By Mark Hendrickson and Casey Jo Holman

Waterworks

I hardly ever cry during diaper commercials any more. I used to sob, for no discernible reason. I don’t pretend to like children, and I’ve never changed a diaper. It was embarrassing. Every time, the music would swell, the baby would piss, et voilà—waterworks. Sometimes depression comes out sideways.

Mark Hendrickson (he/him/his) is a bipolar gay poet and writer in the Des Moines area navigating the Sturm und Drang of daily life through wordcraft. His work has appeared Variant Lit, Vestal Review, Modern Haiku, Spellbinder, and others. He has a background in music, psychology, and marriage & family therapy. Mark worked for many years as a Mental Health Technician on a locked psychiatric unit. Follow him @MarkHPoetry, https://www.chillsubs.com/profile/mhendrickson or on his website: www.markhendricksonpoetry.com

(hunger)

“Paper is cheap,” John says
as an explanation
when I rip sheets out of a notebook
and end them, vengeful, in a trash bin.

Behind the bar, the service bartender
shakes a Sazerac—

He drives me crazy.

After work we come down
a few blocks off of bourbon
where everyone wears black pants and pays in cash,
and you smoke blue & gold cigarettes.

The sunset is white wine in a glass
yellow gold in broken windows.

The curtains haven’t been moved in six months
but they remember fits of passion above old street,
broken sidewalks, empty bottles and wallets,
full pages,
hunger for something more than white plates.

Casey Jo Holman is a bartender based in New Orleans. Her work has previously appeared in Nerve Cowboy, Bank-Heavy Press chapbooks, Verdad Magazine, as well as three self-published books. She mostly drinks water.