Tyler D. Findlay

NEST

Sometimes I see a distant bird
Staring blankly
Ever shifting
It was on the island that their son went missing
Left to witness
Sweeping madness
They grab at nothing



DIVER

Send my head to the bottom
In want
In obsession
To swell and implode
So I may realize I am alone in a strange place



TICKLE

Let us make one thing clear.
I never hindered her soul.
Rather, I passively encouraged each infidelity,
playing oblivious to her neighborhood romping.
I would pace the house
and sit in each chair,
tapping my feet.
Sometimes I pulled my hair.
To smell their youth in those steaming hotel rooms,
I could only imagine.
She never once saw me sitting in the car outside.
Cigarettes and my wildest dreams.
I watch the lights turn out.
Entranced.



SALAMANDER

The old gas station smothers its lot
Slush puppies and noxious fumes
Vintage porn in a heat wave fit
Standing above the end of a time
Tanks of explosives begging to blow beneath the concrete
I want to climb down in them
To swim in their chemical defeat
Waiting for reaction
Instantaneous Hades should a spark find us
I imagine a shark down there
Gracefully cutting through deep green
Heartbroken
I walk out to the lot
The university is just a few blocks from here
Gyrating in six pack frenzy
Unconscious
Slept

CP

Tyler D. Findlay is a southern gentleman and alleged "problem drinker" from Atlanta, Georgia. He began writing in a rehabilitation facility in the mountains of east Tennessee, and was thereafter exiled to St. Petersburg, Florida. He has since dragged his Georgia bones back home. His work has appeared on the Outsider Writers Collective, Horror Sleaze Trash, and 22 Magazine.