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Image by Willi Heidelbach from Pixabay

If Only

Pulkita Anand We stop deceiving through language  With names and meanings  With sounds and spellings  With dangling sentences and silent letters  With words piling on words  With the mob of vandalised words growing  With defunct adjectives and rudimentary words  With clichéd idioms and repetitive slogans  With many languages buried and…

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Photo by Vlad Kiselov on Unsplash

He’s Right Behind You

by Kevin B We’d go out around one.  Climbing through bedroom windows, we’d try to land softly on bushes and backyard lawns. Some of us went barefoot. Some hid a spare pair of sneakers under porches or tucked under tarps used for covering patio furniture. Some of us just liked…

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Photo by Artin Bakhan on Unsplash

Innocence is tending to dust bunnies

by Menke Hudzinski-Biewenga Innocence is tending to dust bunnies raising them under the bed; watching them hop  refusing to eat your veggies just so you can feed them  It is painting a rainbow on the wall   for Mommy; a big happy grin  proud of your work—unaware  you’ll sleep without dinner  It is believing daddy is gone  on…

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Image by WikimediaImages from Pixabay

Ailanthus on Patchin Place

by Claude Chabot The people know.   I have to be careful—they listen, they hear . . .  . . . and I’m afraid for the little girl. And Charlie.     They keep me here, but I flee often only to return. Their voices guide me—but they are wicked guides, hateful voices,…

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Image by Ron Porter from Pixabay

Shedding

by Rose Mary Boehm I know I have to do some shedding. Can’t go into a long, enfeebling winter with the weight of oceans, moors, beaches, dark woods, and stark horizons. I suppose I ought to shed my lightweight roots and put down the other kind, sturdy and reliable, holding a tree that tries to rise…

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Photo by Ignacio Vazquez: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-monarch-butterfly-wing-patterns-30444137/

We fall into bed to make love but write poems instead 

by Alex Stolis When I was sixteen, Dad almost sold the bar, I crushed  on the buyer’s daughter: nineteen, blond, and way out of my league. I was gone-daddy-gone.   She asked if I knew where we could score some kickin’ weed, and I made a joint appear from the inside pocket  of my field…

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Photo by Hristo Fidanov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/milky-way-galaxy-during-nighttime-1252890/

The Joys of Paternity 

by D.S. Stewart As the cancer worms through his body, Simon Weinberg prays the same prayer he’s made hundreds of times, kneeling, arms outstretched, staring upwards into space: “God, if you happen to be there, grant me the chance to explore your handiwork.” He figures he’s doing God a favor….

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Image by Nathan Wright from Pixabay

Graveyard

by Walker Watson You are the sun all flowers seek, Their aching stems bent toward your light— While I, unseen, stay small and weak, A shadow fading out of sight. You cradle beauty none can claim, And never turned to meet my gaze. My love, a ghost that whispers name, Haunts hollow rooms and wasted days. You cradle…

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Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

Icarus Bells

by Jason Bauer The lightbulbs in my kitchen look like little Liberty Bells. It took me 17 years and three hundred something days to see it, but they are. It kinda burns to look at them, but it feels good. It makes my vision distort a bit. Everything turns a…

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Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

Journalism Hard Truths

by Matthew Johnson Son, I wish I could let you  Have time off on your birthday, But you know, we even work on Christmas, So if the Son of God walked  Into my office to request time off, I’d even tell him to go back to his desk  And to continue working on his sources… 

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