When the parrot went missing, I put my hat on, took my father-in-law’s Peruvian cane with the carved parrot, asked my husband to come home, placed his skates by the gate, and headed out, leaving the entrance door unlocked. The parrot, Torrap, had
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Avital Gad-Cykman ~ Babies
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Eric Pankey ~ Four Poems
MEDITATION AT RIO DEVA
How to distinguish a trick
Of the eye
From wind in a chestnutOr waking from dream
Where boundaries
Dissolve and give wayThe body strapped
To its shadow
Weighs no moreThe alphanumerical
Values of letters
Do not make the nameOf
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Jeff Friedman ~ Three Prose Poems
Elijah
I leave my aroma, strong enough to put out the lights or clear a room, to Cassie, my vegan lover, who can use it to protect her patch of vegetables and plants. I leave a pile of hair to my pillow, to the many dust bunnies leaping from room to
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Claire Polders ~ Four Micro Fictions
Specialties
On the terrace across the street below the elms in fickle light, you eat dishes that are neither here nor there. Facing the canal, you lower your spoon into your bowl of soupçon and come up empty, as though the dash of salt is just
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Edward Hardy ~ Apology #9: Not About The Toaster
I’m typing here because Larry the electrician has just—and I know it’s Larry because can I see his lean bearded figure through the upstairs office window as he stands before the front door holding that green cell phone, which nearly glows in
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David Gilbert ~ A Life in Photos
1
She demanded an explanation. At the photographer’s request, she stood next to him and smiled at the camera until it flashed but she was not in the photo. The photographer was adamant that something was wrong with her not his camera. He took
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Craig Fishbane ~ The New Kids
It was not surprising that Tomás and Julio were having another argument. Ever since Shukura had left last month, most of the students were on edge. All of our children from Egypt and Bangladesh were now gone and no one was sure which group would be
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Gary Percesepe ~ Transition
January 2, 2017
I was telling Joelle I was almost finished reading her memoirs. I’d been reading them side by side, an odd way to read, sort of like an old two-columned Ashbery poem, or an obscure passage from Derrida’s Glas. Derrida was something
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Lucinda Kempe ~ Platooning
The damn cat has disappeared again. Truth is, I’d turned the hose on him as I was cleaning the cat box outside during a spell of warmer weather.
“Get the fuck out Orayo,” I’d bellowed.
I clean the cats’ boxes, vacuum their litter off the floor,
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Charles Rafferty ~ The Light Made Everything Harder to See
Tommy was on his way to the 7‑Eleven to buy condoms. He had offered to use Saran Wrap and a rubber band, but Sheila wasn’t game. They had just met and they had both been drinking, but apparently not enough. Tommy felt relieved when she suggested the
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Randall Brown & Pamela Painter ~ Two Pieces
Battle
Her orange dress and the butterfly hat and the edge of woods. She is saying she built a fort and I am yelling out my window that I’m not allowed out today.
“Bella,” my mother yells from where she is patching Dad’s work shirts in the kitchen, “Get
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Joan Wilking ~ Neuropathy Trilogy
Neuropathy
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Glen Pourciau ~ Stretcher
Early evening on a Friday, wine and cheese time at the inn where we checked in only an hour ago, and we’re seated just outside the door to the serving area, wrought-iron table and chairs on the edge of a courtyard, a fountain babbling within earshot.
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Tamara Burross-Grisanti ~ Four Stories
Broken Cakes
Autumn is my burden. My mornings come mid-afternoon. I crawl out of bed by the light between the purple velvet curtains from my failed second-marriage bedroom. I take a swig of vodka to wet my cracked lips, light a cigarette on the fumes of my next
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Sheldon Lee Compton ~ After Watching Ido Mizrahy’s Film Gored — July 9, 2015
I couldn’t really say why I hadn’t killed the bull. Not right away, when everyone kept asking. I struck at it several times in the exact spot I should, but I could not sink the blade. I couldn’t say to my friends inside the vehicle what had happened,
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Sandra Kolankiewicz ~ Two Poems
Before the Desert
Before the desert, I shook trees for
you, beat bushes, traveled far and wide, high
and low, both inside and out through the course
of unfortunate consequences, the
definition of maturity that
I finally recognize -
Gail Louise Siegel ~ As Vulnerable As We Are
Far above: a jet descends. As if pulled by an invisible hand behind a magnetic game board.
Gods play with car and boat and plane-shaped pawns from the other side.
Throw the die, and tokens scoot along. Go to jail or plummet down to hell.
Twin engines
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Hillary Fifield ~ Nice to Meet You
I wake and search for my phone beneath my pillow where I store it nightly. Glare from the window covers the screen. I drop under the sheets, blanket, and duvet. I’m held as if embraced, but it’s only my hair that smells like skin and cotton.
My
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David Gilbert ~ Stupa
When we were within an hour of the stupa, Thurston finally showed me the photo of it. We’d stopped so he could take a nitroglycerin tablet from the bottle he’d bought in India. He looked toward the top of the mountain and smiled despite
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Mary Lannon ~ All the Stray Cats of the World
Oprah will die! Oprah will die! Oprah will die! you think as you pump gas at Gas on the Go on Thanksgiving Day. You mean to send her no bad karma, of course. It’s merely a fact. Still, it seems more shocking than other deaths. Oprah will die! Oprah