In Crowd I discover in myself this startling desire to fit in. As if I am some teenager in an afterschool special or training video. Listen, honey, don’t worry about those other kids. I am now looking for a new teacher than those crowding voices around me. An inner truth to tether myself to the world, eschewing the script, enveloped […]
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Almost Nothing On My TV by, Melissa R. Mendelson The summer’s coming to an end. I’m sitting on my porch, watching it die. Enjoying the heat and watching time fly, And there’s nothing on my tv. Almost nothing at all. All the good stuff is waiting for the fall. There is the good Preacher, Trying to save us […]
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Just a toy though the string is still afraid, tied as if inside a weightlessness is pulling it closer and closer and can’t let go caged in on all sides by the color blue and emptiness –a trapped balloon, banded the way all buoys spread out and the channel lurking below unravels as rain that has no water […]
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The was an upside down bowl drying on the counter, and I was trapped beneath it, trying to find an edge to pry the whole thing up and slip away. Bio: Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and […]
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I take a 12 month chip, a copy of The Iceman Cometh, drape myself in Union blue, cultivate a salesman’s grinning grip. A Valley trip lies ahead, road miles registered in a company car. Spring becoming summer, there’s a ghost in the garden, a feral cat, sensuous in the drying grass. I light a Tiparillo, block walk the […]
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There is something deeply suffocating about life today in the prosperous west. Bourgeoisification, the suburbanisation of the soul, proceeds at an unnerving pace. Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter. Nothing is allowed to distress and unsettle us. The politics of the playgroup rules us all.
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fading scars are fading Twenty-five years ago I unloaded a truckful of books. I’d done it a hundred times. Seventy-pound boxes into the back of the store, ten, twenty, before the bolt that jutted from the door handle caught my elbow. Three-inch tear extended the inner crease of my left arm. As the manager, what can you do? I […]
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VERDANCE FROM BLACK (By Joseph Cavera) To you I ride a weathered train Puffing obsidian clouds, crossing this bridge Your presence awaits me beyond this ridge Alas, from lilac loving I must abstain My presence approaching is raised a smidge And a true train this bridge may lack, But my love you see blooms like fresh lilac Like […]
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HERO OR ZERO? To die on the battlefield leading a charge, Your body upon a shield, burned in a barge – An image heroic of Viking portrayal Approvingly stoic, quite worthy of hail. The fireman rushing pall-mall into blaze As on 9-11, the last of his days. No body recovered from building’s collapse. Just wife, children, mother to […]
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LIFE, A HOBBY (By Joseph Cavera) Let it never be said that each of us would be better off without a hobby. A small side directive of which to begin, where new aspects of life await, waiting to be mapped and measured. For some, the charm lies carving small creations from bits of wood. For others, sailing on a […]
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