Category: Excerpt

3 poems from THESE MANY COLD WINTERS OF THE HEART by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Demi-glace Gods Nothing worse than being sauced for other sauces, demi-glace gods spooning out all the simmering half-baked worship at discount prices and they say a dog and its human grow to look more like each other as the years go on, the same is true of writers and their writing which does not bode …

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Excerpt from THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE by Dan Denton

The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton [hardcover book]

1. I never intended to live in Ohio again in the first place. After my first divorce, and all the ensuing debacles; a rehab here, probation there, a dab or two of homelessness, or years of barely clinging to a roof over my head, and I found myself drunk and alone a lot, watching the …

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2 poems from ANOTHER SATURDAY NIGHT IN JUKEBOX HELL by Alan Catlin

Parallel Lives Every city has one, a block God forgot, some unofficial war zone, demilitarized, but alive and active with all the usual suspects cops roust on periodic missions to clean up after some particularly rowdy disturbance, something so embarrassing, around election day, even the mayor is moved to act. After the votes have been …

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Excerpt from Unknowable Things by Kerry Trautman

Because, Brian I liked you at first, because your dad fixed a flat on my mom’s Pontiac in his robe, and because of your black jelly bean eyes and big-toothed laugh, and because you almost almost rubbed my thigh. But I bought off-the-shoulder homecoming velvet for someone else, because of your seaweed smell, because of …

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Excerpt from Abandoned By All Things by Karl Koweski

abandoned by all things my brother phones late at night, he’s been drinking again, asking if I might write a few poetic lines in honor of our dead father so Richie G can temporarily immortalize the words on his forearm below the half-finished angel, a tribute to a dad he vaguely remembers from his early …

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by Neeli Cherkovski. from Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet

Gregory Corso: An Elder Scamp by Neeli Cherkovski Gregory Corso. There are days where I miss him terribly. It is difficult not to think of him as an elder scamp, yes, right out of some topsy-turvy Huckleberry Finn-like American night folded around the streets on both the East and West coast. He was a child …

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2 poems from Susan Ward Mickelberry’s AND BLACKBERRIES GREW WILD

Last Night I Sat Alone Last night I sat alone waiting for you on the ground in the sun under the oak, as I had waited long ago. The wind rustled the trees and the undergrowth. I drew with a stick in the sand what looked like a Mayan temple. My white t-shirt reflected the …

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an excerpt from RADIO WATER, a collection of flash fiction, by Francine Witte

Night is a Man A man without hands, without feet. Night has nothing but eyes and ears and a scrap of heart. You left ten weeks ago, and Night is what I sleep with. Tonight, I wake Night up and take him to the grocery store. On the way there, Night looks at the moon, …

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an excerpt from Clown Gravy by Misti Rainwater-Lites

CLOWN GRAVY Vanilla Cupcake was talking shit again, talking about how she would give anything to get in my bed for one hour. One hour is all it would take. It ain’t nothin’ nice bein’ the only African-American in a circus full of wack ass crackers. Sometimes I drop my g’s. Nothin’. Bein’. I’m from …

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