The paper in the window of Vern’s Barbershop went up with little fanfare.  The lazy snip of scissors has gone silent.  Across the window paper, scrawled in dozens of hands, are the thanks and best wishes of family, friends and (more…)

Daybreak junkies
sit on busses,
pull close trench-coat recollections

door hinges in need of fixing,
island getaway cruises, 
a where, a who to call their own

Cock-crow attendants
thumb newsprint strategies,
     curse behind steering wheels,
spill coffee (more…)

At first, the offering of a single toe
     breaking the mer,
releasing a surface tension
built of 330 million miles square
of earth’s surface

     not too hot; not too cold

In a pile discarded,
soiled, faux epidermis
abandoned to mustify (more…)

I.

Up an aisle, a bag of Huggies
and an issue of People beneath an arm,
an AK-47 shoulder slung
Like Warhol, he parses
the significance of row upon row
of brightly colored soup cans.

II. 

Skateboard kids carve (more…)

A pressure cooker percolating
20,000 years, maybe more.
A caldera itching to blow
the lid off a new age,
to smother yet another 
Iowa cornfield in ash
three inches deep, 
to at long last cast
California into the sea

There’s (more…)

The fist of God smashes
down on the ‘nine,
grinds out the butt-end of his anger
sends everyone scattering,
searching pockets, the beneath chair cushions,
dashboard ashtrays and the saucer
that sits a top the chest of drawers

Those (more…)

By Jason Vaughn and W.E. Leathem

I. Midpoint 

After three years away from Kansas, I am sitting in my old merciful green chair in the living room of a temporary “home” in a sleepy neighborhood in Basehor, an orange (more…)