An ultralight aircraft overshoots the runway and incinerates my azaleas. The pilot (a person I didn’t know) and my candy-colored flowers perish similarly. Flames glow like movie theater “Coming Attractions” projected
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Michael Grant Smith ~ Space Junk
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Julian George ~ This is a pipe
Maigret smiled around his pipe. — Simenon
A great many men
Many of them great
In word and deed, in flesh and fantasy
Were pipe smokers;
These men
Favoured the noble pipe to the shabby gasper
A trusty Briarwood to -
Al Ortolani ~ Four Poems
Losing a Ring
My father blamed himself. My mother said
he should have listened. Who gives
a four-year-old a gold ring?
And that’s how
it was left, like a tree -
Andrew Plattner ~ Schuylkill
She spotted Alvin seated in a pew in the 30th Street Station, dressed in a wool coat too warm for September. He seemed to be focusing on the digital board that held departure information. She’d thought of visiting
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Glen Pourciau ~ Two Short Pieces
Buttonhole
I was at the college for an author talk on a novel based on local history. A few dozen people attended and most of us headed afterward to a refreshment table loaded with desserts prepared by students in the
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NWWQ ~ JULY 2022
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Abby Frucht ~ Take Six
Even after a day being parked at the trailhead, she has yet to discover the name of the trail, this stretch of boot prints in mud from which wetlands spew, the lake to one side and to the other some turtles sunning in muck,
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David Moolten ~ Five Poems
VOYEUR
My father sat a while under elms and moon
before driving off like the day we played
tug of war with him and his suitcase on the porch.
Hindsight is like longing through glass,
everything clear but out of reach, hardly titillating -
Sean S. Bentley ~ Three Poems
Girasoli
“The Battle of Anghiari (1505) … often referred to as ‘The Lost Leonardo,’ …believe[d] to be hidden beneath one of the later [Vasari] frescoes … in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. … a scene of a violent
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Pavle Radonic ~ Four Short Pieces
1. Pearly White
Bu M. was a fair way outta the usual profile. But this was Indonesia of course. The first morning she rocked up 20 mins. late on the back of a motorcycle, explaining later she was delayed having brekkie with her hubbie.
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J. W. Goll ~ Three Pieces
Poultry Mystery
Within a few weeks of his return from Viet Nam, Butchie’s older brother gets a job as a heavy equipment operator and a girlfriend, in that order. Jack enlisted to avoid an assault conviction and says this is more luck than he’s had in his life.
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Keith J. Powell ~ Head Over Heels
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Michael Rogner ~ Three Poems
Not in Redwood Country
this is sycamore country
cottonwood country
the country of waxwing bands trilling in privets
the country of parks with bag dispensers
to pick up shit next to tents and herds of goats and a mechanized army
of benches honoring -
Steve Gergley ~ One Man Band
I was angry and sad and sick of my shitty life that was nothing but sleep and YouTube and working the overnight shift in a refrigerated warehouse, so I formed a one man noise metal band and built a studio in the basement of my house. Using my vast
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Bruce McDougall ~ The Master Painter
Just before noon she hears Raymond, the painter, calling from the bedroom. Come here, please, missus, he says.
She finds him standing on a ladder in the middle of the room. He has spread tarpaulins over the floor and moved the bed and other furniture
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Pavle Radonic ~ Wife No. 2
Albadaroh.
What do her friends call her? Alba?
— Alba can. Daroh can. Up to them.
More than serviceable English unexpected, learnt from her husband. Not a business type; psychology major, Malaysian with PR. His second wife.
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Donald A. Ranard ~ Two Flash Fictions
5/25/22
Johnny Depp denies he ever threw Kate Moss down the stairs or hit her parents give DNA swabs to help identify children shot by Texas gunman Khloe Kardashian offended by rumors she had 12 face transplants I’ve had only
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Julie Benesh ~ As Told To
Occupation: self-care and waste management. No
destiny to fulfill. Produce nothing but feces and fur.
Work from home naked. Have a live-in with thumbs
who hunts, grooms, sleeps with me, though she keeps
strange hours and has -
Josh Russell ~ Two Essays from Commonplaces
For Robert F. Simon
When I pay $7.99 to download a 1966 driver’s ed scare film I was shown in the summer of 1984—The Third Killer, produced by the Ohio State Highway Patrol and somehow starring Robert F. Simon, a character actor who played Willie Loman on
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Jianqing Zheng ~ Five Poems
Ode to Night
Coldness plasters
my hut
with thick snowI quiver in bed
like a fish
caught and thrownon the ice
to flop
in desperate throes.~
The Gradation of Our Being
Day by day we wait to see
seeds sprout into a fuzzy greenand grow for a good harvest.
We have never feltthe land has grown