears loafers and sings a rich man’s song. He dances in the courtrooms, shadow puppet on the wall, Justice don't knock when the towers are too tall.
They said he fell— But the cameras blinked, And the guards took five, And the world didn't think. Another ghost in a cell, Another name to phase away, The billionaires though were keeping their pace while freedom died like the rabbit in the race.
Palm Beach waters and Manhattan wine, The air smells like money and turpentine. Girls with bruises tucked under their sleeves, Walk out into night like they might still believe.
And the choir sings on in a boardroom haze, Where sins are tallied in the next stock market praise. But I saw his face in a Wall Street bar, Flickering blue under television stars.
No, this ain't no dream, Ain’t no tabloid scene It’s the truth we buried Under gossip and greed.
And somewhere out there, On another mirror with steam, shame is written with her breath.
Another Graveyard Shift
The moon is hanging low like a rusted bell. Ringing out silence where the freight trains dwell. I punch the clock at a quarter to pain, Same old song, same old bruises in a cold steel refrain.
A quick breakfast with early diner's eyes. Coffee black and bloodshot as the Jersey sky. They begin to hum a tune there from '85 Swears it’s the music that has kept them alive.
My boots drag through the warehouse floor, Every box, every shadow, I’ve lifted before. And the forklift breaks again in midnight glare. The men are all sweating through all their chest hair.
Joey's got a kid and a second job, Talks softly, pukes and chokes yet he still walks like a mob. Says he dreams of only beaches, sunsets wide, But dreams don’t pay when the checks bounce, neither does pride.
We’re graveyard bastards in denim, punching steel, Trading hours for a broke-down deal. A brotherhood forged in spit and grime, On the edge of morning, we are just running out of time.
And when the sun cracks over Route 9’s ridge, We drive like a soaring demon crossing some bridge. Eyes red, hearts blue, souls adrift— Blessed and body broken on the graveyard shift.
The Bully's Fence
That black-eyed bald bully lived two blocks from the levee, house with the rusted mailbox, flag faded to ash and dandruff He’d spit on your lawn, cuss at your kids, Tell you where you can go.
Said his daddy fought in 'Nam and he fought no one but his neighbors— lawnmower wars, noise complaints, called the cops if you parked too close but fired his shotgun at squirrels at dawn.
He wore that Carhartt jacket like it meant something claimed respect like it was owed, like it was back-ordered from a world that stopped delivering long ago.
Old Mr. Bailey tried to paint his fence and that bully rolled by slow in his truck, stopped just long enough to say, “Paint don’t fix what’s already rottin’.” And Bailey’s hands trembled but he finished anyway.
The pastor said grace, The bullysaid lawsuits. The kids learned to cut across yards to avoid his stare, and the postman called him “the storm” when he wasn't listening.
But some nights— you’d see him on the porch beer can sagging in his hand, staring at the Ohio stole it's soul and wouldn’t give it back.
Nobody knew what broke him— maybe no one ever tried. Maybe bullies are just boys who ran out of time before someone said "you’re not alone."
Still— Everyone is beginning to see on our lane They'll begin telling you, he seems a little insane That Bully's fence? “It ain’t white pickets, it’s barbed wire pride.”
The New Guy
That new guy came in with a smile too clean, shoes too shiny for this part of town. Clipboard in hand like a hammer of God, reading names like he’d never been down.
He said, “We’re gonna tighten up the line, boys, trim the fat, cut the slack, get lean.” But all we heard was rattlesnakes and hums in the walls, then the buzzing silence that comes when they shut off machines.
We built this place with busted backs, calloused hands and broken sleep. Poured our lives into concrete floors while the world upstairs got their cut deep.
But he don’t know the sounds in a man's head with a burning need. when it screams at dawn like a jailbird freed. He don’t know the smell of burnt-out hope, or when we pray out hard so we can meet our families' needs
He says “Move or lose it, change or die,” But I’ve heard that said in a thousand lies. The kind that come with a pink slip emasculation While they pave the way for the next new sin regeneration.
So beat it, leave it, or drown it away in a bottle. you don’t know nothin’ ‘bout our hearts. This ain’t your show, these ain’t your scars, we bleed in bolts and weld our stars.
Your empire’s built on borrowed time— watching the weeping eyes through the factory line. But if you’re cuttin’ us out to keep your throne, you better learn motherfucker how to stand alone.
‘Cause we’ll be out back, under rusted lights, singing the songs our fathers taught us to sing when the bosses came to break everything. The elimination of the slim.
Phil of Ohio (inspired by Jim Dean of Indiana by Phil Ochs)
He was born where the smokestacks touch the sky, In the steel-bent town where the factories cry, Phil of Ohio, guitar in hand, Wrote the truth of the working man,
His voice was smooth as the diesel moaned, He'd listen to the freight trains rolling through rust and bone, He sang to the old ghosts at the union halls, And lit his torch in the darkened walls.
He wasn’t no cowboy or silver screen star, He was a kid with a song to kill what was wrong with a beat-up guitar, Every chorus, every angelic bend of the wind. He was fighting time, his demons, everyone else's sins.
They called him a dreamer, too wild to tame, Light a flag on fire with a rebellion bravery, Marching through the smoke and lies, With protest fire screaming in his eyes.
Oh, Phil of Ohio, with your dusted hair, You were there to let us know the world just didn't seem to care. You gave 'em truth they couldn’t live, So they locked you out without bread to give.
You played for the weary, the broke, the damned, You stood where the frightened wouldn’t stand. You weren’t made for the TV light or radio noise Peace was lifting through your every pore.
Your stage became quiet and the crowds moved on, We lost you to the demons that bought your brain. In the rust of rails and the picket lines. The sanity of never feeling justice would wave away your light. Phil of Ohio never said goodbye.
Loriann’s Duplex(inspired by Candy's Room)
In Loriann’s duplex, the blinds stay drawn, The paint is puckered with secrets from long nights to dawn. She keeps her hair up high and her heels on low, And the stereo hums like a runaway heart as she bleeds out slow.
There’s a mattress on the floor and a map on the wall, With circles in red where the stars are planning to fall. She speaks in riddles and smoke-ring sighs, And her laugh cuts sharper from the light to the blind.
She says, “Babe, I seen the world in a bus rearview, And all it gave me was this name I outgrew.” But I come running when the porch light flickers and floats, With my collar turned up and my blood still froze.
In Loriann’s duplex, time moves slant, She's the church hiding sin with a rebel’s chant. She kisses like war and she walks like a song, With a heart stitched up where the world went wrong.
And I tell her, “Someday we’ll burn out clean— Like a small town fire in a cloudy dream.” But she just smiles with her rust-red eyes, Says, “Boy, all your dreams got suicide ties.”
Still I stay— I wait outside like a dog to play fetch. 'Cause there ain’t no heaven I ever could see, Like Loriann’s duplex when she’s waiting on me.
Fevers of the Mind 