Author: colleenflorafiction
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Orange Juice by Jim Bates
“Damn you, Eric!” I yelled. “Quit being such a jerk!” I knew I shouldn’t swear but, hell (sorry), he had pushed it too far. All morning long my older brother had been teasing me, calling names like elephant ears and dog breath, giving me wedgies and, in general, making…
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Mercy for Miss Bint by Sandra Arnold
All twelve of us were in Mercy’s room lounging on her bed when the new housekeeper strode in without knocking and introduced herself. We clamped our lips and nodded, blank-face polite. But as soon as she marched out again and slammed the door behind her we collapsed into hysterical laughter.…
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togetherness by Holli Terrell-Cavalluzzi
insidethe wax widensdrips around the candleilluminates your face in a soft light. i trust you. there is a clock.the small handstops telling time. outsideis a bare piece of paperwaiting… Holli Terrell-Cavalluzzi lives in Wilmington North Carolina where she has made a home by the coast. She spends her days writing…
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My Heart’s Unthwarted Sentiment by Bob McNeil
Captcha,Here is my answer:I am,Quite regrettably,Human.Although I wishI wereA combinationOf wiresAnd programsLike you.This way,I could uninstallAll memoriesOf mankind’sUnkindness. Bob McNeil wrote Verses of Realness (https://tinylink.net/muF6C). Hal Sirowitz, a former Queens, NY Poet Laureate, called the book “a fantastic trip through the mind of a poet who doesn’t flinch at the…
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Two Poems by Jim Gustafson
When Poets Die Anthologies embraceWords more tightlySqueeze slightly harderThe meaningsOnce hidden between The up and downMovementOf a now stillchest To a Dying Icon Writer Sancta Sophia Savalaswrite the face of Gabrielin egg yellow on goldBefore it is too late for youAnd your bodyMeets its curfew. Let the cool fan wrestle with…
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Would They Even Want to? by Joseph R. Goodall
The walls of the Gunther house rattled as if a herd of cattle was stampeding through their Denver cul-de-sac. The burning sun had not yet shown its face as four pairs of feet scuttled along the wooden floors, running to and from the SUV in the driveway. The parents and…
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Six Ways of Looking at Love When the World is Ending by Ilika Tripathi
I. If the world is ending, don’t come to see meBecause that would mean that you took a busAnd you hate taking buses – the wait, the journey, the destinationAnd that’s when I’d realize yet again, how much I love you. II. What if when the apocalypse hits, there are…
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My Last Kid’s Table by Alan Brickman
Last Thanksgiving, I swore that it would be the last time I sat at the kids table. The vagaries of fertility, birth rates, and parental callings within my extended family had left me, at fifteen, the youngest teenager and the oldest “kid.” When we sat for dinner last year, I…
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summer storms and fireflies by Holli Terrell-Cavalluzzi
fireflies are contagious creaturesi caught one out of the corner of my eyebut when i blur my eyesthe shape exchangesinto a summer mist. underneath my clothessometimes it is the wild ways that find me—fireflies, long summer daysthunderstorms shaking blades of dune grassin the middle of an ocean swim.we get outwhile…