In Transit Unemployed’s tube journey: For those safe, definable few minutes there is the duality Of oneself and the comfort of the seat – the circle; Seal; it chops perfectly, crossing the antilinear. It induces connexity; the most complete awareness of the toil and monotony which went into making the tube, and the seat inside the train inside […]
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ALAS – By Elaine Nadal I was told I have her eyes, her thick brows– didn’t think much of it: We all have something of someone. My sister has Aunt Natalia’s smile. My brother has Uncle Silo’s curly hair (back in the day when my uncle had hair). I was just glad I didn’t inherit Aunt Rosa’s squared shape. […]
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HOW LEAVING HOME WORKS I need highways, infrastructure that can differentiate between the town where I grew up and the place I need to be. And a Ford that’s up to it, getting on but faithful, its leather bucket seats faded from their prime, but radio rock stations all preset and fifty times louder than the engine. Blacktop, […]
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An hour a day, sometimes more, I chipped away with mallet and chisel on a block of marble I found in Carrara and shipped to New York on the deck of a trawler. I offered the marble to a famous sculptor who told me he works in granite only so I grabbed his beret and one of his smocks […]
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In this small, blue room— overheated, clenched by melancholy, I sit the night, guarding carnival goods, blood potions, the knife thrower’s serrated blades. Two buskers beach-walk a tune, harmonies muffled by wave’s insistence. A mathematical conceit of stars burning to earth enriches water’s lap against pier beams, a night sailor’s crossing. Taken on as apprentice, the alchemist insists […]
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Stone Slate – By Melissa R. Mendelson They tell me that I am alive. If that were so, shouldn’t I breathe? Listen to your heart, and I’m stupid for listening once more. I don’t hear anything. Check your pulse. “I am checking,” I scream. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. How could they tell me what they tell me, and how could I […]
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A Nuclear Childhood What if your parents had never met had never married had never yelled at each other and instead had wed someone they loved and lived peacefully all those years. That would have been their Eden but you shaking there now decades later wouldn’t be with us cursing the tremors of a […]
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van Diemen’s land eclipsed in artwork A solitary Joshua tree curling, fetal, looking outwards its instinct tailored, to fold itself in. and wrap yourself around your arms even as you scream “not here” take me somewhere else you say ribald, Nostradamus hued. Alone. one wondered if you, who liked the drumbeats to suggest how much of music […]
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OUT TO YOU (By Joseph Cavera) Could I help but see it? That light shining down, Everlasting direction Like Thorns of a crown These refractions fly, His word’s unveiled Another day… All Hope is impaled With the sentence he sends, Verified misnomers aside, Until you stretch out your hand To call me to the true light, A truly luminous […]
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Embedded and this statue still tightening its grip tries to revive the horse expects its crumbling reins to smell from leather and crowding –you squint the way the general looks for a small thing encased in a season exactly where he left it waits in the rain for your black umbrella to open make room for you […]
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