It falls on me like a net, chainmail over my shoulders, wanting to kiss its satin cousin. I raise fists and switchblade claws but there’s no piercing through. Bubbles like swollen screams race up like flags. Like flares marking I was once here. Bio: Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she […]
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Lead Us Not Into Never mind young beauties on campus, glimpses of skin on obscene screens, the centripetal force of super-fiction — my siren beckons with perfect diction from its nook on the refrigerator door. Drop the tablespoon I self-command but it appears velcroed to my hand. I kick myself with each step across the kitchen. […]
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I died from a rattlesnake bite and found myself in line with other zombies in front of a bank of elevators, the doors opening and closing as if by metronome. Every time a door opened a voice called the names of 12 zombies who boarded the elevator single file. As the doors closed, Led Zeppelin or Bing Crosby played in the background depending on whether the […]
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And now a word from our sponsor…. Originally appeared in Mad Magazine. ©2016 Mad Magazine
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Echoes Sometimes… laughter echoes, hollow, haunting and mean. Mocking memories and gnawing away at the mangled pieces left behind. Raw, aching moments past, their humor lost. The memory though still too near. ~Chanacee Ruth-Killgore Author Bio: Chanacee Ruth-Killgore lives in East Tennessee with her husband, Michael, and their two wild and crazy pups, Wrigley and […]
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IN WILLIAMSBURG In Williamsburg we learn How freedom ours was earned, At least for lucky born Of alabaster skin. Their independence claimed By declaration famed That Founding Fathers framed, Though was still had to win. But if from continent Of African descent, Whatever effort spent Was not for likes of you. Four score and seven years Still had to bear […]
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The uncommon is common in America today. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Seinfeld might have said to George had they seen the latest Glamour Magazine naming Caitlyn Jenner Woman of the Year. The public seems to agree. No placards hit the air. but Caitlyn has to stand and spray what other women sit to tinkle. Author […]
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Shaping the Internal Of course it’s about the words… their weight, their meaning. Stringing them, placing them, cutting them. Wielding them with passion, fury, and sometimes… regret. With careful measure given to every syllable, every pause. For words are both weapon and salve. Love and hate. Kind and malicious. Words take root deep within. They linger long into […]
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MEET THE MADNESS A Providence twilight, late November, every man and woman dressed in gray, sliding in and out of panels or emerging from dark recesses, all faces plain, hair drab, eyes shut, tongues muted, and there, high up in the skyscrapers, mouths in windows pause mid-shriek, as, down by the riverside, water rats crack on scattered bones […]
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Fifty years ago Jane got on a plane and flew away without saying good-bye. Her parents took her, I know. She was only 14 but she could have said good-bye to me, the swain who saw her through our last three years of grammar school when she wore braces, the only girl who had them. Fifty years later at our […]
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