Stories tagged conflict

The Lookout

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I had never seen anyone die. For first time in my life, I was afraid, even more than when my step-dad got drunk and roughed me up. When Dale Franklin got shot last year standing on the corner outside the laundry-mat it took the ambulance forty-five minu

A Hall of Mirrors

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My face in your face The light in your eyes Dancing and twirling Growing, alive A hall of mirrors reflecting me Shards of glass Silver and black Injure and cut Years of bad luck A hall of mirrors protecting me Wrinkles and bags Time's been unkind Disease and…

Black Hole of Beauty

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Surrounded by a stressfull sense of trying to understand the human condition. The flawed characters in the story speak of past violence and conflict. It is about a boy who is dealing with a recent suicide attempt on his own life & the regrets that come wi

Second verse, same as the first

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Most people assume I’m gay, and have assumed I’m gay since I was in fifth grade. Maybe sooner. Maybe fifth grade is just my first memory of recognizing what other people believed true about me. But coming out as a gay man in 1987, when I was in fifth gra

Gabe

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“Damn!” he said to himself, wondering for the millionth time what he was doing in such a sad line of work. Break time, he decided, grabbing his stash box and locking himself into the freezing cold bathroom to smoke a joint. He emerged thirty minutes la

The Hateful Patient

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He especially dreaded the argumentative help-seeking help-rejecting ones who took none of his advice because of contrary information on the Internet.

Wind From The West

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I stand near the wall, a 40 pound roll of tarpaulin across my shoulders. A blustery Chinook wind blows steadily off the snow covered foothills. I'm trying to psyche myself up to haul a tarp across a span of narrow wall that's studded with spikes of greased blue steel…

It All Falls Apart

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a nightmare where I find out they're disowning me

Kash Mire

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You watch with frigid eyes, as their soggy woolens squelch dark mud, even smiling a little as they make croaking frog-lure noises. You know eventually a toad or two would land in the Frogger. You like the word Frogger.

Guided reading

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You were

5 Things I've Learned After 5 Years of Reviewing Small Press Books and Writing 2 of My Own

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In today’s print-on-demand and digital world, there are unlimited avenues for aspiring writers to circulate their work, but deregulation and limitlessness often leads to chaos. Writers are more inclined to release unpolished work that fails to rise to the

my love for you

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my love for you/ is like the falling snow