'Twas the day before Christmas
and all through the mall
there was pushing and shoving
and even a brawl.

The shoppers had come
with their cards all maxxed out
to search for yule bargains
before time had run out.

Some of these gifts
are intended for girls.
They smell like a whorehouse
or control errant curls

Some others are meant for those
all-American boys
who laugh at concussions
when playing with toys.

For those in strained marriages
jewelry is nice...
An argument Christmas Eve
is ameliorated by ice.

Pre-packaged shrink-wrapped gifts
piled by the dozens
make up for perennial
indifference between cousins.

For really impressive gifts
brand names are in --
if you're in the dog house
these will please your kin.

Don't forget decorations,
smelly and garish
Torture to put up
But your family will cherish.

The children will take turns
In Santa's broad lap
He sips from a hidden flask
and listens to their long lists of crap.

The economy stirs, groans
And lets out a fart --
It’s awakened by Christmas folk
Filling their carts.

Some come do your part
In the local strip mall
Treacherous though it is
It's required of all.

Kathryn's book Snide Remarks in Sotto Voce, is available on most ebook outlets.

I told him, "No matter where you go,
Or who you're with,
Remember that someone loves you."
He hugged me, nearly cried,
Grateful just for words.
So I didn't tell him the punch line,
which was,
your mom.

Valerie can be reached at valerie@valerielewis.net.

Art collectors will often
Lend out their privately-owned pieces
To public museums
For years at a time.
Even if they're not
Philantrophic by nature,
They feel morally obligated.
It's like how no one can copyright
The sound of rain in the summer.
How no one can claim
One's first sight of the ocean.
Somewhere in a Manhattan penthouse,
An old white man considers
The discolored square of paint above his mantle,
And feels a warmth rise in his body.
Some things are too perfect to be owned.
This is how I feel about your dick.

Valerie can be reached at valerie@valerielewis.net.

One night, this cowboy wheels in to the Drive-In with his headlights pointing skyward to the moon, rear end clipping speed bumps, muffler dragging. Wally is taking tickets below the marquee, so he steps up to the window to get the money, but there's no one in the car except a skinny-assed driver surrounded by a dozen voices escaping from the headliner, the air vent, the ashtray, the cigarette lighter, all speaking crazy-fast in something like Spanish or Comanche.

Wally thinks about you, Miss Ticket Girl, in the mini-skirt, perched on your stool by the cash drawer. The driver smiles and Wally takes his cash, pretending like he doesn't see the scam. What if he challenges? And the trunk latch clicks and a dozen tough guys from the road crew climb out with stilettos and switchblades and shining white teeth, and what if they only have enough money between them for one popcorn and a drink? Think about it, what if the two of you would have to chip in, buy all those tough guys tickets, popcorn and root beer, and then, you'd have to sit with them through an entire spaghetti western? You in the backseat. Wally in the trunk.

Al Ortolani is a teacher from Kansas. His writing has appeared in a number of periodicals, across the United States: New Letters, New York Quarterly, The English Journal, The Midwest Quarterly and others. He has three books of poetry, The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, published by Woodley Press at Washburn University, and Wren's House, recently released from Coal City Review Press in Lawrence, Kansas. He is active with the Kansas City Writer's Place and an editor with The Little Balkans Review.

The professor was known to lose track of himself for hours on end. New Year's Eve was no exception. He had merely driven one block too far to a departmental cocktail party and had consequently knocked on the door of a meth lab. The junkie with the forty-five told police in his subsequent six hour stand-off that he had no intention of shooting a professor that night; it was an accident forced by improper residential zoning. Professors, he insisted, shouldn't be barging in on the privacy of a lab; recipes are arguably intellectual property. The girlfriend, still doe-eyed, but lined and creased with hard riding peeked from behind the gun. Doyle, she said, nudging her boyfriend with her forehead. That's the professor who flunked me out of English 101. We got nowhere to run.

Al Ortolani is a teacher from Kansas. His writing has appeared in a number of periodicals, across the United States: New Letters, New York Quarterly, The English Journal, The Midwest Quarterly, and others. He has three books of poetry, The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, published by Woodley Press at Washburn University, and Wren's House, recently released from Coal City Review Press in Lawrence, Kansas. He is active with the Kansas City Writer's Place and an editor with The Little Balkans Review.

Alan D. Harris writes his stories and poetry based primarily upon the historical fictions of family, loved ones, and/or serial killers. Most recently his 2011 publishing and acceptance credits include: Candidum, Blink-Ink, Healthy Artists, Australia's Chimaera, and UK's Welcometowherever, Blinking Cursor, and Poetic Causes.  Harris has received the 2011 Stephen H. Tudor Scholarship in Creative Writing from Wayne State University.

No big deal
I said to my father,
a son of the Great Depression,
an era influencing his lifelong
obsession for saving money
through conservation, a guy
as green as Popeye's poop
with a budget tighter
than Tupperware.
I was only six, after all,
not as though I used the chocolate
substitute and it was merely
a Tootsie Roll, segmented for sharing,
but I never had to share
with my three sisters
the same bathwater again.

Bob Petras is a resident of Toronto, OH, and a graduate of West Liberty University. His poetry and fiction have appeared recently in Phantom Kangaroo, The Camel Saloon, Speech Bubble Magazine, and Haunted Waters Press. He often hangs his work on a nail in a tree behind his house. He is a frequent victim of prank phone calls.

I feel like there is a presence in this house.
Did someone die here?
It feels like a heat, a headache heat in my head just now.

I'm getting something more now:
a child, maybe about eighteen or nineteen.
It's female, but for some reason I can't see the face.
She wants me to know that she can't leave this house,
not until someone knows how she died.

She's telling me that she died in the bathroom.
I see something about a large man with a club.
No, it's not a club. It's a bat, a kind of baseball bat.
She wants me to know she was killed by a baseball bat.
She's saying something about aluminum;
she doesn't seem to know how to pronounce aluminum.
She's giving up on trying to pronounce it;
now she's saying it was a metal bat.

Wait, I'm getting something else.

This part is confusing; she's saying that she tripped
on the bat that was on the floor in the bathroom.
And then the bat got angry and animated itself
and it flew in the air and hit her on the side of her head.
She says the large man just watched and did nothing.

I'm getting another message
but she's not making sense to me:
she's telling me that we should look for a sweater;
she wants to know if her sweater is okay.
She says she doesn't want anyone else to have the sweater.

Is there a sweater in this house?
Is it an expensive sweater?

She's telling me she'll kill
anyone who touches that sweater.

A past member of five national poetry slam teams (Worcester, Mass. (x2), Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Del. and Albuquerque, N.M.), Rich has published four chapbooks of poetry and for seven years hosted an open reading and slam in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in March of 2008, Rich has been performing and writing steadily in the Duke City, and is a regular contributor/editor at localpoetsguild.wordpress.com. Living day to day with physical abnormalities caused by the consumption of Monsanto’s supercorn, Rich is also an educator, adventurer and an unlicensed psychic. Rich’s poems have appeared in Adobe Walls: An Anthology of New Mexico Poetry, Fickle Muses, The Rag, Menagerie, Clutching at Straws, Shot Glass Journal, Mutant Root, The Mas Tequila Review, Borderline, and The Legendary. Hear some of his poems at: http://richboucher.bandcamp.com.