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Featured Works: Week of Sep. 4 (Friendship)

By on Sep 4, 2023 in Featured | Comments Off

Friendship keeps us going, gives us support, tells us who we are, and forms a basis for our life’s stories. This week’s contributors examine different ways that friends can impact our lives. “4’33” by Glenn Kane relives a day of mischief, courtesy of a fellow high school band member. Old friends reconnect in “Visitor” by Kevin J. Lenihan, as their memories give way to a darker present. “Stoned English Majors” by Stuart Michaelson is a coming-of-age story where independence, and friendship, sometimes prove to be at odds. “Burning Out” by Kevin J.B. O’Connor...

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Burning Out

By on Sep 4, 2023 in Featured, Poetry | Comments Off

You, who never tire of chaos, must comprehend this fire, and the manner in which it deconstructs the crackling logs, books we’ve read, ablaze in orange and splintering blue. Victims of our rage—it appears—they turn to white ash that drifts in our nostrils, presses our tongues in gestures of mute farewell. You, who never cared for poetry or philosophy, part willingly with yours, while I confess some doubt, hesitating over tomes you’ve heard me mention with sighs. We are wholly different, it seems, not in our desire to purge, but in our methods of departing from what remains of...

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Stoned English Majors

By on Sep 4, 2023 in Featured, Fiction | Comments Off

On a late-spring night half-a-century back, best as I recall, I drove a Plymouth through a restaurant napkin and entered another universe. Of the first I’m reasonably sure; second, certain. It was a time of infinite possibility, near-probability, life all full ahead, fears masked in male bravado, if there at all, and as the black rotary phone in my bedroom shot unanswered rings at Phil’s place, it was like I could hug the future. And expect it to hug me back. 1970, 18-edging-toward-19, was the last year I’d live with my folks in their West Oak Lane, Philadelphia home, which has housed...

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Visitor

By on Sep 4, 2023 in Featured, Fiction | Comments Off

As I drew nearer the house, my carriage rolling slowly under a clear sky, not a single sound to mar the late afternoon, a sense of dread pervaded my soul. Still several miles away, I could see the ancient structure atop the hill, regal and prominent, like the residence of a Lord or a King residing in sunlight and majesty. The house had occupied that spot since ancient times, and from its birth it has been occupied by the family Van Cordt. Such a large and beautiful house it was: Of its size one could wander along its hallways and easily get lost in transit from one room to another; Of its...

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4’33

By on Sep 3, 2023 in Featured, Fiction | Comments Off

Okay, okay, I know … I remember opening this bottle of Zocor that is right here in front of me. I mean, it was just a few minutes ago that I did, just before I let myself get distracted by the news on TV that wasn’t really news, nothing that Walter Cronkite would have put on the news anyway. The question remains, the question the bottle seems to be asking me is: did I already take my nightly tablet? Honestly, I haven’t a clue—and that, of course was something I did or didn’t do after I opened the bottle. I do remember taking a tablet—but was that last night, the night before, the...

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Featured Works: Week of Aug. 21 (Writing & Inspiration)

By on Aug 20, 2023 in Issue Archives | Comments Off

How do you write? From where do the ideas spring? How do you bridge the gap between the nascent thought and a finished work? This week’s contributors explore that liminal space. “Flower Girl” by Michael Lee Johnson uses floral imagery to depict how poems bloom, or fade. “My intense intents indent the bubbles” by Twixt ruminates on possible futures, as an exercise in language. “The Office” by Craig Kirchner takes us inside a poet’s work space, and inside the writing process. “From crackling within” by Ayaz Daryl Nielsen provides a snapshot of inspiration. “Soul an...

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