AGE HAS ITS PRIVILEGE – By Ray Gallucci When you are old and prone to mold, It matters not if you they’ll scold For skipping meetings by not heeding Platitudes they keep repeating. It’s right you’ve earned to choose to spurn What management claims you should learn. Once you have heard it all before, Their tired words are just […]
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HOW TO BREAK SNOW – By John Grey Something foreign helps, armored vehicles adorned with unfamiliar grim-faced eagles rolling down white slopes, and explosions in the distance, close at hand – loud red, even louder black, instant thaw. No tool more expedient than soldiers pounding on a door, the path more hob-nailed print than even sheen, roof and eaves cascading […]
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Poem By SIMON PERCHIK * Though there’s no leak your hand at every turn makes the adjustment takes hold the way this wrench begins as mountainside, workable picked up and the pebble dragged off circles down, carving out her name and from your mouth the stutter tighter, tighter –it’s all about the water isn’t it? a spill […]
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Of Meringues and Mindsets My mother used to make lemon pies when somebody died. “Because my pies were beautiful, all fluffy and white,” she said as if it all made perfect sense. And I wondered at her logic. Was it as flawed as I initially believed? Maybe the soft white topping to the bitter yellow center […]
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The Odyssey (By John Biscello) Casting my toy boat into the tub and jumping in, I stare at my love, slathered in gauzy bubbles, she of the champagne beard and foam wig; tension mounting, I take a deep breath, exhale, then pop the question—Will you be my first mate and sail with me, come hell or high water? She […]
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GALILEO’S GHOST With Earth at the Center, Ptolemy ruled. Mathematically sound, for centuries fooled Who then passed as scientists to proclaim, “We know all the Universe; don’t defame!” When Copernicus proved the Sun’s the Hub, Those of Catholic persuasion wouldn’t budge. “Since the Bible’s declared, ’The Earth is It,’ Therefore anything new must therein fit.” When […]
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AFTER PARTY (By John Biscello) She, Lazarus, back from the dead, with a musical vengeance— A beat, Christ, please, she asks of her martyred D.J., half-light, half-man, and out climbs her voice, grinding through rubble, a dark velvet toy wound up for centuries, released, on behalf of every last blue girl, unannounced, notes from underground unfurling a cortege of […]
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VEXED OF KIN You pick your friends, but not your kin. Once stork descends with you, you’re in Whatever group that Fate selects, Who’ll mold you to what they expect. To some degree, your genes decide What you will be, who you’re inside. But those you’re with through early years Upon your pith their likeness sear. […]
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THE STUDS IN THE BAR – By John Grey Rosalie is at the bar thinking – who’s next? Then two extravagant, exaggerated beings enter, one behind the other, like stallions, heads high, tails swishing, threaten to pull the floor out from under the regular male patrons with their jangling gold, French cologne, and styled hair flopping on the brow like […]
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Are We Real – By Melissa R. Mendelson The elderly couple sat in their chairs, waiting to be called. As they waited, they drew close, and he said, “What is Reality?” She didn’t answer. “How do we know, if this, we are real?” Still, no answer. “Does that not worry you?” She took a long moment to think, and then […]
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