John J. Dunphy ~ Robert J. Gregg

Ed Higgins ~ Roxanne Hoffman

Peter Marra ~ Tom Sheehan

Patty Patten Tiffany

Poésie Saisonnière

John J. Dunphy

The War On Christmas

"These damn liberals hate Christmas.
They're all a bunch of goddamn atheists.
If they had their way, they'd get rid of Christmas.

"You aren't even suppose to say 'Merry Christmas' anymore
'cause you'll hurt the feelings of the goddamn atheists and camel-jockeys.
You're suppose to say 'Happy Holidays' or some such bullshit.

"Well, I'm a Christian and I'll say 'Merry Christmas'
any damn time I please and to who the hell ever I damn well please."

And this guy,
who was standing next to me at the club,
said "Merry Christmas" to the stripper
as he slipped a twenty in her g-string.

Of Jews And Christmas

My neighbor had heard about a Jewish family
that put up a Christmas tree.
"Jews are getting more like Americans all the time,"
he exclaimed with no small amount of satisfaction.

I tried to explain that Jews
living in the United States
are indeed Americans.
"What you probably mean is that some Jews
have adopted certain Christian customs," I said.

He listened to me but didn't get it.
An ultra-conservative
in both religion and politics,
he relies exclusively on right-wing news sources.
For him, it's just so simple.
The United States was founded as Christian nation.
Jews aren't Christians.
Therefore, Jews really aren't Americans.
Or, at least, not in the same way that Christians are Americans.

I asked him if he liked the song "God Bless America."
"Yeah," he said. "I love it."
I told him it was written by an immigrant Jew name Irving Berlin.
He was quiet for a moment and then asked me
how my cats were doing.

John J. Dunphy is a notorious hell-raiser who has been infuriating right-wing political and religious extremists since the early 1980s. Authorities agree that it's a miracle he's still alive. His Facebook Timeline has been likened to a Wild West show. Check it out for yourself.

Robert J. Gregg

Christmas Stood Before The Door

Christmas stood before the door

Dressed in tie, shirt, tuxedo, shoes

Suspenders, belt, underwear

V-cut T-shirt, shorts

Hat, red fur coat and boots.

It was cold and he was lonely

But he was two weeks early

And no one had yet finished

His Christmas shopping.

A tree was naked on the back porch

And the Christmas card for Grandma

Not yet written.

He rang the bell

Knocked on the window pane

Unwittingly activated the alarm system.

A mechanical voice predigitalized

Sang Jingle Bells

And gave dire warning to the count of three

So Christmas left

And would never have come again

Had not little Bobbie tugged his sleeve

And given him a piece

Of Thanksgiving turkey.

Robert J. Gregg is a native Clevelander presently domiciled in Germany. He is the author of Death Road, Sam and the Fall of the Wall, and Death Commends Not All, each available exclusively on Amazon.com from Hammer & Anvil Books.

Ed Higgins

The Shepherds

“OMG!,” as if such were possible,

said one awe-struck shepherd

to his equally startled nearly dumbfounded

mates after hearing those star-loud voices

sing in perfect Renaissance-choir harmony.

“I’ll be damned,” said another, truly stunned

with credulous wonder, “Maybe we’d better

hike over there and possibly see for ourselves

what this commotion’s all about?” As meanwhile,

the universe itself dilated, contracting as if the entire

cosmos were suddenly birthing or going supernova.

So the shepherds crossed that illuminated eternity

turning directly into Bethlehem’s dark center

arriving finally at slightly past midnight.

Far beyond all but their own rancorous belief

they beheld there the singular multi-gift child:

Mary’s manger-miracle birth. “Now, don’t that

beat all Hell,” said one wondering wholly, yet

curiously adoring, as any ordinary shepherd

might. They there stood still, wondering.

Roxanne Hoffman

Advent

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

[Central Park, New York City]

bird

chirps;

dawn

emerges;

families

gather,

hugging

infants,

juggling

kids,

lifting

mutts;

neighbors,

out-of-towners,

politely,

queued;

rain /

shine;

tots

uplifted,
voices

wafting;

x-mas-ready

youngsters

zoned!

make a wish or what i want for christmas

for John “Jack” Edward Cooper

how we retrofit our lives:

penciling plans;

rescheduling schedules;

clocks set back, we spring forward,

take this leap of faith —

reality suspended midair —

and like children

waiting for Santa’s delivery,

we hug, locking in embrace,

eyes closed tight,

our dreams pouring forth

like clover’s amber-hued honey

from lust-loosed tongues;

we buzz like bees,

as the snow drifts down,

glitter before street lamps

against the black drop of night,

hushing all around us —

pure and white,

the flakes — now the size of moths;

eyelashes fluttering,

hearts ticking away from any boundary of time,

we talk and talk and talk,

pollinating most perfect memories.

Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline. Her words can be found in cyberspace, set to music, on the silver screen, and in print. She and Jack Cooper run Poets Wear Prada. Her elegiac poem “In Loving Memory,” illustrated by Edward Odwitt, was released as a chapbook in 2011.

Peter Marra

Häxan, Noël and the Black Dahlia Active Video Camera

(Häxan: English title, The Witches or Witchcraft Through the Ages is a 1922 Swedish-Danish documentary-style silent horror film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts.)

A feeling of Who is She?

a woman in a mask and handcuffs dreams

of Man Ray dead under a Christmas tree

as the plum pudding burns and the holiday meal is destroyed

A tortured gift from Kris Kringle

(the one clad in the black leather outfit

embellished with blood-hued accents)

in her world there is just silence

in her environment the stars come and go as they walk up decayed staircases

craving the mirrors at the top

floating towards cruelty

a Glasgow smile adorning a figure torn asunder in mid-January of last year

anniversaries are to be celebrated

view a thin layer of skeletal biology as a way to pull it off

she felt it rapidly contract as

gentle snow burned her eyelids

her most wonderful time of the year

Overcome by addiction

she clothed herself in fantasies

some known some obscure

like ancient Christian rights of

holidays that had been long forgotten.

feeling dead inside

repetitive injury made her feel more alive.

it was silence all around now save for faint hissing.

Leave the rooms where women once dwelled

photographing tableaux of exhumed bodies dancing under moonlight

sensually humiliate and eliminate all know witnesses

return the models to the ice and snow

hang a wreath on the door and

pretend all is normal as usual

once again

The family is gathering around the table silent and bare

glassy eyes betray their shared love of morphine

and twisted sexuality hammers nails into the TV set

as the Bing Crosby special runs on an endless loop

followed by Perry Como eventually

black yuletide bliss

she sits upstairs and waits for the horror show to begin

Send new

messages via

our brains pray to Criselda of the

vacant stare

our mutual patron saint

of spilled blood

becoming electricity through

her collapsing veins

an over under acrid sour smell

of flayed dreams warmed over in an oven

of hallucinations

bisected forms adorned the fields

that were forever lost

The always surprised spermatic cords

withered in the stratosphere

heaven frowned

on things it couldn’t

control

Another motherfucker hidden

behind her and

whispered depravities

she turned around rapidly and used a

blessed straight razor

to sever carotid arteries and random capillaries

the red blood spray complemented the

aluminum Christmas tree

erudite priests burned

with lust as they lit the votive candles

arranging the nativity scene in a “just so”

fashion smashing the advent wreath

the color wheel spun

A lonely Photographer
crushing smiles together
just tell me why we’re here
just describe what happened
grant the silence of our
forgiveness

sleep for a while add

extra gasoline to the yule
log

you know why childhood holidays were
so brutal

it's because we never existed
sweat on skin
lock this away please
original sin has a shape and taste
celebrate the feast of the possessed unknown children
photographers attempt to reattach a bisected torso
regenerate for the degenerates all the pleasures

so they can do it one more time

Tom Sheehan

The Mercies Found in Christmas Light

Across this newly thickened pond

my night skates chatter up clouds

of mist as dense as the Milky Way.

Underneath, the fish disbelieve

the sudden hardness of their sky.

It is the darkness makes me love

all the mercies found in light.

Only the blind could love light

more, given one more chance;

a flake of pond ice in their eyes

with a star caught up inside.

If I dare to listen I hear an event

of ice fracture, a shore to shore

cracking underfoot, schismatic,

a round of forgotten artillery;

or my booted cutlery slashing

lines on the sugar-white surface,

crackling an electricity that divests

thinly clad wire. I am on the pond

after midnight and there is light.

Clarity speaks on cubes of air.

The wind has teeth for the back

of my neck. Only my left arch

is tired, and that from an accident

once on a night moving lightless.

What matters is I am not blind.

Light comes in spheres, or long, thin

lines, in the dusts we know of ex-

plosions. Light is in the cold air

slingshotting pellets at my teeth.

It is what first comes of darkness,

and all the mercies we’ll ever know.

Tom Sheehan served in the 31st Infantry, Korea 1951-52, and graduated Boston College in 1956. His books are Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; Collection of Friends; From the Quickening; The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; Reflections from Vinegar Hill; This Rare Earth & Other He has published 28 books, which include the western collections The Nations, Where Skies Grow Wide and Cross Trails published by Pocol Press, and Six Guns, Inc., by Nazar Look and three titles issued in 2016, The Cowboys, Swan River Daisy and Jehrico. He has multiple work in following publications: Rosebud, Literally Stories, DM du Jour, Danse Macabre, Linnet’s Wings, Serving House Journal, Eclectica, Copperfield Review, La Joie Magazine, Soundings East, Vermont Literary Review, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voices Journal, Frontier Tales, Western Online Magazine, Provo Canyon Review, Vine Leaves Journal, Nazar Look, Eastlit, Rope & Wire Magazine, The Literary Yard, Green Silk Journal, Fiction on the Web, The Path, Faith-Hope and Fiction, The Cenacle, etc.He has 30 Pushcart nominations, and five Best of the Net nominations (and one winner) and short story awards from Nazar Look for 2012- 2015, and a Georges Simenon Fiction Award. He is 2016 Writer-in-Residence at Danse Macabre Magazine in Las Vegas.Under consideration are Valor's Commission (collection, military stories), The Keating Script (novel), Back Home in Saugus (story collection) and two poetry collections (Small Victories for the Soul and To Athens from Third Base.)

Patty Patten Tiffany

Key West Christmas

Stroll along the seawall to Old Town,

Wander up Petronia Street,

Make a right on White,

And meander up Angela,to the edge of the cemetery.

Drink in the last sensuous frangipani blossoms,
every color a different fragrance.

Pay homage tofuchsia and golden interwovenbougainvillea,

Study the palms, immigrants now happily at home,

Coconut, ponytail, traveler and

Sago, the oldest, which pharaohs dozed by.

See the elegant eyebrow porches,

a shady style borrowed from past mariners,

Adorned with red bows and twinkling Christmas lights

draped along the balustrade

where sailors’ wives waited in rockers.

Hear the laughter of pirates stopping for water,

The cheers of wreckers heading for plunder,

The rumrunners, the smugglers,

Bound for fortune and paradise.

Watch Ponce de Leon round the corner

To meet Calusa natives when this was really Bone Island.

Daydream along the narrow streets

Or flow like the balmy breeze

Down tiny alley ways,

To tasteful mansion gardens, back and forth,

Drifting between the past and the present,

As you imagine Santa with a sleigh pulled by dolphins,

Hemingway, Tennessee, and Truman aboard,

Waving with smiles

At the beautiful island life so many have loved.

Friend of the Macabre Patty Patten Tiffany writes from, you guessed it, Key West, Florida.