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Michael Cooney
The Very Next Season The woman asked me if I could move out of her way.A variety of people came into the subway car. Some were overly friendly. Others were insane.I looked around for someone that I knew. It was then I discovered that some of my friends had grown very old.I quickly changed trains at DeKalb and rode all the way to Coney Island. I walked past the frozen Ferris wheel out onto the beach.The winter rains reminded me that the very next season was Spring. Michael Cooney has published poetry in Badlands, Second Chance Lit, Bitter Oleander, Big Windows Review and other journals. His short stories have…
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Carine Topal
{The Crows of Dresden} My mother dreaded anything with a beak. Eagles and doves no exception. When the windows were open and a house sparrow flew in, she ran. Ran for the door, the fields out front and the forest behind our house. The earth filled with feathers. My mother fretted. She shuddered with coughs. I ran to soothe her, but in her head, birds circled, flocks conspired. Any head-under-wing left Mother open-jawed: the raven, the hawk, even the black-capped chickadee, with its common coo-coo. I yelled for Father who came with a broom. Mother flailed her arms like a wide-winged fowl. I held her and whispered: The black crows…
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Rebecca Pyle
Orphans, Old In Prague they remembered the old orphansWho came to their house, pretending to beReligious people, or famous writers.He sat on a big pillow, and sheTook the favorite chair. AnotherCame with band-aids on hisFace and his science fiction.Others liked dressing up andPretending to be a professor or aDoctor of writing. They smiled and gaveThem tea and wine and cookies and cheeseAnd ten years later half were gone, unfindable,But we remembered how they made up namesFor themselves, pretended to be lightning-strickenWith great truths, by agents fighting for their works—Everywhere! And always attended astronomical eventsWhere crazy old men gathered with great large telescopes. Rebecca Pyle is living in France this…
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Carmen Fought
Observer’s Paradox When I was eight I watched my cousinget hit by lightning. It felt likeI made it happen.Lightning drew on him: Lichtenberg figuresthe startling henna, a map of his veins. Everyone who looked at himcould see his blood, could follow where it went. If people pray it makes me uneasy, but the statueof the virgin of Guadalupewith plastic flowers …
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Barbara Miner
My Body My body smells old Leaves overturned and wet Bark peeling down to limb Wine dried in tumblers left on the counter Sunday papers disintegrating in the rain Barbara Miner holds the position of tenured Professor and Chair in the Department of Art, at the University of Toledo, in Toledo, OH. Her mixed media sculptures, installation works, paintings, and writings, informed by the nexus of human/nature iteraction, and the practice of meditative repetition, have been exhibited nationally (Maine to California) and internationally (Sweden and Poland) in over 107 exhibitions.
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Madina Tuhbatullina
Humming Throats Did the fly drown in the cup already?Every existence is a digestion—furniture grazes skin likefingers soak clouds Let’s wait for all fliesto cross the swallowingwe can work with what’s left. Madina Tuhbatullina is an international student from Turkmenistan, receiving a Creative Writing MFA degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Madina’s work has been published or is forthcoming in New Note Poetry, PubLab, great weather for MEDIA’s anthology and elsewhere. Madina is an alumna of the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop and Tupelo Press Manuscript Workshop.
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Christien Gholson
Tidepool: Elegy 1. Waves fall into themselves all night long. I dream ofinsomniac children playing at the water’s edge, darkcircles under their eyes – so many unseen deathsbattering against their sleep. 2. Grim skies, grey, no shadows, rain-pocked sand. I listento sea water slip down rock. Drops hit the surface of atidepool. I am there for the moment when the surfaceclears: body and thoughts, still. 3. The drop moves through the seams of tendon, networksof blood, marrow, into a cave without light, arrivesat a cache of smooth black stones placed in a circle bygrief. 4. A sculpin with huge black eyes takes in the worldfrom the safety of a red…
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Kurt Olsson
Anecdote The first year, students would come up to mebetween class while we all stood outside the little kindergarten that had been convertedinto the English faculty in the hinterlands of the former Soviet Union and say, Mr. Kurt,tell us please an anecdote. Life until then hadn’t lent itself to Chekhov, let alone Turgenevor Tolstoy, but I’d lived a slew of anecdotes. The students would lean in close and laughat the end, glancing at one another, one maybe balling his hand in a fist and clipping a neighboron the shoulder, before they would thank me and shuffle back through unlit halls paintedwith ducks and dancing bears to their next class. My…
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Rebecca Faulkner
Edith And Lot’s wife did look back….and I love her for that, because it was so human.Kurt Vonnegut What do you remember? the stench of burning hair a chlorine yellow hazedisobedience of the screen doorslam of my backward glance Stand closer listen to the rasp of my breathas I become salt tastethe mineral of my fingertipscrystals sharp on your tongue It’s not too late to turn back watch me bid farewell to my daughterstheir bright bodies twistingin the eucalyptus I am here with the linens still dampmy palms frayed lace …
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Annamaria Formichella
Prayer for the Broken This is for the rusty outlet in aroom no one uses, for the crackedwindow without a small face peeringthrough, wishing for a snow day. Blessings on the damaged plant Ileft outside the night of the firsthard frost, on both its hopeful greenshoots and its withered brown leaves. Good fortune to the worn yellowwallpaper, carefully drawn designscurling away from the plaster likean unraveling bandage. Tidings of great joy to my linedface and troubled mouth. There isbeauty in decay, if we only learn toshift our gaze and love the scars. This song is for you, transienceand imperfection, marking oursurfaces with the passage of timeto remind us we are…