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[b]Angle of Repose[/b]
In the red light of highway protocol
All traffic stalled
A burnished wreck for sunset
Time to pause, as the book says, time to reflect.
Words come so easy till we know their source
And find it wanting-
In need of sympathy or recompense
Say, a fat check
For the fat man stricken in the road
Now out of body, now at the plastic faux pearl gates
Never having seen the equally fat toad
That sits in loam and gravel
Under the guardrail.
Sits. And waits.
Waits for the green light
Of understanding-nothing-being
The toad's just a toad
And the fat man is dead.
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short fiction by Joseph M. Faria
([email]jmmf [at] msn [dot] com[/email])
[b]one day, one night[/b]
Bob is an upstanding citizen. He smokes big, black cigars. He says they're Cuban to those who don't smoke cigars. Bob's hair is gray-speckled white and on his upper lip he wears a slippery thin mustache that looks as though he painted it on with a magic marker. He says to those who don't dye their hair that it's naturally black.
Betty, his wife, is a blonde. Her eyes are stone blue and her lips are full and expressively red. She keeps a diary. She uses a tiny copper-colored key to open the clasp. She writes diligently everyday as if she were errantly snowbound. She is quite utterly alone until Bob returns from the office. The words in her diary are not the same words she uses in real life.
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a short story by Marian Wilson
([email]pobdjw [at] nidlink [dot] com[/email])
Gerald dropped a box of rat poison into the hole and grinned. He was sure that stupid fox hid her babies there. "Damn varmints," he muttered through his gapped teeth.
Gerald was a hunter and it didn't matter for what: ground birds, squirrels, rabbits. He kept some of them for meat. It didn't take much to get by, no wife or kids to feed. Some people shoot for the racks, then create furniture of balanced glass over a maze of antlers. Others say they like the taste of game. Gerald didn't try to fool anyone with excuses. He just liked the hunt, the challenge of the kill.
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short fiction by Kathy Fish
([email]mrsfish1960 [at] yahoo [dot] com[/email])
[b]July[/b]
A hot breeze blows through the bedroom window. Jake Harvey looks up from his tattered Huckleberry Finn. The elm trees whisper. Their limbs bend, telling sign language secrets only he can decipher. People come and go from his little room but he doesn't notice. He listens and watches and waits.
[b]August[/b]
Swaddled in the moonlight that streams through his window Jake Harvey likes to imagine himself the offspring of ghosts. He closes his eyes and raises his fingertips to the ceiling but he does not levitate. He sleeps and dreams of his sister Emily.
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[b]Two sides of the same coin...[/b]
I have been the hunter
I have been the hunted
I've tracked down men with
the reckless abandon of a
she wolf in heat,
lusting after their hairy, fur
covered bodies
and their howls of ecstasy
as I sucked them dry.
I have been pursued,
coaxed out of hiding by
sugar-coated words:
"I'm not going to hurt you.
It's okay to come out."
only to feel a gun poking
in my side.
I have run in circles,
howling at the moon,
getting nowhere,
my frustration
dripping like spittle from
my mouth and
sticking to my sweat coated fur.
I have fought battles with my heart.
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[b]Charles Town[/b]
Spanish moss curtains
fluttering in the wind
A gauzy layer over
the banks of the Ashley.
Down by the market
Ebony skin glistens
Sculpting a basket
of the reedy sawgrass.
The old market echoes
cries from the past
that trail a carriage
of modern day belles.
Sidewalks sizzling
Paddle fans twirling
down Meeting Street
people shuffle.
Over to St. Mary's
with whispers from the tombs
over to Poogan's Porch
Miss Zoey speaks.
Lazily sipping on the side porch
trying to catch the afternoon's breeze.
Over on Queen Street
tantalizing smells waft
calling your name.
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[b]at the joining of sky and horizon[/b]
the prints now left behind in sand will soon be washed away
the fires that burn bright tonight will all burn out by day
remembrance does not come for those who carve their names in stone
their memory decays and fades as even stone erodes....
no guarantees implied or written come with human birth
no standard set nor written guide can say what life is worth
one day life is, the next it's not, the next new life begins
that life will live, that life will die - and that is how life is....
the author writes - his paper fades; and so his story dies
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[b]Sunshine State[/b]
In wood gray comes
soon before falling down.
Inland Florida being no exception,
across the road a gate creaking
"Keep Out" where the rusty sun sets,
and a seven-year-old girl tore her dress
on the barbed wire fence
behind which a dirt road
disappears in a field of burrs
and weeds and nothing
ever happens.
The sun seems distant,
yet it bakes the air
from horizon to horizon;
and the moon,
when it gets close to the land,
turns maroon, turns the land
a kind of sinister shallow pale.
The three of us watch the
bonfires down the road
set by a man my mother
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