2 Poems by Dustin Pickering

We Are Free

Each attempt to love
leaves a scar, and
an empty breakfast table.
The heat will not let me go,
my body is the clown of it.
I am a nightmask,
horror's relevant kiss, this streak of satisfaction that love's technology
grants the lover.
I am free to give love,
though it rejects me.
A cynic fresh from questions
unanswerable.
I do not love you as the courts
love mischief.
I love you as the judge loves justice.
Let us go, set my people free!
The vast abyss, open to decaying voids,
these words are depths of the heart.
Let it go, let it be, either way we are free.


Freshen/Renew

Intuition is the way life dreams
without plan.
Whose mind is split without
the constant renewal of time?
The oceanic feeling--
these blank powers of existence.
I test my heart with a sorrowing leap,
and I surrender my title to the damned.
Every day I strain my poems
to make this incense fester like a corpse.

2 Poems by Ross Vassilev

animal kingdom

so many strange things

like that one time in a Kroger parking lot--

a young man walked up to me

and asked if he could pray for me

he said that God told him to pray

for the first man he sees walking with a limp

(I walk with a limp)

I said sure

so he put his hand on my shoulder

and sent a prayer on my behalf to Jesus

when he finished

he beamed with evangelical ecstasy

I said thanks

he said something I don't recall

and walked away.

so many strange things--

I was watching football one Sunday

the second game of the day

when I felt something weird in me

and wondered what it was

then suddenly it hit me:

every second that I watched that game

I was getting dumber

both in mind and in spirit

so I turned off the TV

and stopped watching crap of any kind

soon thereafter.

when I think of all the crap TV I used to watch

when I was a kid

(my poor brain!) hour after hour

it's a wonder I can think at all.

so many strange things--

my insane family

the white trash and their kids

and their dogs--

so many things

I'll never understand

and I've given up on trying.

zombified

it's a funny world we live in

where the people who slaughtered the Indians

and penned them up in reservations

keep talking about freedom.

I guess you need black slaves to build democracy

you need nuclear bombs too

and the biggest prison complex

the world has ever seen.

do these people

really believe their own bullshit?

here's some NO-bullshit:

I didn't mind working 40 hrs. a week--

what I did mind was sweating my ass off

for minimum wage till my feet hurt

in conditions that were more slavery than freedom

and all the union could say was sorry.

if zombies are the walking dead

then I certainly was one for a few years

till my luck kicked in for once

and I finally got a chance to work at

becoming a human being.

but when my luck runs out

(and I know that some day it will)

I'll be back in the warehouses

the supermarkets and dim factories

(if there's any factories left in America)

busting ass and bitching

and stinking of sweat

cuz when it comes to working for shit-money

I just don't feel like showering some days.

Poem by Corey Cook

To-Do List

Yvonne Alstead ripped up rummage sale

handkerchiefs and used the scraps to patch

her husband’s beloved coveralls. Dabbed

cotton balls soaked with hydrogen peroxide

on the nicks and burns plaguing his hands -

inflicted by car engines. Truck axels. Cooked

his steak on the grill, placed it before him

and cut it up as he watched Match Game

and barked, “Move your fat ass!” All until

the day he scratched “Get a life” on her list

of things to do. Sandwiched between “Scrub

kitchen floor” and “Wash and iron curtains.”

And so she did. She moved in with his brother

who made her pan-fried brook trout, left love

notes in her pockets and took her line dancing. 

Open Call for Submissions

Very excited to announce today that the journal arm of Blind Vigilance Press, The Blind Vigil Revue has risen from the ashes and is back online! We currently have an open call for submissions and hope to be re-listed on Duotrope soon. Please read thoroughly through our Submission Guidelines and then send us some poems! Also in the very near future we expect to add additional staff. We hope for The Blind Vigil Revue to become as successful as Whisper & Scream Magazine was during its short run. We are pretty bare bones right now, but hope to bring forth some great content very soon. Thank you for reading!

Cheers,
Lee Lincecum, Managing Editor