Scott C. Holstad is a disabled Pulitzer & BOTN-nominated poet/author with 75+ books to his credit & work in hundreds of magazines including the Minnesota Review, Exquisite Corpse, Pacific Review, Santa Clara Review, Palo Alto Review, Chiron Review, Southern Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Sivullinen, De Nar, Gangan Verlag, Kerouac Connection, The Beatnik Cowboy, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ginosko, Libre, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, The Piker Press, Barbara, Bristol Noir, Mad Swirl, The Galway Review, The Scalar Comet, Five Fleas, dadakuku, The Argyle, miniMAG & Blood+Honey. His newest book, SURVIVING IMMORTALITY AGAIN, was released in 2025 by Alien Buddha Press. He’s moved 40 times & currently lives in Pennsylvania (USA).

7 PM at The Coffee & Smokes Café

I sit in the coffee shop

waiting for night to come,

graying tables, blue-grey

windows, faces, stares

with a blankness burning

and screaming hard. An

empty cracked mug looks 

back at me, berating, accusing,

reaching out, grabbing me

by the throat and shaking, no,

demanding – why this coffee 

shop, why this night, why 

these people, why those scarab

windows illuminating one’s very 

absurd soul? But soon night is 

here and with it lights pop on 

and as I stare through air 

shrouded thick with smoke 

from my Dunhills, the ever-

same people scratch their 

collective asses at the same 

tables behind the same windows. 

I take a drag from my smoldering 

Dunhill and think of Meursault, 

lovely and brittle, and his gunman

on the sands, and I know I’ll sit here 

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

with these lovely blue-grey skunks 

dwarfing the evenings with their 

self-important airs as I look on, 

staring into murky bottoms of 

stained coffee mugs, making 

love to my never-ending smokes.

– (Originally appeared in Fresh Words, 2025)

WoundExitz — [Another Random Cut-Up Series Creation]

we live this life as though we were already amongst the dead 

– and perhaps we are

Bed Thoughts/Torture Porn

I once asked a girl I was briefly with 

what she thought about when she

was in bed at night (more so alone

than when otherwise engaged)

and she listed things like her schedule

the next day, working out and 

the fact that it felt good to be in bed. 

 

When she then asked me the same 

question, I told her I thought about God 

and if s/he existed and if he did, did he 

even give a shit and is he actually 

omnipotent and omniscient because 

I see little evidence of that, think others 

could have done a better job, and I 

ponder why my parents believed what 

they did so damn fervently and why 

humanity acts and reacts the ways 

it does as theoretically we ought 

to be capable of so much more,

and who suffered more among

                        Kierkegaard

                        Dostoevsky

                        Schopenhauer/Nietzsche

Jünger              

Camus/Sartre

for instance, and if (a) God 

is actually more benevolent 

or evil because sometimes I 

really just can’t tell

and

I felt her put a hand lightly on my

shoulder and she asked if I would

like a nice back rub and I sighed,

turned over and gave her my back.

– (Originally appeared in Misfit Magazine, 2025)

Near-Universal Belated Questions

Funny,

they never really

quite work out

the way you expect,

            romance

            chivalry

            destiny

            divinity

            eternity

and all that jazz,

not only learned 

from family and friends

but in school and church

because we’re all owed

loving spouses

2.5 beautiful kids

the cat and dog

home ownership

with white picket fence

as well as assurance 

of being reunited 

with loved ones in 

a blissful eternity 

and certainly

not that 

other place

(formerly 

referred to as

“fire insurance”)

and perhaps that’s not

really so bad but

it’s

just that so often,

so many find themselves

waking up one day

to absolutely nothing

that fits that picture,

if we’re not simply

utterly alone or

dying like hell 

to be, and 

wondering

what in the 

bloody fuck

happened…

 

Trapped

Winter is a long descent

into hell, a daring

kidnapper, on whose lips

rest the word always.

Look upon it as the rains

do, leafless trees blowing

earthward like constraints,

shackles of the soul.

Hold me now, struggle

to breathe, smoke a

cigarette in the falling

snow. Winter and

you are the only

possibilities in this

world. Paper, pen,

teeth, bones and skin,

the future is now.

How will you make

this work, snowflakes

against the window,

every ounce of pain

like blood on my lips.

– (Originally appeared in Snow Monkey, 2004)