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Going Back in Time: Song

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If we go back in time We are living in tents If we go back in time We are living in caves We are fighting over rivers We are fighting over fields Near the soft edges of slime If we go back in time Nothing would have us And we had t

Haiku Life

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A funny thing this life

Seeing Me

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I got to see me the other day.

Accident Assurance

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They found your athymic neck/clipped like a bag of Skittles/and your lifeblood left a Rorschach test on the dash/in which they saw the future/and their own exits/(straight ahead and to the right).

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.6 - c.3

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Mother’s eyes stared outward in a trance, on her throne, visualizing the world Azure made. Though it was right before her, she could not reach it.

Metamorphosis Revisited

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When I met Gregor Samsa he was still a cockroach, erratic and skittish whenever the light came on. We often spoke in the dark. I empathized with the man. I mean bug. Ok. That isn't fair. You can't call a man a bug because he chirps and eats dried skin cells. A…

Flutter in Night

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Have you heard this yet? The daughter flew home to care for the mother, whose pump is still tick ticking—though now with aid—which means she leaves the kitchen when the microwave clicks on.

Resource Management

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’m sure they have their/ cleverest working on it, though.

Lovelandtown Tavern

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James Hubert III sat at the bar. It was late. His wife and kids were long in bed and he knew he should be, too. But with the Lovelandtown lift bridge stuck in mid-air, a drink beckoned him. He sat next to Vince DeSantos, a small, stout man, with a bowling

on the shore on the shore

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I await, here at Sandymount Strand / There's a stony bed and moistened sand / Couples dance away into futurity / With their dogs upon the shore

Lessons from Survivors

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You cannot go back, you cannot go home, you cannot cannot cannot…Only in memory is it possible to travel back in time. We all imagine it. We relive happy moments, sad moments, we exist, time exists and it passes. We cannot stop it.

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

The Caselvetrano Olive

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He spotted her in Sarasota Whole Foods surveying the artichokes

Solution

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I wrote her a poem.She said, “I hate poetry.” I said, “OK, just read the words then."

ALL THE REPORTERS WANT WAR

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The countdown is on and daily the propaganda gets more and more aggravating It appears at times that the news media dictate and orchestrate more that just report on events of diplomatic shock. A huge effort has gone in to covering this coming war and it…

Whither Butter Sculpture?

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Would we have been satisfied with a humble butter sculpture of a cow in 1960? Puh-lease! Would Parisians of the Impressionist era swoon over a big-eyed child picture?

Loved, Stupid

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I want to be adored for something and chose poetry to be that something adored for. But Annie doesn’t see why anyone would ever choose anything over love.

Professional Pizza Patter

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We all stared, somewhat shocked and mostly disgusted.

Hope's Amanuensis

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I was low on carburetor / oxygen and my fraud protection / had just expired.

Jenny Whistled Through The Mail Slot

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We all thought, Birds! We all thought, Nests inside the chimney!

Esmée

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Esmée sat alone at a table on the terrace at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota. She had been there ten minutes and no waitress had approached her.

What's that on your glasses?

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The shit just doesn't want to come off.

A THOUSAND PARROTS

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  The parrots woke Eddie up. That and Rocker snoring in the twin bed. A thousand parrots flying over the motel? They squawked, God how they…

Napomo 17: April 25 - 30

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As air warms and warm/ winds stir, green becomes the force/ that surges the plains.

MOTHER MOUSE AND HER BRATS

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Oh, you aren't going to lecture us, for heaven's sake?

Mommy

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I miss her.

Spittoon (w.c.55)

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“I’m pregnant,” he says...

Gossip

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Gossip Betty Martini divorces husbands when they least expect it. On a seeming whim, she pays a visit to dear Arnold, who keeps her papers handy in his top desk drawer. She initials here and there, signs with a…

Dignity Village, Portland

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A cheap pocket knife was the only sharp I carried in my backpack and they allowed me that. The man with the pot tattoo on his neck said, “All of us here needs some type of knife. You gotta cut up your food. We don't…

Regret

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Regret takes the shape of little clouds ...