The Whisky Blot
Journal of Literature, Poetry, and Haiku
To hell with deejays, live bands, crowded dance floors. On lonely nights, bourbon in hand, I still love to hunker, over wide-bellied jukeboxes tucked into dark corners of back street bars, their squat legs perched on sawdust strewn floors, their gap-toothed grin, like a fat man waiting to be fed. I flip through metal pages in search of songs from the past—downbeat Doo-wop of the fifties, Frankie Lyman wailing on that ancient question —why do fools fall in love-- the Platters, rumbling with the rhythm of sex, and Elvis, the king, high gloss, down dirty, singing, sobbing, turning us weak with desire, we wanted to be there, to live in that mysterious hotel called Heartbreak, to walk its bleak, seedy corridors until we learned it was not a place to reside forever. Elizabeth Burk is a semi-retired psychologist and a native New Yorker who divides her time between her family in New York and a home and husband in southwest Louisiana. She is the author of three collections: Learning to Love Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase, and Duet: Poet & Photographer, a collaboration with her photographer husband. Her poems, prose pieces, and reviews have been published in various journals and anthologies including Atlanta Review, Rattle, Southern Poetry Anthology, Louisiana Literature, Passager, Pithead Chapel, PANK, One Art, and elsewhere. Her first full-length manuscript will be published in September 2024, by Texas Review Press. How calmly the cubes settle in the tumbler where twilight ambers. The antidote to memory Lights the body's furnace, Banishes the cold. Once at a fetish street fair a man-sized latex egg, and in it, an alien. The barrier of skin dissolving. a wet hand digs through a breech to signal safe. I take that hand in mine. I won't let go. Darren Black resides on Massachusetts North Shore. He continues to hone his poetic skills in workshops and has studied in Vermont College's MFA program. His first publication appeared in the fall 2019 issue of the Muddy River Poetry Review. Recent poems explore disability and his own experiences living with blindness.
The men hold their sticks, chalked at the tips, smashing balls against one another, ordering Mich Ultras & Budweisers & my phone number, tipping me when they remember as they tip glass bottles to their chapped, thirsty lips, puckered like the assholes they are after the sixth beer settles in their guts. Jessica Cory teaches at Western Carolina University and is a PhD candidate in English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is the editor of Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene (WVU Press, 2019) and the co-editor (with Laura Wright) of Appalachian Ecocriticism and the Paradox of Place (UGA Press, 2023). Her creative and scholarly writings have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Northern Appalachia Review, and other fine publications. Originally from southeastern Ohio, she currently lives in Sylva, North Carolina. It is raining and I am listening to Jazz Noir The heavy rain comes down the whisky spills into my glass The sky is dark the dram tints the crystal amber Rain and whisky soothe the dry places parched by drought It is no longer raining I am still listening to Jazz Noir and I feel it The whisky pours into my glass I drink it again and I feel it too Shane Huey (editor) writes from his home in America's most ancient city. When he is not working, he can often be found on top of a mountain in Colorado or seated on his favorite barstool in Key West. no periods exclamations or questionable marks let your life be a run on sentence that never ends maybe maybe allow an ellipsis (if necessary) Roy N. Mason has 41 years remaining until his death. Striving to make each day count, he documents his experiences. His observations and lessons-learned are documented in personal essays and poetry. A world-record holder at nothing, but a legendary Key Lime Pie cooker, he has the ability to remember mundane facts. He is an introspective storyteller touching on all the topics of the North American human experience. |
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