The new moon came in with the stormy weather
and washed everything so clean, all that is left to do
is to cling to the brightness of a future
we’ve never seen.
And the past, pulling on hopeful
bodies like a puppet master reminding us who we have yet to
forgive, telling us to hold on when we should let go, keeping us
in fear of the unknown.
I reach for you in the dark and hope that you reciprocate.
I run until my feet are sore to warn you like Eve in the garden
wishing only to share with a partner, not to be blamed for eternity.
But you resist.
– Tejan Green…
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Award-winning vocalist, performer, and composer Morgan Minsk taught herself piano in kindergarten and composed her first song at age 7. Soon after, she discovered her innate musical talent as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist and later added saxophone, guitar, clarinet, bass, and percussion to her repertoire. At her high school graduation, she was awarded a full tuition scholarship to Berklee College of Music (where she received several awards, including the Voice Department’s Outstanding Performer Award). She left her hometown of Springfield, IL in 2011 and later graduated magna cum laude in 2015 with a B.A. in Music Therapy and a minor in Psychology.
Now a board-certified Music Therapist (MT-BC) and Certified Neurologic Music Therapist (NMT) by the Robert F. Unkefer Academy for Neurologic Music, Minsk’s work as a music therapist includes work with Ugandan child soldiers (Musicians for World Harmony).…
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It is 1980 my father is high on cocaine.
He is a man unfaithful even to his own sadness.
–
(there was a machine I was involved in it it gave me a diamond I gave it the heart of a palm it thundered and groaned like a moss-covered god)
–
It is 1980
we are among
my wife’s dead
hanging flowers
and I am
Cocaine.…
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The strained ticking of a broken clock was the single noise in Oscar Brum’s living room, but was enough to clasp him from his staccato sleep. His spindly body shook convulsively as a nervous wave shot from feet to torso and sprung him upwards. He immediately made note of his latest night terror: ‘suffocation’. His dreams were becoming progressively violent, all ending with painful, contorted deaths. They had, for a while, been morbid, but it was a gloom he’d basked in. As the unfortunate butcheries had involved others, he found no reason for concern. Now that his visions had taken an unwelcome personal turn, he sought a confidant but couldn’t trust his neighbours. They were the epitome of paranoia, walking like maniacal hens, darting their gaze nervously from sky to ground, unable to settle on either. …
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Darrin Doyle is quite an accomplished writer, having published two novels (Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story and The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo), a sequence of fiction (The Dark Will End the Dark), and many individual pieces in various journals over the last decade. Couple that with his diverse history of jobs (including paperboy, pizza delivery job, janitor, door-to-door salesman, telemarketer, and janitor)—as well as his experiences living around the country and teaching English in Japan—and it’s no surprise that his latest short story collection, Scoundrels Among Us, radiates a mixture of [mostly] down-to-earth situations and eloquently refined yet quite accessible language. While not every piece in it is as conclusive, eventful, and/or impactful as it could be, they’re all at least enjoyably inventive, with a few downright enthralling entries that’ll stick with you long after you’ve read them.…
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I carry
clothing & food
downstairs
across the river
to another compartment
in the sky
an offshoot
a sequel
I lie
carrying still
anger waiting
an excavation in the future
on the bed you turn
glowing blue-lit
then
mouth wide open
face to the ceiling
mouth kissed by others
nameless
in dark places
I wonder
if we’d met at another time
would this be severed
could we laugh then
& throw each other
knowing glances
never touching
we would lie
at separate ends
of the sofa at the party
its end closing in
– Joe Sullivan…
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they huddle in the doorway
of a dark abandoned building,
smoking what might
be a cigarette,
beneath shreds
of blankets
goodwill coats
and cardboard.
we pass as the light
moves on from red
to the green
of seaglass caught
in sun,
and they
do not watch
as we pass
from their lives
so freely,
as if there were
more
worlds than one.
– Thomas Higgins…
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