Paul Sutton 


No Stops for Murder

Culture war, so the day pubs reopened

mostly the middle classes stayed away.

 
I saw one in the Co-op, still masked –  

almost a surgical gown – he looked half-angry

when asked, was he going to 'independence day'.
 

Well, there I was, my book on Ted Bundy to read –  

the anonymity of gas stops, stolen credit cards and

Holiday Inns. A man in a zebra tie said he believed

in reincarnation – after five pints – and thought this

life was pathetic – he'd go out in his dust to planets

and beyond. His dour friend said this life was enough,  

a miracle, if you took time to sort fine from the rough –

who wants to come back as atoms in another place?


Planes were invisible above the clouds,

not spying, but not free to wander wide

over the earth's curve, out to the zone

where blue meets gold.

Paul Sutton was born in London and has published six poetry collections – most recently from NY publisher BlazeVox: Parables for the Pouring Rain (2019). His last UK collection was from the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press: The Diversification of Dave Turnip (March 2017). Falling Off (KFS, January 2015) was Poetry Book Society Recommended Autumn Reading, 2015.

Paolo Bicchieri

I watched the elephant seals get born

It was in January and I watched 2019 blink into a year of poorly made beds

Lubricated blue crescents writhing around the sand

castle down 101 holding court high above and afield
like tennis, 
untouchable & opulent

I wondered at the way my love teetered from heel to toe at seeing the calves mewl, 
at watching them hunger

I wondered at the way my love for my love teethes along her arms, between her tattoos,
between the places I knock and ask

In the bombing slams of their father’s bull bellies I wondered
about the food eaten in the long halls of Hearst Castle down the road

The tide rises each year and I watch the sand,

dollars,

grate against the fortress door, futures in oil and in children trading below
a pint of beer, Brent bent low like fentanyl, the opioid that crushes the hillside,
the valley, the North Seattles all but the 
glittering castle peak

I watched the elephant seals get born and I wondered if any of this mattered

and I wish I meant the wondering or the watching
and not the writhing,

the sand

Paolo Bicchieri (he/they) is a poet, journalist, and novelist living on the coast. His work has been featured in Something Ordinary, Quiet Lightning, Bay Area Generations, Nomadic Press, and 826 Valencia. He loves his family and police reform.

A. Loudermilk

Cop Apologist


My conservative aunt is a cop apologist. 
     My conservative aunt is married to a cop. 
My conservative aunt as if the only conservative. 
She laments childhood cancer and homeless pets

and English not being our national language
officially. Why feel betrayed by her vote? Why
unframe her taking my hand when ten, walking 
me around the deep backyard facing all that pasture? 
She couldn’t have known I already hated 
the family she married into—hated perilously 
my hick boy cousins, my sociopath brother, my dad.
She’d descended, pretty
     redhead divorcee from a suburb up north. I hoped 
but mom never wanted any friends. When did I start 
saying mean either instead of me neither? Always

     probably. My conservative aunt, hardly
the family’s only conservative, she talks no politics 
at Sunday dinners or Thanksgiving; still—
     couldn’t I see Reagan in her eyes? 
     My conservative aunt is a cop’s wife.
     Their daughters love rodeo. She mourns
     statues of Robert E. Lee torn down and
     The Anthem on one knee. Just seeing 
a hijab smothers her. Her opinions matter. 
I used to think she was my favorite aunt.

A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, with individual poems in many publications like Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Smaritsh Pace, and Tin House—dating back to the 1990s when Mark Doty introduced him as a new voice in The James White Review. He’s taught creative writing at Hampshire College in Amherst and MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) in Baltimore. He currently gets by working at a tea shop in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.