Story
Nothing Helps Anyone
T Francis Curran
Melany started taking meds in ninth grade to help her focus. It worked with boys, with the AP curriculum, not so much. She went to the prom with Tony who proposed to her in his tux. She ended their engagement tearfully in co...
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Story
Floating Moments in Space
Rachel Speed
The meditative hush of the sea, in and out, in and out, like the breath. The pebbles beneath her grounded her to this world. It brought her into the present and drowned out the strange problems and dramas of human life. All ...
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Story
The Pale Riders Guild
Alan Schwartz
We of the guild, are easily recognized by a certain unique glow, that manifests where there was once pigmentation. In our continuum of colors, white is not one but rather the absence of one. Unfortunately, for those of ...
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Writing
Poems and Prose as Personal Protective Equipment
Margarita Meklina
“And then double strap them!” The white noise of the humming machinery is pierced by his voice. His face angry, his bare knees angular, he cuts through the still air of the night warehouse, “Do your effing job! Don’t...
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Story
The Complex
Shawn Yager
The kids played on the old playground at the back of the complex. Everything was metal, and rusted. There were sharp corners. When you fell, it hurt.
"Better than nothing," parents said with a shrug. "Just gotta be c...
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Writing
The Future Impulse or Mind the Mints
A. Kaye
LSD₂₅₀, an experimental drug of unknown properties was developed during the late 1960s. A variety of test subjects were found, all volunteers, mostly burned-out cases. The experiments were illegally sponsored by the CI...
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Story
There is a country…
Allan Graubard
There is a country all too rarely visited where nothing ever happens. It is a place as calm as a tomb, and with the same bleak hope as a tomb. Its citizens take this for granted, wishing above all to preserve the sanctity of...
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Writing
Three Book Reviews by Max Fielding
Benjamin Schmitt
1
The ancients shared stories through ears, for them literature was an oral (or aural) tradition spoken to audiences and passed down to each new generation. In modern times stories are mostly shared through the e...
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Review
MAMMAL – new poems by Richard Loranger – Review
Richard Modiano
MAMMAL by Richard Loranger 128 pages ISBN: 978-0-937804-91-9 Publication date: October 2023 Roof Books
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Writing
Cannonball
Ron Riekki
In prison, we talk about film.
We fantasize about film.
We talk about prison movies as if the real prison doesn’t exist, as if there is only Clint Eastwood and Alcatraz, only Paul Newman and his chain gang. Because ...
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Story
Archivist
Ian C. Smith
Like being drawn by a soaring choir to an ancient cathedral high on the ramparts of an enchanting city I am in thrall to scungy streets replayed in my mind. I see lampposts disappear into fog in my early boyhood near London,...
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Classics
A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift
For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland,
from being a burden on their parents or country,
and for making them beneficial to the publick.
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great to...
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Story
Solid Oak
Mary Lewis
From her table at the kitchen window Francine glanced out to the road half a mile away to see if the mailman made a stop at their box. A car turned into the long driveway and stopped half way, started again and came another...
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Story
George Street
Ronald Jackson
Under a milky overcast, Tass Warfield crept through the rear window of an abandoned rowhouse on George Street and stood for a time in the silent kitchen. Wide gaps in the worn-down linoleum exposed the old tile flooring, a c...
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Story
Discarded
Linda Boroff
The silent, empty cubicles of the Discarded remain untouched, their gray, padded walls still displaying the cartoons, awards, and post-it notes of their late occupants. Computer towers stand inert beside telephones patiently...
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