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Quietning Man by Sheldon Lee Compton

What helps is to have a total lack of curiosity. That’s what he told them. It was the first time in seven years he had said more than a single word in response to someone. [...]

November 17, 2020

The Price of the Ticket to Heaven by Raphael Maurice

Stay & hold me & these suffering hands. For I won’t be long. I will not remain unread like a book for God does come & blows the dust from my back & says [...]

August 14, 2019

Psychic Mountains Ten Thousand Feet High by Sheldon Lee Compton

Clifton’s home is the same as anywhere; curses and miracles happen in the same small steps, and the difference between the two are twin mysteries. But it’s not the same, [...]

August 8, 2019

I am my own planet by Meg Johnson

I don’t suffer from night terrors, but if I ever do, I hope I scream out, Neely O’Hara! I could scream this out while masturbating. I’m masturbating for Mormons. They [...]

March 22, 2019

Coffee and Cigarettes and other poems by Benjamin Blake

Coffee & Cigarettes Sometimes, life doesn’t seem so bad A pot of black coffee brewing on the kitchen counter Cigarette burning peacefully away in the ashtray One soul, [...]

March 1, 2019

Sore Spirits and other stories by Ashlie Allen

Sore spirits The reservation spirits are sore again. They need our energy. Mom locks the door, useless as it is. We can hear them crying as they stagger towards the porch, [...]

February 22, 2019

The wine label as poetry 3 by Lindsey Thaden

The wine label as poetry, 3 Ingredients for fermentation: Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara Smashbox Halo Perfecting Powder Urban Decay Vice Lipstick – Backseat That black, [...]

February 18, 2019

A Small Bestiary Within by Raphael Maurice

[A Small Bestiary Within] They want a sweet country boy, tender, true as hell. At least they seem to, they do, until failures mark up his face. Until his tail even, is short [...]

February 18, 2019

The King of Hearts is the Loneliest of Kings and other poems by Steve Passey

The King of Hearts is the Loneliest of Kings Scars and Tattoos: Every scar is a story; a tattoo is just someone else’s art, so The King of Hearts rests on my shoulder. [...]

February 18, 2019

Off Season & Real Image, Lens, Virtual Image by Jenya Doudareva

Off Season Sticky heat, sounds of electrical lines, traffic, commotion – all gone. The blue of the sky is crispier, the trees are fiery red and orange, and it’s [...]

November 26, 2018

A Victory by Raphael Maurice

The ocean was black near the shore and farther out a storm was massing in the sky. He sat, looking out over the water, looking up aimlessly at the night from the tiki bar, [...]

November 22, 2018

The Heart Is an Organ on Fire by Sheldon Lee Compton

Tracy had sensed Bruce was different but had been too interested in his company to see any sign of it early on. The church carpenter shook her hand, the last load of old [...]

November 15, 2018

Leaving Deneb by Jenya Doudareva

Two deer along the trail yesterday. First, they hesitated as I passed them – muscles tensed and ears on alert, but eventually decided against fleeing, evidently, and [...]

April 18, 2018

Autumn leaves and other poems by Alison Znamierowski

Autumn Leaves with Pictures we opened each other like maps explored, traced our fingers along every outline, got utterly and joy-fully lost and at last convinced ourselves we [...]

October 23, 2017

A Blossoming Storm Shades Reality and Insomniac Act by Alexis Bates & Logan February

Some physical existence & the yearning, always. Sky, jaw-wide, hurtling fictions to the ground. Witness this descent in slow motion, this deft dive & this graceful [...]

October 23, 2017

Splintered Love and other poems by J. B Stone

Our love used to be this cozy little cabin Secluded from the irrational drama The world throws at others Our love wasn’t strong enough As the cabin started to split apart [...]

October 23, 2017

The Unmaking of a Savior and other poems by Khaya Osborne

i am an unsovereign, yet abandoned nation. my capitols have all their own names but look the same: faceless, skin thin as the lesions left by raw flax leaves, their cheeks as [...]

October 23, 2017

ACQUA DI PARMA and other poems by Frank Rubino

Not that green afternoon, when walking by a taco truck near Montclair High School, I felt a bird drop a load on my forehead. It was like a squeezed-empty toothpaste tube. [...]

October 23, 2017

Nightswimmer Poems by Todd Mercer

Hazard Warning, Ludington Beach closed, high surf warning. Turbid storm waves churn out there six or seven feet. Unsafe, they say, but now’s ideal for me. I leave the car [...]

October 23, 2017

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In the spotlight

End Times by Amy Saul-Zerby

by Vending Machine Press in Poems

I am a bridal registry at a sex shop. You are a plane crash. I am the dental records used to identify your corpse. Our teeth are the same, you know. All teeth are the same, [...]

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Past Contributors

  • Vending Machine Press Issue #15

    May 29, 2016

    Photo by: Johannes Huwe The very fine writers for Issue 15 are: and when i by Alison Leigh Znamierowski All Types of [...]
  • A Series of Controlled Explosions By David Haight

    April 1, 2015

    Evelyn sat at the kitchen table the tiny hands of her tiny body wrapped in supplication around her coffee cup and never once [...]
  • No Picture

    Two Poems by Michelle Brooks

    November 1, 2015

    Three Mile Island at Night I am waiting for the disaster of my life to reveal itself. All the elements are present for an [...]
  • Familiar Stranger by Eva-Marie Sher

    September 2, 2016

    The crow on the horizon you see in the eyes of the Trappist… from The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank [...]
  • Psalm by Mark Tretin

    September 2, 2016

    PSALM The stammer of the crow is me. The stilted stream is me. The stinkweed fouling the roots of the sycamore is me. So [...]
  • Charting Greatness by Laura Iodice

    March 14, 2017

    Like many baby boomers, I learned how to diagram sentences in grade school. As a kid who loved reading and writing, I [...]
  • End Times by Amy Saul-Zerby

    March 2, 2017

    I am a bridal registry at a sex shop. You are a plane crash. I am the dental records used to identify your corpse. Our teeth [...]
  • Two Poems by Helen Wickes

    September 2, 2016

    January Dazzle What did we know then—clock ticking, spilled salt, and that one faucet— bitterly, bitterly. The heart [...]
  • 2KBK by Cara Lorello

    August 1, 2015

    He left a note for me on the cardboard back cover of a notepad hung by a magnate on the fridge, all its paper gone from [...]
  • San Juans by Dede Cummings

    April 1, 2015

    From here she can see no islands, only a mountain beyond water mostly purple-black and defying the orange-spreading sky. [...]
  • Spill by Karie Fugett

    April 1, 2015

    The day my husband died, April 20, 2010, BP oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico. I was told about the spill weeks later, [...]
  • Confessions of a Lunch Thief by Allie Marini Batts

    December 1, 2013

    I’m just like any other kind of criminal. I started small. In kindergarten. My life of crime can be traced back to a [...]
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