you leaned on the bar
sexy
like last time
bent over the pool table
drunk
to make your shot
cue stick
sliding through your hand
like a scepter.
i asked for more
jack daniels
& wished i could
turn up the volume
of the “4 songs for a dollar”
jukebox.
you smiled
after scratching
& sipped your
sex on the beach
just like last time.
i accepted then
your vacant eyes & how they
did not remember me.
soon it was 2 a.m.
the bartender
kicked us out
like last time
& unplugged the jukebox
before any of my
songs had played.

Michael Benson manages a comedy club and makes fiction and poetry out of the love and desperation he witnesses on a daily basis.  He lives with his girlfriend and a cat near Tempe, Arizona.  This poem was written before the girlfriend came along and she's okay with that.

                       after a painting by Peter Hurd

cup the flame
& feel the heat
burning in the low fields
burning the mountains
blue, in the cool dusk
burning your cheeks &
the insides of your fingers.
Don't smile. But stare
at the origin of fire
feel how it can warm
like a dream and burn
like a fever. Then hold
the thin candle deep into the night
deep, deep into the black night
& be still, very still, until
the light
goes
out.

Shea Balboa lives in Salem, Oregon, with her husband and three children.  This is her first published poem.

moon/light
spilled in
as she slept
peacefully
next to me
in the gray darkness
of the hotel room--
dreaming something
wicked
behind those
half-moon eyes.
I realized then
I was in bed with her
not make love,
but to learn.
not to touch her
bare shoulders,
but to study.
and it
almost took
my life
to watch her
breathe
w/o thinking

Leroy Riverton lives in La Mesa, California.  His work has appeared in a number of literary journals including Clock Tower Quarterly, Wench, The Julian Review, White Daisy, and Free Poetry. 

some sad lost soul
from every city
on the planet
kissing his last dime
good-bye
or tying a slip-knot
with some stranger
in the hot sandy middle
of nowhere


Sue Christian lives and writes in the shadow of
the Matterhorn in Anaheim, California.