Single Men by DS Maolalai

1am;
my table festive with bottletops
spotting like umbrellas
up against a storm.
cup after cup
of sweet
and milkless tea.

we are playing monopoly.
I have the space around the jail
and some of the top corner properties.
my electric cigarette
tastes like violet candy.

Jack shakes the dice
like he's wanking them off
and Aodhain makes dirty jokes.

thursday night
and we have very little to be.

*****

DS Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)

New Book: Kind Surgery by Matt Dennison

Cover photograph by Juta Pryor

Urtica is proud to publish Matt Dennison's debut poetry collection. The father figure is central to this book and the voice takes you down memory lane, but not in a morose or weak tone. There are memories that, though painful and devastating, can later lead to the most beautiful moments.

After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans, Matt Dennison’s work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.

Many of these poems were published in small press magazines.

42 pages - $6 - ISBN: 9780244537012
Buy it here!

*****

Kind Surgery

Your father had an ear infection
so I lit a cigarette and blew
smoke into his ear and like a
damn fool started smoking
again and playing those
Hawaiian background
music records until
I got the scrof jaw
which you can see has
been removed through a
bit of kind surgery at the
Cook County Jail—
just the right side,
I believe. I touch
nothing when I touch it.
And yes there was my
side-family thought to be
hidden, but with your
grandmother fresh off the boat
from Sweden or somewhere
and dropping those babies,
‘twas tough being a cop and
a lumberyard cook—so consider
your father’s galvanic eye-squeaks
a rich source of magnets and
call it a day.

Love at Club Level by John Grey

Photo by suzukii xingfu from Pexels

So much smoke, so much noise,
a kiss straight from a whiskey glass,
and a touch, of your leg
that pops your eyes bright hazel.

All sex and jazz,
rain outside and dark within,
chairs pressed together,
bodies close as summer grasses.

You're all sugary sweat,
clutching and nibbling a perfect stranger,
the first step in a long relationship
or the penultimate line of a joke.

*****

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.