Archive for Other
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WHAT ROUND THE CORNER WAITS • by Effie Collins
6 Comments
I have seen have felt this thing long before life came before hours spent sitting silent remorseful repentant what I have seen what I have heard I have had shoved in my face thrown in my life foul rancid rain from putrid clouds yesteryear’s afterbirths rotted and unforgiving what passes for life such a thin [...]
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BIRTH DAY • by Lia Molly Deromedi 8 Comments
I was born on the 10th day in the month of Tishrei I did not come easy I did not come breathing one small collarbone broken and the cord moved just so the room was still and silent and waiting I screamed the room exhaled the morning was white and hot already in its [...]
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ITINERANT VENDOR • by Fehmida Zakeer 8 Comments
a singsong litany announces the nomadic seller as he hawks his wares cart piled high random heaps of pots, pans, plastic baubles in rainbow colours, kitchen accessories, shiny steel utensils, sit cheek by jowl, through roads hardened black or streaked moist brown pockmarked with puddles, he brings slices from city markets to far flung [...]
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POUND IT IN • by Jacky Grice 7 Comments
+3lb in sausage (your one meal for me) +4lb in kids (now times that by three) +2lb for valentines (not always shared) +1lb for curry (footy matches, prepared) +1lb cooking from my mother (outlawed) -2lb for grumbles (so I have my own flaws) -14lb in diets (down through years) +5lb for drinking (so I love the [...]
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THE SELLER • by PWG Graham 7 Comments
When he first visits my thoughts, he’s all smiles. Talking of what-ifs and if-onlys, and saying how it would be fun, it’s a shame – not seeing your friends. You never were a real addict. And often I return, shame-faced to his side. If he doesn’t win he quietens and waits for a time [...]
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SILENT AMERICA • by Michael D. Turner 9 Comments
blue-collar vampires greasing the wheels of industry-after-dark second-shift teamsters truck-stop waitresses factory workers night watchmen anticipate the five a.m. rush a full time paycheck and six a.m. beer the American Dream inside out sunset to sunrise Michael D. Turner lives, works, sleeps and writes in Colorado. He dreams elsewhere.
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ADDIE MAE’S • by Kent Reed 13 Comments
greens and grits with big muddy riffs greasy fried chicken on Delta roadhouse frets corn bread 12-bars in C D or A soul food to go Kent Reed calls the Twin Cities home where he lives with his wife and adult children. Primarily a scientific writer, his work reflecting a relation to the land [...]
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CRASH • by Valerie Valdes 12 Comments
Somewhere someone is not. Tire stops spinning, headlight extinguished. The moon too weak to reflect rainbows in dark oil. Somewhere a phone rings, refrigerator closes. Cat and baby girl cry for milk. Voices fall in another room. Power line hums off-key. Crow takes flight. The stars careen around the poles. Something white flutters and vanishes. [...]
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EMPTY VESSELS • by Paul Ingrassia 6 Comments
Small boy in the backyard, tossing a baseball to the sky – eye blackened, tears fall in silence. The last drops of scotch trickle down the drain – he walks outside to try, once more, to be Daddy. Paul Ingrassia reads and writes short poetry and prose from Westchester County, New York, where his loving [...]
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POLISSYA • by Stuart J. Griffin 12 Comments
Always, there is glass underfoot, the windows all left open. Five hundred on the bridge where they watched the rainbows, two still linger in the moss. Everyone forgot about Labour Day, they buried a whole village under six feet of earth to keep the diggers down, but the shattering of Four is not so easily [...]
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