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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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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THE MULTIPLEX – By John Zedolik Walking on the left side is walking on the same street but it’s the other of the one if the right has been the only I have used in my journeys up the hill and back home in falling leaves or following cold. And yet another arises when walking in the middle […]
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Colorless There is no God Who prepared A heaven At the end of the book Nor are there holy ones Who brought us into the fifth world On corn pollen roads dusted with beauty No spirit no creators no love To watch over us or our deeds Nothing holy or sacred There is only the deliberate […]
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ON BEING SAFE His mantra starts out, “Warm, clean, comfortable.” He’s had his share of troubles — health, work, relationships. He’s never been consoled to hear, “Others have it so much worse.” Why would that make him feel better? How many people go hungry, combing dumpsters for food, or sleep in cardboard boxes in freezing weather? Others […]
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