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Riding Giants

Each new love affair
is like 
standing in front of
a 50 foot wave--

It looked doable 
from shore.
     
​     --Todd Cirillo
Car Troubles

Every night
it was her,
that drove me
to the liquor store.

We didn't 
even own 
a car.

​     --Matt Amott
Muse

Reading the poems
of my past 
to her
she says,
"I had to go through a lot of pain for those."

"I know," I said,

"me too."

     --Todd Cirillo

​the human animal


possesses 
an uncanny ability
to justify any action
after the fact:

if the devil
didn't make us do it,
we were drunk,
stoned
or temporarily 
insane.

when all else fails,
we blame it
on love.

​     --Wolfgang Carstens

​This Kind of Quiet

It's midnight 
on Friday and the weekend
is spread out like a smoothly
made bed with the covers
tucked up, waiting for me
to slide in, and that's exactly
what I'll do.
While you're out in the night
where quiet is the steady 
stream of drunken voices
and cheap beers
slamming down on counters,
and you knock a few back
yourself, comforted
by this kind of quiet,
fighting to fill your head
with the right answers,
dousing your heart
with another shot of fuel
and one more song
to keep it running,

each of us enjoying
the kind of quiet
we deserve.

​     --Julie Valin

​Heavy Metal Summer


My 15 year old summer
was all sweat and musk,
sweet lust and revelation,
smeared lip smacker
and hand lotion
in the heat of his
teenage room.

It's hard to make-out
to Ozzy's Crazy Train
with all that laughing
and bass thumping,
but, we did it.
All the way 
through 
the first side.
When he got up
to flip the record,
it amped up my anticipation
of where we would be
carried away next,
the rise of the guitar's moan
and beating drums--
the accompaniment
to my wild exploration
of his hot love,
the room
humming with
high notes,
melodic words,
and heavy metal sunshine.

​     --Julie Valin

​Backseat


We were never romantic
in the classical sense.
Our first time, you pulled off
into a cornfield and we fucked
in the back of your car,
the skin of our knees scraped
red and raw
by the stiff upholstery.
And it was fucking, wasn't it?
Fierce and wild and all about 
what we wanted,
what we could take
from each other
while the moon laughed
and banged its fists
against the steamed-up windows
like a fat, drunken cowboy.
We ignored it all--
the barking dogs,
the distant crunch of tires on gravel,
the cows lowing in the fields,
the strange, sweet smell of manure.
After, you wrapped me in your t-shirt,
and we laid tangled there
for hours like willow roots.
You said I smelled like gingerbread
and buried your nose in my hair,
and we laughed because it was absurd
and real and funny. 
That next morning,
we wore our bruises
proud as prizefighters.
Months later, I carry
the scar of your teeth on my neck,
a small pink flower
buttoned into my flesh.
I like to think it blooms
only at night and smells
something like gingerbread.

​     --Amber Decker
The Perfect Death

She called from the city
to say she missed me. 

We talked for hours
in the stillness of the night
until her phone died
around 3 a.m.

When I see her
I express my regret in
killing her phone.

She says,
"don't aplogize,
its final moments
were spent listening
to your words
whispered 
in my ear."

It was the perfect death. 

     --Matt Amott


"if not a mess,"

my wife groaned,

as she picked up
the empty Tequila bottles
the empty beer can
and
the half-smoked joint,

"then 
what do you call it?"

"we 
have been married 
twenty-five years,"

I said,
lighting the joint,

"and that,
my Dear,

is what 
I call

a survival
kit."

     --Wolfgang Carstens

​Fuck Stars


when we kissed

I saw

guns

shooting.

     --Madeline Levy

​Perfume & Cigarettes


The memory of you lingers.
Absorbed in thin skin,
clinging to strands of hair,
like the perfume and cigarettes
I smell in dance clubs
when groups of giggling girls,
in flashy, barely covering clothing,
flip their pretty ponytails
as they walk by.
But when it's drenched
in my own party dress,
tangled in my unbrushed hair
in the sober sunlight,
the smell,
ain't so sweet.

​     --Madeline Levy

​Fate


I will find that special person
who is wrong for me
in just the right way.

​     --Will Staple

​Much More Trouble


She could have made me
most unhappy--
now, I'll have to do that
for myself.

​      --Will Staple

Amen

I'll take the 
chocolate
when I'm old
and the flowers 
when I'm dead.

Right now
while we're still
young,
agile
and free
I simply ask
that you
fuck me
like you mean it.

​     --Noel Kroeplin


Checkout

Waiting in line
for the woman 
with 200 frozen dinners
each on sale
at a different price
gives me the quiet time
I desperately need
to find out
who's banging who
in Hollywood.

     --Noel Kroeplin
​

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