Archive for Other

1. THE STILLED WHEEL • by Jeff Jeppesen 1 Comment

    
   In a park in a Russian town,
   close to where an accident happened, stands
   a Ferris wheel that has not turned in many years.
   Candy colored paint is flaking but still bright.
   Most of the wheel’s hundreds of bulbs are unbroken
   though unlit.
   A park like this should never be so quiet.
   And despite what you may have heard, when the sun [...]

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2. WHEN FIRE TURNS TO ICE • by J. Clayton L. Jones 2 Comments

   I remember the Frost poem, the anecdote about
   when the astronomy professor came up to him
       at the faculty mixer, he in his awkwardness trying
   desperately to make conversation: Al Gore on 30 Rock
              smoking cigarettes without filters in the southland where it
                      never gets this cold or during the winter we’ve never sweat
             frozen bullets before [...]

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3. TURN • by derenz 6 Comments

    
   in autumn,
   where foot-fall
   and hoof-fall
   once dented the soil,
   a verge is moulded
   by the tread of tyres
   destined
   to be squeezed
   between vessels
   of steel and trestles
   of wood.
    
   A fortress of crates
   attend at a gate,
   as a mechanical
   harvester -
   with skirts and belts
   that shoogle
   and sort -
   grubs spuds
   from shawless
   plants, where
   tattie-howkers
   once finger-picked
   stents, joked
   and sang, ran
   from the man
   from the buroo,
   ignored sore
   backs, and earth
   caked skin,
   to heave themselves
   and their spoils,
   up [...]

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4. BED OF TEARS • by Amy Corbin 19 Comments

    
   I had always been afraid of what giving me “something 
   to cry about” would feel like.  Like soap wedged between  
   clenched teeth wasn’t a good enough reason.  Reason could  
   have been his belt.  Belt thrashing my scrawny legs.  
    
   It was true what he’d said about pain. Pain was seeing
   that note on the door “evicted”.  Evicted [...]

   Other, Relationships
   
   

5. MY SKINNY EXOTIC DANCER • by Christie Isler 8 Comments

   Feathers.
   Fine overlapping scales
   of dust
   except edges
   where light flashes
   tinsel
   turquoise threads and
   gaudy neon
   jerking on a
   chicken head string.

   Just as brown
   is earthen,
   delicate brushstrokes
   of an exotic hand
   casts
   each fan an
   unearthly dancer,
   a painted bird
   on humble field,
   until the stage light
   looses shades once green,
   now blue-cum-violet
   and the bird head bob
   emerges
   the flirtatious dance
   of a fancy chicken.

   But who would scribe
   this poem
   on poultry
   when verse is
   the river rearranging
   stones like typeface
   on [...]

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6. DISTANT WAVELENGTHS • by Magdalen 6 Comments

   Gamma’s radio only plays
   oldies, and it’s tough to tune
   it in. Static sizzles between
   entwined stations, while the
   receiver thrums on the fringe
   of monotony.
    
   Late at night, when she’s all
   but forgotten me, I listen
   to music from the Dead or
   burnt-out stars, and riff on
   squelched tears in the dark,
   dark matter of my heart.
    
   Gamma’s radio only works
   in short bursts of [...]

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7. FIBONACCI PAEAN • by William Dexter Wade 17 Comments

    
   I
   stand
   amazed
   beside my
   youngest granddaughter
   and step back to look up at her
   fourteen very short years after
   I felt her first breaths
    resting so
   very
   small
   in
    the
   arms
   of a
   grandfather
   who did not dream that
   one day soon she would jump higher
   than he stands, watching, filled with pride
   as she gracefully
   arches back
   above
   the
   bar
    

   William Dexter Wade is a Senior Scholar in linguistics. Turning to fiction in retirement, he has published two [...]

   FIB, Other
   
   

8. GEORGE #3 • by Nick Weingartner 2 Comments

   I wonder if you were happy when you died
   you seemed so calm all the time
   But, in reality, I don’t know a damned thing about you,
   No matter how much I read, watch and try to distinguish
   To me all you are is an assembly of 0’s and 1’s,
   And a pixelated face.

   Nick Weingartner is an [...]

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9. TALKING TO DEAD POETS • by by Michelle Lin 10 Comments

   Teach me to die
   with one eye open, the pupil
   a peephole—
   a pit to swallow the world

   Michelle Lin is a creative writing student at University of California, Riverside. Despite her family’s wishes for her to become a lawyer, she fell in love with poetry at a young age and pursued it ever since. She lives in Torrance, California [...]

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10. SNAPSHOTS • by Jeff Jeppesen 7 Comments

     
    We’re riding a crowded bus to escape the rain.
    I tell him I’ve used my Olympus thirty-five to capture
    a nice landscape; a far off oil derrick
    in silhouette against a sunset in a field of scrub.
    And with my zoom, I get sharp close-ups of my daughter.
    We lurch and rock in the sticky vinyl seat.
    My friend the photo-journalist [...]

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