Cell Phone Videos

all you cops
who beat down
the Occupy
protesters
all over America
with yr billy-clubs
cuffed them and
pepper-spayed them
in the eyes:
I want to thank you
for reminding us all
what a bunch
of thugs and goons
most cops are
showing
the taxpayers
what their money
goes for:
the next time
I eat pork chops
or fried bacon strips
I'll be thinking
of all you pigs in blue.

-by Ross Vassilev













Ross Vassilev is a born loser and a poet. He's originally from Bulgaria but now lives in a small town in Ohio where he eats rotten eggs for breakfast and spends every day watching lezzie videos and other fine entertainment. You can read more of his poems at http://rossvassilevpoet.blogspot.com/.
                                                                                                           
Painting Courtesy:  Francesco Garieri

Francesco Garieri was born in Italy in 1958. He is a self-taught painter and currently living in France. he did his exhibitions all over the world. He is also associated with the art in the streets.            


                                                                                                                                                                                 

Gary Cummiskey

      © Gary Cummiskey


Watched/watching

We were being watched by the people on the boat. We were doing things. We were sticking our fingers in each other’s brains. They were watching us as we watched the samurai on horseback race along the shore.


Intimate lives

It is an evening in September.
You are typing 
in the next room.
The cat slips out of the window as
the horse slips in.
Soon the details of our intimate lives 
will be pasted on 
billboards 
throughout the city.


-by Gary Cummiskey


Art Courtesy: 'Mirror of Xtasy' by Gary Cummiskey

Gary Cummiskey lives in Johannesburg. He is a poet, writer and publisher. He has had several chapbooks of poetry published over the past 20 years. His short fiction collection Off-ramp has been nominated for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award 2014.

Don’t Fuck With Jesus Or He Might Fuck With You

Growing up I had a pal

called Shorty, he thought

he was a bad motherfucker

Shorty was never without

a pistol tucked in his pants,

one day his lady caught him

cheating on her with a floozy

She kicked him in the nuts

so hard his gun fired, blowing

off most of his pecker

She grabbed the bloody sausage,

stomped on it & gave it burial at

sea, flushing it down the toilet

That’s how Jesus lost his name

I told him look on the bright side,

Shorty is better than Stumpy.

-by Catfish McDaris

                       

                                           

Catfish McDaris has been active in the small press wold for 25 years. He lives in a cave at a nudist colony. His biggest seller is Prying: with Jack Micheline & Charles Bukowski. He has only 7 toes.

                                                                                                                                                                    
Painting Courtesy: John Graham 

John Graham  is an australian artist and cartoonist.

John Yamrus

The apartment

had

no heat,

no hot water

and no back door.

to

make it

interesting

two strippers

lived upstairs,

the problem was

they were nice girls.

broke,

just like us.

we ate

boiled noodles

and

very little else.

the

poems

came hard.

-by John Yamrus

Since 1970 John Yamrus has published 22 volumes of poetry and 2 novels.  He has also had nearly 1,700 poems published in magazines around the world.  His work is taught in numerous colleges and universities and been translated into a number of languages.  His most recent full length collection of poetry is ALCHEMY.  It's available on Amazon.  More information on John and his writing can be found at http://www.johnyamrus.com/index.html

Art Courtesy: Janne Karlsson

Janne Karlsson is a wildly prolific Swedish illustrator and writer.

Leldon Grace fetches a frisbee

      © Simón Vázquez

I hated him

I hated his dull brown hair

parted to the left side

I hated his dirty ears

his crooked glasses

I hated his Vietnam Vet father

stocking booze at

the local liquor store

I hated his skeletal mother

walking the neighborhood

since she never learned to drive

I hated his red cabbage stink

I hated his one pair of jeans

his two stained shirts

I hated that of every boy

in the fourth grade

I was always the one

to be paired with

Leldon Grace for recess

so I threw the frisbee

as high as I could

as hard as I could

and watched Leldon Grace

charge after the blue disc

I watched him sprint five steps

into the street and get

clipped by a sleet gray Buick

I joined the other children

gathered on the sidewalk

as the teachers screamed

for someone to call 911

we listened to the apologies

from the Buick’s elderly driver

I couldn’t take my eyes

away from Leldon Grace

his left leg broken, forehead

gashed to the bone

those cheap glasses, setting

lopsided on the car’s hood

the blood collected curbside

and Leldon Grace still tried

to claw his way out

of the street but only

succeeded in finger painting

crimson on asphalt

seeing him writhing

I felt nothing

and I realized

I could do this again

to anyone

-by Karl Koweski

Karl Koweski remains an enemy of the Amish, having launched peanut brittle boycotts in 12 Mennonite communties.  His poems and stories can be found here and there.  His collection of short stories Blood and Greasepaint remains available and his latest Kockblockers will be out in November.

Painting Courtesy: Simón Vázquez 

Simón Vázquez (Barcelona, 1979) started in the field of animation and studied at the School 9zero. But soon he turned to Arts, and  studied at Barcelona Llotja. After engaging in illustration, he led himself to painting and sculpture, and  he has been doing  exhibitions  for years  at the galleries of Spain and abroad.

An Avalanche of Flies

A cavalcade of planes

piercing the soft skin of clouds,

so white & thick like sour milk.

Silent zombies ascending the sky

like sleeping flies.

My mind is adumbrated.

I can’t find a clue.

I have to read William Golding’s

Lord of the Flies again.

Perhaps, I would find a connection.

— Flies are not just insects.

They are the salt of myths.

C[rude] salt bombarding

the city’s eyes.

Pyrokinetic planes &

cacophonous sounds of flies

splitting the city’s ears.

A blue sea rich in lights

ready to submerge the city’s body.

White clouds hauntologies—

shields for a slumbering city

shrouded in mist & peace.

-by Ali Znaidi

                                                                                                                          

                                                                       

Ali Znaidi (b. 1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia, where he teaches English. His work has appeared in various magazines and journals worldwide. He authored four poetry chapbooks including Experimental Ruminations (Fowlpox Press, 2012), Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems (Origami Poems Project, 2012), Bye, Donna Summer! (Fowlpox Press, 2014), and Taste of the Edge (Kind of A Hurricane Press, 2014). He also authored a fiction book titled Green Cemetery (Moment Publications, 2014) which is in fact the first Tunisian flash fiction collection written originally & published in English language. Some of his poems have been translated into German, Greek, Turkish and Italian.

You can follow him on Twitter @AliZnaidi. You can see more of his work on his blog aliznaidi.blogspot.com.

Painting Courtesy: Chris Howard

Chris Howard is an illustrator, working in ink, watercolors, and digital formats. His web site is SaltwaterWitch.com.

Playing The Game: Catfish McDaris

        

Catfish McDaris

H&P: Someday you see that all your writings are on fire – your reactions?

CM: I’d probably cry and start over or cut off my left arm and wait to die.  Or just go fishing and say fuck writing.

H&P: Do you believe that you have any social responsibility as a writer? If yes, how do you manage to perform that with your writing?

CM: I don’t think about social responsibility when I write. I try to tell a good story and if I enjoy it, maybe someone else will too. If people don’t like my words well fuck them. I remain my biggest fan and best audience.

H&P: Your best four poets?

CM: Bukowski, Poe, Li Po, Neruda

H&P: Your best four writers?

CM: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Zola, Steinbeck

H&P: Would you still continue writing if you see that not a single stuff you wrote is sold?

CM: You can’t be a small press writer for money. It’s fucking impossible. You might as well try to suck your own dick. Even if I was facing a firing squad, if I had pencil and paper, I’d be writing. It’s like taking a shit, it might not always be pleasant, but it has to be.

H&P: Can you write if everything is NOT OK? I mean do you need a situational stability and mental calmness when you sit to write something?

CM: I can write in a tornado of madness, in a hurricane of insanity, in an earthquake of orgasmic eruption. I can write in the dark with nothing up my sleeves.

H&P: Do you ever suffer from a complex that you cannot write like the ones you love to read? If yes, how do you handle it?

CM: I’ve never experienced writer’s block. I have been working on something and get distracted by other thoughts or priorities of projects. Fuck it, I attack like a hammerhead shark and let the devil lick my ass.

H&P: Does writing come out of continuous exercise or it’s a spontaneous gust of fresh air?

CM: Writing is about doing. Have you ever captured a fart in a jar? That is my gust of air.

H&P: Do you like to identify yourself as WRITER or writing is just a part of YOU?

CM: I am WRITER hear me roar motherfuckers!

H&P: When will you stop writing?

CM: As soon as I finish living or when I sleep.

H&P: Which one is your personal favourite among your published works? Where can we catch it?

CM: I have no faves, but the next one. You can catch it in the razor sharp wind with stainless steel teeth of a bloody bear trap.

H&P: Briefly let us meet your family

CM: My wife, Aida, our daughter, Elizabeth, two cats, Honey and Pepper, and our kid’s dog, Izzy. All females.

H&P: What are your further suggestions for Hash n’ Pumpkins!!

CM: I think you are doing a super job, Mr. Nili-bro and I am honored to be interviewed by you. I would ask that you introduce the small press world to Kolkata, India your home.