I want to scream until my voice blistersAround the hot cinders of the words I spitI burn out next to the Sun and SisterWhere my Mother and Father lit the […]
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Tag: women writers
The Gift by E.B. Cotenord
Trigger Warning: sexual themes and abuse In my career as a sex worker, I accept gifts with poise and grace. It’s an odd twist in theminds of other people. That […]
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“Out of Body” by Liza Olson
I am lying flat on the ground in a quiet living room in a quiet home in the kind of quiet suburb everyone’s at least driven through, if not lived […]
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Three Microfictions by Ashley McCurry
My Friends and I Started Having Premonitions About Future Lovers Sonia dreamt of being sawed in half by a mustached magician, rugged steel grinding rosewood beneath hot stage lights. Margie […]
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“Misplaced Affections” by Sinclaire Dickinson
A golden retriever of a womanjust met and she’s practically sheddingin your lapshe steps away from packing heroverstuffed bagwell-meaning but not seeing boundaries that should go unsaidtells you she’s consolidating […]
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“Susan” by Holly Day
I stood and watched you sleeping, hadstood there watching for nearly five minutes inthe shadow of the hallway for nearly five minutes of circustime before I dropped your purse on the […]
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“Arizona” by Zoë Blaylock
Emerging writer Zoë Blaylock was educated in the school of hard knocks and droll encounters but credentialed by Harvard. She works in research/healthcare ethics in San Diego where she lives […]
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“That Damn Selfie” by Laurel Osterkamp
If only Joyce hadn’t taken that damn selfie. Her and Tate, laughing at a truck stop in Mexico, drinking beer with lime, his cotton t-shirt sticky with sweat, her tank […]
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“Another Life” by Helen Nancy Meneilly
Helen Nancy Meneilly is an Irish poet whose work explores issues of identity, language, and womanhood. She is currently studying for her MA in Creative Writing through the Open University. […]
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“Alligators to Ashes” by Margaret S Mandell
Prologue to a Memoir Based on Love Letters to my Dead Husband By Margaret S. Mandell Sunday, December 10, 2017 My Dearest Love: October 2015. I am swimming laps alone […]
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“Fever Dream” by Rebecca M Ross
Rona piles rice from path to porch like snowdrifts sprinkled with crayon colored carrots, peas, corn– until the guardrail disappears under an ever-growing mountain of cooked rice. I steal furtive […]
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“Text Me When You Get Home” by Helen Nancy Meneilly
night falls like a brick. urgent tongue of wind stuck to the back of my neck, hair wrapped around my throat. fist of keys in my coat pocket. wraiths of […]
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“Inaccessible” by Connie Woodring
I was afraid of my abusive and controlling ex-husband, but I didn’t know this until 10 years after I divorced him. I wrote hidden poems, feelings hidden. Hidden in notebooks […]
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“How to Use the Supermarket When You Are Losing Your Mind” by Rebecca M Ross
When in a supermarket in a town not your own do not start screaming “Where are the olives? Where are the fucking olives?” as you race down the aisles Do […]
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“What Lay Beneath” by Christine Yount Jones
In the sweltering summer of 1966, I have a kitten who will not cooperate under the Arizona sun that glares at me from its cloudless sky and scorches all things […]
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“I’ve Barely Been to College” by Kailey Tucker
Autumn snapped my spine like the sudden flash of a spark, waking up the dark. She brought rain and left me blooming, treading my fresh soles on top of crumbled yellow bladed leaves that change […]
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“Dog Joy” by Judy Guilliams-Tapia
I am sitting on my meditation cushion, cross-legged and with eyes closed, warmed by the afternoon sun shining through the glass patio door in front of me. The sound of […]
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“Plastic Hearts” by Chella Courington
At fifteen Anne bought her first action figure—Wonder Woman. When she saw her on television in her blue starry shorts, legs rising out of red boots, steel cuffs, and gold […]
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“Rare” by Joanne Howard
Two a.m., well into her night shift at the NICU, was never a good time to receive a call on her cell. “He’s gone,” Jason’s slurred words garbled on the […]
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“Pandemic Yoga” by Judith Beth Cohen
At the Senior Center, we challenge stereotypes about old ladies. We practice yogaoutdoors for “social distance.” If it starts to drizzle, we ignore it. If it pours, we run for […]
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“The Calling” by Christina Eagen
without askingearthquakes rumbled to announce thearrival of mountains rivers roared to forewarn rocksof their ravage winds howled to demand fishermenback to shore wildfires raged to birth new lifein the forest […]
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“So Many Ways to Live” by Victoria Woolf Bailey
When that moment arrives(by car, by bus, by daybreak) We live in it like a house(condo, apartment, tent down by the river) Imagining we may see it all again(later, someday, […]
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“In the Willow Garden” by Isabel O’Hara Walsh
Down in the willow garden, where me and my true love did meet,There we sat a-courting, my love fell off to sleep – “Rose Connelly,” traditional Appalachian ballad I hear […]
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“In the Kingdom of Songora” by Linda McMullen
James was a senior when I was a freshman at Salem North High School; I fell in love with him when I heard he’d persuaded the principal to let him […]
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“Abracadabra” by Christina Marable
The man I loved as my grandfather was a tall, strong, broad-shouldered man who carried a fake ear in his back pocket. With his indigo skin and smile brighter than […]
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Microfiction by Megha Nayar
Grievances David calls as I’m retiring for the night. “You really need to stop spoiling that dog, Mom!” he begins without preamble when I pick up. “How many more plushies […]
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“In Between” by Kelly Claytor
Are you dead, Maria? One Hour It seems so. Seven Days Their black clothes. Their black veils. Their white handkerchiefs, dry in their pockets. None linger at my grave. No […]
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“Before” by Margaret Krusinga
Margaret Krusinga lives on sixty acres she and her husband manage loosely for wildlife. Diagnosed with MS in 1976, she graduated college under a cloud, in 1977. Poetry has become […]
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“Tethered” by Sarette Danae
His is a lariat love, beginning with a wobbleAs it starts to unwind. Then stretching fastInto a wide-spreading circle, swinging wild,Arcing high, landing without warning,Just a thump and a cinch. […]
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“One Learns Ruthlessly” by Lydia Storm
“And I learned, gentlemen. Alas, one learns when one has to. One learns when one wants a way out. One learns ruthlessly.” —Franz Kafka, “A Report for an Academy” Dear […]
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“Brutal Roux” by Elyse Jancosko
Becca add morebutter Becca. That’s no way tomake a roux. Don’t just measure on a whim.Your flour and fat. Or fluid and fault.Meat drippings, maybe. That ratio. That ratio!That’s what […]
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“Bird Calls over Puget Sound” by Sarette Danae
There is no chirping from gulls, no chatter back and forth,No songs at sunrise or ushering in night. No lonely callsFor a lover to echo back. Among gulls There is […]
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“Running on Empty” by Melissent Zumwalt
June 1999 Bzz…Bzz…Bzz… My alarm sounds off, 2:00 a.m. A rude but expected awakening. Rolling onto my side, out of bed, I slump upright. From a pile of clothes stacked […]
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“Tenderness” by Mary Paulson
Through the eye of a dream,the round pit of a binocular opening,I recognize myselfstanding in front of a stranger,his gun barrel pressedagainst the bone between my breasts. We’re in a […]
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“Two Gates For Ghostly Dreams” by Dawn Bratton
That motherlode of Sun right thereliterally blasting me in the face with its gloryit’s so far away (1 au, to be exact), but all this brilliance over vast […]
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“Searching for the Cottingley Fairies” by Kim Malinowski
I. Snapshot Click. WHIRR. Shadowed still frame capturing fae.Ethereal grace magnified by child’s wonder.Muted only by adults’ misunderstanding “genuine.”Why would fae be less real if crafted by paper?Paper and glue […]
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“Ruins” by Mary Paulson
Mary Paulson currently lives and works in Naples, FL. Her poems have appeared in Slow Trains, Mainstreet Rag, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Arkana, Thimble Lit Magazine, and Tipton Poetry […]
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“The Sands of Time” by Rebecca Johnson
Amber, scarlet, gilded daffodil. All sits quiet, calm,and the sun sets as I turn to you. It takes a second but then I see a granuleof sand that chips away, […]
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“No Dreamin’ at the Double Tree” by Suzanne S. Rancourt
everything smells like soap except that one hallway smeared withvolatile coconut particles, reminds me of that porn theatre in somedank Indianapolis district wild with heavy air and greasy tanninghuts, but […]
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“A Season’s Breath” by Turi Ekirapa
I can’t sleep. Deep breath in. Boredom has hit me like a speck of bird poop that I can’t shake off. I’m doing that thing I did when I was […]
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“Hope is a Blue Jay” by Rebecca Johnson
I.As snow settles upon the landand brings with it crisp, frozen air,I’ll hear the cardinal’s jarring callas it echoes in my anxious mind. The cold and weary world revealsthat ancient […]
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“Pennies for Pilgrims” by Julie Allyn Johnson
Julie Allyn Johnson, a sawyer’s daughter from the American Midwest, began writing poetry after her retirement from IT work in 2017. She loves hiking, gravel-travel photography, riding bikes, altered books […]
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“Waiting” by Christine Webster-Hansen
Eyes linger, unchanged photos thickened with dust,body-locked, estranged face gazing at the mirror,clutching at the mind, recalling memories dimly-flung,cycling again through sitcom and rerun.Bras holding the biblical fall,suspended breasts clasped […]
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“Waking Up in California” by Jennifer Novotney
My mother is already uplong retired from work, she putters aroundher house all day, buying things and giving them awaycalling friends, taking short walkskeeping herself busy in the hot heat […]
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“A Future Leviathan’s Prodigious Sister” by Mina Rozario
They called me incandescent. Queens and counts, dukes and earls alike sat enthralled when I performed, swept up in a sea of notes that would swell and recede like tides. […]
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“Rangoli Man” by Mina Rozario
Maya’s entire town had awoken one morning to find swarms of people milling outside their doors, their skins a mottled mix of colors: sunny yellows, rich crimsons, deep blues, and […]
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“The Mosquito and the Bell Jar” by Carol Motta
Our balsa-sweet Mosquito flies low and slow into the burning sun, undetectable by radarI hear only air scratching past the belly of the holdNo bomb today, just a tired man […]
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“We have Always Lived in the Castle” by Tara Campbell
We have always lived within these walls,this gleaming, shining castle on a hill,a beacon held aloft for one and allto marvel at, imagining the thrill of breathing liberty and chipping […]
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“The Shape of the Laugh in Your Throat” by Edie Meade
From downstairs I hear you playfully yell “panties!” with the tantrum-bound toddler who is disemboweling my underwear drawer. By the shape of the laugh in your throat I can tell […]
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“Diadem for the End of the World” by Randi Sanders
Seven billion was the end predicted by that movie where the population was fed on a questionable combination of soy, lentils, and plankton that wasn’t really plankton because we needed […]
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“Antidote” by Kate Copeland
A fire sunset facing her, thunder didn’t show, how much she even wished for this sky to hurt, to rive in two, boiling the river This house helps her to […]
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“Cardinal Sin” by Jennifer Fox
Julie stared at the cardinal laying in the snow outside her living room window. It was like fresh crimson on white porcelain tile which made the small horizontal scar on […]
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“All the Water in the World” by Kate Copeland
A grey afternoon and when itcontinues to rain, a clueless patternleaves pools on our balcony, tearson the skylight.By now we knew who we are and asdrakes parade near the breaking […]
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“We Built a Fine Madness House” by Lorna D. Keach
Before their house was built, Jan and Stan spent hours staring at the blueprints, hunting for a 90-degree angle. Their architect told them the construction would reject mundane angles and […]
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“Penny of Ithaca” by P.L. Watts
She’s even made the bed where another man will rape her. The swine have been slaughtered, the silver’s been laid. Everything’s ready. She scans the room once more. She’s always […]
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“Meditations on Water (Ode to Escambia)” by Stella Meadows
I didn’t always know I was a woman. That’s one of the myths – that every trans person knows it from Day One. I guess I knew from pretty early […]
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“thick crusts of midnight in the late Ordovician, a wilderness of morning elsewhere” by Kate Shannon
i.other things live easy, you knowI suppose I, too, live easy in some ways.a domination of oceans gatheringa braying of old bones, dust and then nothinga quietude of less wrathful […]
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“Unleashed” by Catherine Zickgraf
I clutch Dad’s oak tree leg. He reads the congregation my pre-baptism testimony. Seems myheart rejects sin, especially finger-painting my bedroom during Sunday naptime. But I’ll convertagain for another church […]
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“Sold Sign” by Kate Koch
The sunlight that crawls between hydrangea leaveswhile moss roses stretch and mouse through cracks in the stairs Neighbors who share their sweet ouzowith stories about Portugal under low apple branches […]
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“Recreate” by Shannon Cuthbert
Floating, ghost horse wakes in a fieldExactly like his own, just that he can’t touchThe soft weeds crawling up the fence.At first, he shivers into invisibility.His long colt legs, long […]
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“ghazal for aguas del sur” by Kate Shannon
once, mothers waited for their dead children in damp bodies untilno more noises crept from their wind-polyp’d throats, until a dozen moons passed, a skinned and rising tidethat never overtakes […]
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“Bamboo” by Mary Donaldson-Evans
Privacy. Who doesn’t want privacy? Even if you’ve sold off half your property to a persistent developer intending to put up twenty “McMansions” on it, that doesn’t mean that you […]
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“Red Summer” by Chariklia Martalas
It was the days where the night would not come, for the sun held the sky hostage just by a look. It was the tyrannical glare of a red summer […]
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“Pour toi, mon amour” by Tasnia Nahla
Chaos sings, we areDisintegrating whole, drunkWith the city’s disillusionmentHalf and half and nowhere reallysick sipping stars, picking dirt off soles unmet; yet to birth new fire –mere – the thoughts […]
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“Glass” by Chariklia Martalas
Did they tell you Inferno was made from glass? Clear as truth turned upside down You can see through to the bottom of the world An everywhere that exists below […]
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“Zoom In-Out-In and Cry” by Hibah Shakhez
Earth o’ mine green red brown and blue, They ask me which colour you are And laugh when I cannot answer. Could I lie you were one all through? But […]
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“Kurt” by Veronica Lupinacci
Kurt wouldn’t eat yellow rice. Hedidn’t like that exotic food. Henarrated our trip to Iowa onesummer, had a story for every exit onevery road, tooth-whistling throughdetails while I dozed in […]
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“The Dinner Party” by Alexa Hailey
We arrived right on time, although we had debated that. Isn’t fashionably late, well, fashionable? In the end, though, we were on time. Which was good, because she was out […]
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“The Destiny Tree” by Hibah Shabkhez
The destiny tree, Dark gnarled and secretly wick, Claws at you and me Across eye spaces Twisting phoenix-glass specks prance Bloated toad-faces Yearning for their ilk, Bucking the frothing cream […]
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“Those Black Americans” by Evelyn Umezinwa
My finger banged on the tiny doorbell. I paced back and forth trying not to fall off the tiny step. Finally, the door slowly creaked open. A girl, around my […]
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A Writer and Dungeons and Dragons by Melissa Reynolds
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) about three years ago. I didn’t know much about the game and approached it as something new to do with my writer friends. […]
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“1984” by DC Diamondopolous
James, as the doctors and staff at St. Mark’s Regional Hospital in San Diego insisted on calling him, applied pancake make-up over the band-aid camouflaging the skin lesion on his […]
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“These fragments I have shored against my ruins” by Jie Wang
We are all doomed to lose everything. I’ve lost three fingers, one arm, one eye. I’ve lost my family, my childhood home, my native tongue. I’m getting better and better […]
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“When My Ear Fell Off” by Stratos Moustakas & Dora Mezei
When my ear fell off I first thought of the client delegation sitting at the conference room, waiting for the meeting to begin in earnest. My boss would now be […]
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“Dopo Mezzonatte” by Marina Kazakova
Dopo mezzanotte! Dopo, dopo! The door pops open, out of the dust the ocean unfolds under the ropewalker’s high gloss black shoes. He floats among the buoyant atoms- the iron […]
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“Death and Mercy” by Kim Malinowski
She wasn’t a phoenix, but she knew ash. She painted herself with coals, with cinders. War paint disguising the woman of the woods. She felt knighted, unable to cry out […]
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Time in a Coronavirus World by Elena Lucia Perez
“Time is an illusion.” – Hue, from Avatar: The Last Airbender, “The Swamp” I don’t know about you, but I feel like the days this past month have been going […]
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“Edges” By Kim Malinowski
There used to be an edge where the world ended, where ships would tumult down cataracts into nothingness. There are places still, buffers and hallows where the edges become light, […]
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“Cattail Confessions” by Hannah Melin
I’ve fallen in love with all of them. How could I not? With their skin so soft I can watch it give way beneath my fingerprints like silt at the […]
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Preview: The Story That Folded Into Itself by Marina Shugrue
There’s no getting around the fact that this has been a very unusual month. Here in the States, we’re facing the first impacts of COVID-19, and I’m not going to […]
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“Tree Song” by Melissa Reynolds
I have stood for over a hundred years in this place, endured the idiots who link hands and try to encompass my bulk, observed the overprepared hiker complete with stuffed […]
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Why Do We Write? by Elena Lucia Perez
Why do we write? I’ve been asking myself that lately because it’s been tough to find the motivation to do it. It’s not that I don’t want to, but life […]
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“So Dark, Up Above” by Emily Ruth Taylor
Sure, no one ever said that people were getting their powers from the rain. Tommy guessed it had something to do with all those big companies that owned the factories […]
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“Pink” by Izzy Martens
The small pink tube is pressed into the palm of my right hand. I am flicking the lid with my thumb, finding satisfaction in the incessant beat of the lever […]
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Focusing on Your Creative Goals When You’ve Sold Out by Marina Shugrue
I’ve been a sellout since I was twenty-two, technically. That was the year I turned a seasonal copywriting job in the fashion industry into a permanent one—one that included health […]
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“Barbed Wires” by Ria Banerjee
Did you, my beloved, notice the barbed wiresthat run along the length of the city,to separate you from me?Such walls of divisiveness are man-made:penetrating your blue arteries, they weavenarratives of […]
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“The Neighborhood is Burning” by Kaileen Campbell
The house across from mehas caught aflameand taken it against water The firemen are comingtheir trucks yelling attheir speed. They are dressedin their shieldsand are ready to huntthe guiltleft by […]
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“The Night the Billado Block Burned Down” by Elizabeth Gauffreau
Then the Billado Block burned down, and I had nowhere to live. “Well, shit,” I said to the guy standing next to me watching it burn, “what am I supposed […]
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“It was Slow” by Kaileen Campbell
I sat and held the world’s coldest hand.One whose skin had been taken by ice. The palm of a dried soul […]
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“Reclamation” by Mallika Bhaumik
Someday we might meet,when time has melted in us,our lives look like dried river beds Would you then recognise my face? My face might appear unknown,remote like the rugged terrains […]
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“some other nights” by Mallika Bhaumik
Nights are essays in loneliness words scrawled in the darknone to be retrieved, I stretch on the bed; disheveled like my hair,twinning with the night.My flesh sinks far below, a […]
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“One Day” by Rebekah Ricksecker
6:47 AM The darkness turns gray; the misty fog rests over the water; the honeysuckle perfumes the air as white petals float on the still water. 7:03 AM Beneath the […]
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“Forgotten Man” by Ann Christine Tabaka
Dust motes dance on sunlight streaming through a dingy window. Rusty mailbox, empty, always empty. Cadaverous cobwebs mocking back at him from a peeling wall. He sits alone in his […]
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“Traumatic Pneumothorax” by Melanie Gaughran
Melanie Gaughran is a university student in the city of subdued excitement, Bellingham, Washington. Particularly concerned with her internal workings and misworkings, she finds that putting them to paper can […]
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“Seasons of Earth” by Manisha Manhas
the dust storms whineagainst the windowas cherry dreamsslide inside.Searching a marigold,a child’s eyes bob tothe tunes of morningas do butterflies rise fromchrysanthemum jars.And so does the coupsurging from a younggirl’s diary […]
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“On Light on Shadow” by L.L. Madrid
The air is thick with a bovine stench. We’re driving eight hundred miles through desert and oil fields to our new home on Dyess Air Force Base. Five days ago, […]
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The Missing Brutal Honesty in the Final Walk-Through with the Soon-To-Be-Ex-Tenant by Erika Murdey
Entry Door Yes No Damage to exterior? X Interior? X [The lease says “no nails,” but upon her arrival in December it was a matter of days before […]
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“Canescent” by Jagari Mukherjee
1 These mornings, I wake to find silver threads in my hair — gleaming as if dipped in the winter moon. I have always loved oxidized ornaments and grey pullovers; […]
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“A Russian Romance” by Nikita Parik
One fanciful Calcutta summer the world maps were ripped off from overused geography textbooks in an act of innocent revolution. You cherry-picked ecstatic reds from sunsetty Russian sky-palettes, scooping […]
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“Almost Rimbaud” by Mary Shanley
I live in the pulse of unconscious patterns. My civilized mind remains incapable of interpreting the illuminated life I experience outside the limits of ordinary consciousness. Today, I am an […]
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