My top three favorite holidays, in order, are:

1.) Thanksgiving, because I get to feed people and we all talk about how thankful we are.

2.) Your birthday, because I get to celebrate you having been born.

3.) Valentine’s Day!!!!, because we get to celebrate one of my favorite things: LOVE. Love, love, Hooray for Love!

I’m a sappy romantic. Movies, music, weddings, new love, old love. I love love. Even if I am single on Valentine’s Day- oh. Wait. That’s… never happened. Huh. Anyway, even if I were single, I think seeing other people in love is pretty darn wonderful. I even love the people who are grumpy about Valentine’s Day.

So, starting next week I’ll be posting product reviews, stories, recipes, and hopefully, if you’re so kind as to send me anything, your own Valentine’s Day related writing. Send me poems, artwork, stories, songs! Whatever you want to send to me, send it. I would love to share it here.

You can submit by emailing me! NikolHasler at Gmail
Email a by-line, any photos you want associated with your submission, and links to any of your work.

Love to all of you!

“My hands look like old man hands.”, he’s saying, as we’re both looking at them. He’s holding me in the kitchen. He says he needs to leave. He says it’s too hard to stay. He says he can’t be with me, and no matter how much I disagree, this isn’t a democractic decision. When a person decides that it’s time to go, no matter how well constructed your argument is, they’ve already gone.

He leaves and I crawl into bed, look at my own hands, watch them shake. At dinner, everything seemed far away from me, surreal. None of this is happening. It can’t be. But when your guts hurt that hard, you know it’s reality shoving a javeline into your belly. There’s no armor to protect against it. You’re knocked down. You’re not Chumba Wumba. You’re not going to get up again.

My own hands aren’t looking so young, either. I’ve noticed lately that my face is looking its age, too. And how many times have I been exactly right here? And how many times has the message been the same? I love you but I can’t be with you. Asking why like a four year old has never gotten me any sort of acceptable answer. I’m not the right guy for you. Why don’t I get a say? You need more than I can give. I’ll need less. I promise. Just, please. Please. Don’t do this.

For the next few weeks I will feel like hell. Then it’s back to it, I suppose. To quote my favorite author, “I hope that death contains less than this.”

by Danielle Hlatkey

Cactus knocked off sill

Cactus falls on me with quills

I am stuck in bed

Hey hey hey.

So, I promise I’ll get back to the writing board soon enough. For now:

Do you like to write? Do you like me? Do you like it when I read what you write? This is an open call for submission to be published on NikolHasler.com. Right now I am looking for works on the theme: “Stuck In Bed”. I want to see poems that don’t suck, artwork, photographs, works of fiction, and personal stories on whatever your interpretation of the theme is.

Good looking people should not seem this unhappy about being in bed together.

Email them to me at NikolHasler@gmail.com and I will email you back letting you know when your submission will be published. Include a photo and short bio please.

Back in my midwest poetry writing, watercoloring, soap making days. 2003-ish.

Every once in a while I still do it, too. But I used to do it every day.

Recently, my first ex husband got remarried. I’ve been married twice already, and some days I’m fine as frog’s fur with that, and other days I feel like it’s a bit of dirt up my nose that I can never wash out. I can smell it, and it’s visible, and that dirt says, “Here’s a lady who doesn’t know how to have a long lasting, meaningful relationship. Here’s a lady destined to make bad choices.” Couple that with having three kids from three different fathers, take a look in my cupboards at my chipped, non-matching dishes, and look at the way I thumb tack mementos to my bedroom wall, and this is the pretty little package of a someone stunted person.

So, Mitch got remarried. Nothing feels weird about it. There are no moments where I miss what we had; no regrets that things ended. The wedding reception was great, too. They had a mashed potato bar, you guys. And in the morning? At brunch? Another mashed potato bar. It was some kind of heaven, and a goddam lovely time.
(more…)

The feel of a carpenter ant
beneath your tooth
back hairs like brillo pad prongs
oil coming off the stinking bastard
the way his pincers clattered against the spoon,
biting stupidly thinking he’ll break skin
his last time
as your tiny teeth pressed him
white guts and black shell
along with the cornflakes (more…)

Your side of the bed is spicy in odor
but cold.
It is not at all you;
not at all like my mouth when we kissed

I liked kissing you
on your side of the bed
licking the backs of your teeth,
never caring if your breath was
first thing in the morning
or last thing at night
or after you’d eaten cheese.

Your side of the bed is Old Spice
and still discarded beer cans
It’s a mess over there
because I haven’t
been over there in a while.

It’s a mess over here, too,
over on my side of the bed
because I haven’t left
in a while.