Category: Fiction
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Abandoning by Jackson Dammann
Whoever saidsex and hungerare our most powerful urgesclearly never tried the stuff I’m on. This stuff is teeth on neck cold static through veins unpolluted stars the piece of me that was always missing. Need to cut back budget don’t need the car cable friends just need to be able to breathe.…
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Late Summer Evening by Anne Mikusinski
The day’s fever breaksSubtlyAs thin white cloudsTrace eggshell cracksAgainst the fading blue.The heat leavesQuietlyIn sighing gasps ofTepid airCircling the drainLanguidlyAs night comes inSpreading outIts indigo dropclothAnd sprinkling the starsUpon itHaphazardly. Anne Mikusinski has always been in love with words. She’s been writing poems and short stories since she was seven. Her influences range from Robert…
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Reflections Close to Closing Time by Anne Mikusinski
It’s three minutes pastThe last time I checkedI’m so informedAs time is marked by thin gold hands.Around me,Life happensIn couplesIn groupsEvenIn the singular purposeOf the man next to meGlaring at his phoneGoogling solutionsHave meritThe room is fullOf sound bitesMurmured conversationMusic of the earnestBand of the eveningDebates and discussions on human connectionsFor me it’s just theLanguorous…
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Columbine, Will You Be Mine? by Douglass Allen
My cultivated garden grows, seeds in rows,Gently tendered, watered, sun enough and earth—Daisy, hollyhock, delphinium, andColumbine—will you be mine?Blessed flowers, blessed birth. I’ve grown discouraged, bummed out, glum.Flowers should enchant, delight, so—Tell me the flaw― my failed green thumb?Germination yes, but oh, oh no! From someone so upset, chagrin—Let me tell you what woe is—All…
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Firefly by Warren Benedetto
Missy caught the firefly in mid-air, cupping her hands around it to form a tiny, dark cave. She could feel the insect’s delicate footsteps tickling her skin as it wandered across her palm, searching for a way out. “Got you!” she whispered, victorious. It was almost dark. The sunset was nothing but a burnt orange…
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Carmenere by Matthew Hunt
I want to taste the golden sunThat sits so cold on this high unending plainAnd over the multivariate earthIts rays to soils unlightened bearThe sweet, lost dreams of stars afar.Is it possible to seeFrom this sliver, this crescent scratch of ground,Wherein our habitat moments pass,The snows that never melting lieIn stony crops above the land,That…
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Mulberry House by Will Sheets
It was spring when the stranger found me. I watched him as he stumbled over the roots of the great oaks that had grown to obscure the once-pristine path that led to my gate. I couldn’t help but stare. I hadn’t seen one of his kind since Lord Asenger and his family roamed my halls.…
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Eugene From Mt. Lebanon by Bryce Johle
He butts in line at Deluca’s for breakfast in the Strip District with his white cane,doesn’t even realize what he has done when he sparks up a conversation with one familyand continues it with another, ‘til the second wife says she lives near him, in Dormont,and he says he…
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Diner Love by Philip Andrew Lisi
The top of the Heinz ketchup bottle at the Neptune Diner looked secure–I am sure it was on tight. But as I stare at the tomatoey Rorschach splotch adorning the front of your date night dress, I guess I must have misjudged the synchronicity between white metal top with its spiral grooves and the striated…