Back Patio Press

A photo of a standing bear
on one of those days it’s so nice to stand outside in the grass
But the bear is in pain
Can elephants jump accompanied by pictures of elephants not jumping
Derrick as in oil not someone you know
What happens to helium in the air – it keeps rising fyi
What exactly is a horned frog
Wordle
Worldle
Statele
Tromssa in the midnight sun
Cats named after bulls
Internet history in too small a font to read
Geese navigating by land crevices and features
Samson’s riddle because of a poem by jason heroux
Boethius for the same author, so old, this man, but never heard of him – not jason
Newcastle pub pies
What are neeps
How northern england became  how it became, which i only know from tv, the last part, if i know anything
Shepherds at north ulster obscured by an ad
Europa the consort of zeus, getting jiggy with a bull
A photo of a blackbuck from a zoo i drove by in texas
The strange creatures i saw took me aback
Made me stop
Longyearbyen, a town in norway that sounds like what it is
American primitive guitar styles
Bighorn sheep in wyoming in a parking lot
From a movie i am fond of, deeply, tired moonlight
A culvert because sometimes it sounds like custard
Custard could go inside a culvert but culvert doesn’t go inside custard
Unless you like eating rocks
The horse has six legs, a poetry anthology i forgot
The eating of bulls after they’re slaughtered, the ones that fight in the ring
Understanding spanish colors when bulls fight, colors that mean nothing to the most important “competitor”
Really are they fighting there’s a lot of running around
In the youtube videos i see, bulls looking for a fight
like me searching for dinner when i already made it
When it was already made for me
Where’s my dinner, the bull running around the ring is like that
You know cruelty is such a cunning thing
Once extinct auorchs who might not have had these problems
Bold and beautiful as that black bull may be
Chillingham cattle, again
I really like bulls
I think these are white i fell asleep about that one
Raton a bull that was honored and i believe died a natural death
For killing people who asked him for the possibility
He charged into that he gave them that
Wonder how their mothers feel about that
Holy cow, hinduism, take me away from how quickly i am lost in every other word combination than those
Imagine that kind of love
It must be possible
Not to eat 
Living creatures
Pi review, more jason heroux
Gilycuddy, a name that came to mind to fill a rhyme
Menhaden which sounds like a secret society of germans but is actually a very small little fish
That perhaps once floated with george, the lobster
Who is famous for being old and large, large as my dog
Did you know they live for 100 years if we let them live?
A trestle which i still can’t explain but i think is wood
Giraffes which are not wood but resembling woods
In the dark if you saw a hundred giraffes would you think you were in the forest
And then one ran after another and another 
Why don’t poems like these get accepted when i submit
Why do frogs look like they’re staring into your soul
Is it just the not blinking?
Ispropoyl alcohol, does it damage something other than germs
I’m only fighting violent killers
A question about feeding picky dogs
A poem by lucas restivo
A butterfly called the swallowtail my neighbor saw from upstairs 
I mean he is from upstairs, he saw it downstairs
We only meet downstairs
Like butterflies we go up and down the stairs Female giraffes, something
Trestles again, should giraffes know trestles
Do giraffes trestle? Are they trestling right now
Should i make an introduction
Depressor for the tongue, and cabo release
Of sea turtles, when the postman comes
In the UK because i saw one deliver mail at dawn and that must mean
You failed the day before?
Oh what a thing to think about
And What about the thatched roofs and the restaurants that define portland per sponsored content
Like me at this moment telling you i’m a great poet
A bit manipulative a video of something in a bowl
How big are hummingbirds,
Prado, which probably means bulls to me, nesting seasons of crows
The property management cut down their tree
The pair sat on the roof with twigs before they flew away
All that work for nothing, evicted
First thought last thought worst thought, that’s just me now, interjecting
I can’t even figure this, oh now here, some gifts for my brother
In may
Here i was high, irish menus, irish sausage rolls
Russian america … that was an accident
My credit card interest is piling up but seeing it pile is reassuring
Like the crows feel, i’m sure
Bok choy and scholarships, bangers and mash
Salt fat and acid because i reproduced salami and avocado
Toast with brie i would never, but the internet has not discovered my friend’s trick
I won’t can’t tell you, student loans and neptune township
Funny to live in a land on earth named after a planet
If anything will bring comets close to earth
It’s the annoyance of being named
For this stupid place with 12 cozy places to eat, impenetrable pastas
Old poems about women, synonyms for field where they can land
A car muffler backfires, perfect they can use that
William butler yeats
With his wild swans, which still i think
Belong to the queen
And so what does that mean

About american swans?

I need to google
And find out what american swans
Do all day
Their political beliefs
And if they fight
For independence

---

Robyn Schelenz is originally from Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Her poems are at Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, Words and Sports Quarterly and DUSIE. Say hi at https://www.instagram.com/robynotheswede/.

Sexy Pome #2

To get me in trouble, my older brother used to tell me that my mother really liked her hair clip and I should compliment her on it.

Except he called it a hairy clip.

And he said it with a weird accent.

He said the secret to getting the right accent was rolling my tongue to touch the top of my teeth.

It came out like this: Ah wully like your hairy clit, Ma.

Oh thank you. I really like it, too.

My brother doubled over.

What’s so funny?

It only took me years to figure it out.

I don’t think my mother ever did.

A few years later my brother finally broke down and ate a shotgun blast for his 18th birthday.

Try explaining that to your mother while biting your tongue.

Sexy Pome #5

Today I walk by a girl whose jogging pants say quit staring at my dick across her crotch and it takes me a minute to realize it’s social commentary and here I am staring, so yes, I really am part of the problem.

Sexy Pome #7

Just imagine for a moment how sexy it must be to be a comptroller.

---

drevlow is the managing editor of BULL, a lit mag about toxic masculinity and the author of the book of rusty (2022), a good ram is hard to find (2021), ina-baby: a love story in reverse (2021), and bend with the knees and other love advice from my father (2008). you can find these and other works linked at thedrevlow-olsonshow.com or on twitter/x, insta, face, and threads @thedrevlow.

Candy Flipping

spacing out as the chimpanzees hump

reading reviews of robot vacuums, gravlax
and double mezzaluna knives

under the blue spruce the spine 
of a lady fern uncurls

I see three lights

Ill Wind

when I get afraid of death
I touch your soft thighs
and imagine glasses of cool milk
even though I don’t drink milk

Cheerleaders for the Sun God 

They go: Ra, Ra Ra!!!

Windjammers

futuristic rocky shores in corduroy shorts
putting a sexy leg on ice
coffins of asteroids honor our anniversary 
the proximity of windjammers are a matter of perspective 
sea otters made of broken pencil lines
enjoy a very long lunch

Flop Era

Civilization is janky
a fortress made of hairy legs
what is a sound in geography exactly
20 years ago I was in Alcatraz
Swallowing vitamin E gel caps
Spelling licorice
Imagining strawberries
counting to 100 
thinking about baseball
trying not to succumb

Headwind

trying to google evolutionary economics 
but clicking on evil dead rise by accident 

of course there’s an orca in cape cod called old thom 

of course

wandering through the cat grass 

and drifting 

into the imaginary isthmuses 

as the clippers sail over my head

the white days and nights
are swept up and tossed out

Notes for a Super Long Epic Poem

talking boat or magic frogs or something 

Camels?

---

Mike Andrelczyk is the author of “!!!” (Ghost City Press)

---

Yoel Noorali is a writer living in London, England. His fiction has appeared in a range of publications, both online and in print. His work is primarily focused—though not entirely—on the 21 st century. Take an early example, Glimpses of Cities Through the Windows of Planes, a prose poem set in the clouds, looking down on our towns and skyscrapers. He also writes for film, television, and radio—but never for money. Ultimately, anything of value must come from the heart. The heart is the organ that pumps the blood that animates the hands as they type. To replace the heart in this process with the blunt pulse of money is to choke the life out of the writing. What you are left with is Gone Girl, written for a paycheque. But even our finest minds are sometimes victim to a similar impulse. Far be it from me to attack the hallowed Dostoevsky in an arena as ill-fitting as the bio, but he was a degenerate gambler in serious debt and since most of his so-called “major works” were released serially I believe he may have been paid by the chapter and so might have doled out pointless chapter after pointless chapter, way beyond what was called for, purely in order to fund his gambling habit. I’m sorry, it’s just how I feel. Readers deserve better. Readers are busy. They need writing that is concise, succinct, and to the point. It must be short and sweet: terse, pithy, breviloquent. In the 21st century, which I hope I know a thing or two about, a writer cannot, among other things, waste a reader’s time on flowery superlatives and caveats, except perhaps in the most elegant of elegant poetry (see: Glimpses of Cities Through the Windows of Planes). Only what is necessary may stay. Brevity is the soul of wit! Yoel Noorali travelled to meet and study for a time under the great Philip Roth, whose feedback was exactly this: brevity is the soul of wit! Brevity is the soul of wit! Philip Roth soon issued a restraining order against Yoel Noorali, but Yoel Noorali had this overturned in a counter-suit claiming “insufficient evidence.” Yes, he one-upped the mighty Roth! Still, Yoel Noorali took this holiest of lessons away with him—this lesson pertaining to wit, the soul of which we know is brevity—and perhaps his knowledge of this is what we can credit his astounding success to. Yoel Noorali is the recipient of numerous grants and multiple awards, awarded by dozens of awards bodies stretching from the Lakes of Killarney to the Caspian Sea. He is represented by David Lee of the Curtis Brown Agency, but is open to other offers. David Lee’s performance has frequently been found wanting. It pales in comparison to Yoel Noorali’s. Yoel Noorali is a regular, prodigious contributor to magazines, journals, periodicals, quarterlies, monthlies, weeklies, dailies, and assorted other written materials. He is the editor of The Atlantic. Since graduating from Goldsmiths University in 2013, with a first class honours degree in English Literature, his incisive, economical prose has been translated into as many tongues as there are nations (there are 195 nations). As already noted, he is based—to the degree anyone can be “based” anywhere in this 21st century—in London. But in reality, thanks to that very 21st century obsession “the internet,” he is based everywhere. Sat on the London Underground, he is striding across Japan. In a cab, he stares indifferently into India. Paused at a red light, he looks away from his phone and finds in the idle reflection of the Uber’s black exterior gently shuddering in the glass of a department store that it is still night in Regent Street and that he is amongst the midnight shoppers browsing within, part of the fleeting picture: a beige speck floating. And then the car resumes its journey, gliding through a city which daily grows older but looks newer and newer, more pristine, and suspended in the soft, amniotic quiet of the inner cab, the noise outside dampened to deadened thuds, the muffled screams of people having fun outside bars and restaurants, he sees that the second tower has just fallen. He sees California aflame. He sees a dog. To what degree is “Yoel Noorali” even based in the present anymore? Yoel Noorali is based in no time. Via the iPhone, we all travel through time as if pinballs in a great pinball machine, but particularly Yoel Noorali, whose mind has the capacity to expand farther across vaster distances. Born in Lisbon in 1991 (at 11:09 on September 27th (a Friday)) to a Portuguese father and mother of Celtic descent, Yoel Noorali transcended his origin in a manner exceeding others of his generation to become a man belonging to no defined space or age. This is something Yoel Noorali has explored at length in his fiction and also his non-fiction (he writes non-fiction too). But what of his method? What use is a list of his works—such as Shark In Formaldehyde and One Thousand Monkeys—without any knowledge of how each came to be? Yoel Noorali wakes early. In his stove-top coffee maker he makes six strong coffees, which he drinks one after the other whilst working first on a short story, then on his next novel. He does this every weekday until 10am, when he stops to begin the bloodless and heartless work he is forced to do for money: teaching. Yoel Noorali is a lecturer at Goldsmiths University (although currently on strike over a pay dispute). His writing can also be found on his Substack. Please follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. He lives with his wife and cat.

Lemon Affair 

Those lemons had a miscarriage
A sour yet sweet liquid dripped profoundly 
And the only thing missing was a crystal cup
That could contain it all 

Poor Platinum 

Platinum had mesmerized my vision
Regrets about naming my fish a metal faded
I saw a dentist rub her hands 
While a crowd of children whined 
As October had finally came to an end 
Irritation left and negative visions entered
My body was like a flaky buttermilk biscuit 
No gravy or jelly on the side 
It appears that my problems go beyond just my dry skin

---

CJ The Tall Poet is currently spending time writing obscure poems and making digital artwork.

Wixsite: https://cjthetallpoet.wixsite.com/website

It was the last apple in the bowl, no doubt because of that unsettling little blemish up near its stem. Most likely, it had been nicked by a piece of hail during its youth back in the orchard, but who could say for certain that a worm hadn’t given it a nibble? Being an apple, the apple obviously didn’t remember; all it knew was the right now, and right now it was sitting alone in this ceramic bowl on this butcherblock countertop where it was probably just going to end up rotting. But wait – what was this? A shadow? A warm hand? A slavering maw?

The last thing the apple thought as the teeth cracked its skin and dug into its still fresh flesh was: Oh God, it hurts! Please stop! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo…

---

In recent months, Eli S. Evans has published work in several now or or probably soon-to-be defunct literary magazines. A small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, was published in 2021 with Moon Rabbit Books and Ephemera, and can be purchased on the internet. A larger book of mostly even smaller stories will be published by the same in 2023.

Manifestation is the whore of hope

Look Dale, I’m gonna level with you.
This isn’t looking great. But hope
rarely does, now does it, Dale? Tomorrow
will look like today, until it doesn’t
which is fine by me. And will be
for you too. Remember, there’s always
a catch, Dale. Especially the ones that promise
the opposite. Dale, you won’t get rich.
That’s for sure. Models won’t ensnare you
with pregnancy. You’ll be the kind of guy
who wears pants. Dale, remember the last time
and for good measure, the time before that.
Hope is the sugar baby of the soul. And Dale,
I won’t let you get taken for a sucker again.
Do you trust me, Dale? If I told you I got a great deal
on energy drinks, would you tell your family, Dale?
Dale, believe me, it’s over now. Labor is theft
and your soul is unemployed. What I mean to say is
today’s your last day here, Dale. Dale,
I’m sorry. This is a good thing. I don’t know
how to put this lightly. Think about God, Dale.
Think of His battles and the benefits
of another. Dale, there’s no easy way
to say this

What is happening

Outside, in the thinking world
thinking is happening.
Thinking is not happening.
Not all thinking is thought
the same. It’s my experience
that life is less this,
more that. It’s happening.
And you have to happen
too or else things
will not happen right
or happen poorly, and still
you don’t try to happen
at all, let alone think.
It just is and so are you
and whatever you’d like
to feel. It’s not like fear
or a great unknowingness,
it’s everywhere you go.
It’s what’s happening and people
not loving it, thinking all the while.
What can you do?
If the sun’s out, and you
happen like the sun,
if it’s the moon and so
are you, try not to think
so much about it.
Nothing is happening

What happened

I step into the road,
I get hit by car.
I don’t understand
the concept of traffic
because I don’t
understand traffic.
I was told nothing
happens. I told
that myself

---

If anyone has a lead on a remote job, Lucas isn’t picky. His IG/Twitter is @Louielibrary.

I’m in my room at the motel. I’m watching him floating. My room is poolside. He’s in the pool. I like him. He’s got aviator sunglasses. He’s got a can of beer. He’s got a circular tube with a flamingo head and two fins painted with squiggles, meant to indicate feathery wings, coming out of it. He’s getting pink. There’s sheer white curtains and slat blinds between us. I can tell how pink he is, even through the curtains. I look to myself in the mirror and say, stick a fork in him. I wink and I wink. I say, a fine Christmas Ham. I’m alone here. I smile and I smile. He’s napping, I think, Mr. Pink. I watch him turn. He’s turning as slowly as the hands of the wall clock. Analog. I open a beer. It’s the same kind as his. A green can. Rolling Rock. Ah, I say, nothing quite like a cold one. I laugh at myself, which is to say, I open my mouth into a sort of smile and breathe out hard, like I would if I laugh, but there’s nothing tense in my throat.I open the box, which I purchased one hour ago from Target, containing a circular pool floatie with a pink flamingo head and two flamingo fins. Two hours ago, he entered the pool. I blow into the floatie’s pinch nozzle. I’m inflating. As I catch my breath between blows, I take sips from my beer. It’s a very cold beer. I look up from time to time. He’s just floating. I open the blinds. I open the sheer curtains. I put the flamingo donut on the white tile floor. There’s palm trees by the pool. They lean over it. They’re neat. Freshly shaved, a person might say. No brown scrap or scraggle. The palm fronds are green. They flash in the sunshine when they’re stirred by the breeze. They’re like sunglasses hit by the light. I see him raise his hand and wipe at his face. He rolls his neck. He throws some water from the pool onto himself, cooling his roasted flesh. He drops his hand into the water. I remove my shirt. I remove my pants. I’m very pale, as I can see in the mirror. I make double finger guns. I make double finger guns. I’m wearing blue and white pinstripe boxers. I’m normal looking. I smile. I smile. I’m alone, except for myself watching myself. I take my beer cans from the mini fridge. I place them in a line on the floor. Click, click, click, click. Four green cylinders, wet with condensation. I put my ass in the pink floatie on the white tile. I sit. My forearms rest on the tile. The tile is pleasantly cool. The tile is white. I place my sunglasses on. I look at myself in the mirror. I look nice. These sunglasses suit the shape of my face. I look at him in the pool. Wobbles from the sunlight rays hitting the pool bottom, bouncing off, wiggle slowly on my ceiling. I don’t turn. I’m not like the hands of the clock. I just have hands.  Now I’m not watching myself anymore. Now I’m watching myself. Now I’m watching myself watching myself. He’s not watching himself. He’s not watching me. Nobody is watching me. I’m alone. The plastic squeaks against my arm as I shift to move my beer to my lips. The light makes those lazy squigglies. I think of music. Pop or jazz. I look back out. He’s floating. I take a sip of my beer.

---

Joshua Hebburn is an assistant fiction editor at X-R-A-Y and a grocery clerk in Los Angeles. He recommends the story “Driver” by Frederick Barthelme.