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INBOX EMPTY

9/20/2019

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by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

Beautiful day. Must check inbox before going walking. Swimming. I’m a writer. Inbox, read 1. Hold acceptance. Possibility. Just read 1. Convey possibility. Let me obsess over that number. Try to discern story’s fate from first line. No emails. Refresh. Refresh. Morning fades, afternoon, walks and swimming fleeting. Keep checking. Just once. I’ll step away. Waiting is a reward. I must learn patience. But emails follow me. I’m a writer. Just one rejection? Pine trees blow in late afternoon breeze. I can watch Office Space. Dusk, still checking. Pink and purple shadows fall. Avoid email tomorrow. 


Can’t wait to check.

AUTHOR
Mir-Yashar is a graduate of Colorado State's MFA program in fiction.  His work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Terror House Magazine, Unstamatic, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Ariel Chart. He lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.

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Original sin

9/18/2019

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by James W. Gaynor

Outside on the playground
Eisenhower was president
and the seven-year-olds compared sins
getting ready for our first confession
although transgressions tended
towards the venal.




Outside on the playground
I decided on a different approach
and in the dark booth confessed
to having committed adultery
knowing only that it sounded grown-up
and happened at cocktail parties.




Outside on the playground
I was a hero
having received serious penance
for lying in my First Confession and
spent considerable time in theory praying
but in truth looking forward to adultery.

AUTHOR
James W. Gaynor been writing poetry since I was 12 — somehow, still here, post- Stonewall, the Vietnam war and the AIDS epidemic, and still writing. And still examining what it means to observe, to record his experience of the world from his evolving, now 70-year-old, queer perspective. He's the author of Everything Becomes a Poem and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 61 Haiku.
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LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION AUGUST 24TH, 2019

9/16/2019

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by Robert Marshall 

I would like to say my depression is because of the Amazon. But it’s not because of the Amazon, or maybe it’s in part because of the Amazon. It is, in part, because you don’t call me back. But perhaps you don’t call me back because of the Amazon, because you are depressed because of the Amazon. Or perhaps it’s because you’re depressed for other reasons, perhaps there is someone who hasn’t called you back, someone who is, to you, more important than me, and this has sapped your strength. But of course it’s possible that this person, whose existence I may just be imagining, doesn’t call you because they’re depressed because of the Amazon. I do not, in truth, understand what is happening in the Amazon; I could not, if pressed, explain why or how the forest does—or does not—breathe. Causality is always a story; I believe the one the scientists tell, I have to hold onto something, though really I know nothing about science, nor about the Amazon, nor do I know why you don’t call; I do not understand the zone that’s named your heart. I can make out nothing clearly, there’s just the haze, or maybe it’s smoke.

AUTHOR
Robert Marshall is a writer and artist. His novel, A Separate Reality, was released in 2006 by Carroll & Graf and nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His work appeared in Salon, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review Online, among others.
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SRO

9/13/2019

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by Gale Acuff

There's no one I love more than Jesus but
Satan maybe, I confess that I like
to sin and I bet that everyone else
does, too, and it can be good clean fun or
damn-near and surely God in His infi
-nite mercy won't send me to Hell be
-cause didn't He give His only begot
-ten Son to die in my place, die for my
sins so when I actually do, die
that is, I actually won't, I'll live
--not only live but dwell--in Heaven for
-ever? Sometimes I think that if Jesus
is Who they say he is then He won't mind
a little transgressing, that's a fancy 
word for sin that Miss Hooker used in Sun
-day School but last week and I'm only 10 but
I kind of cornered her after class, that's
a figure of speech, cornered her, not class
I mean but then I've got more to learn be
-fore I die and go to Heaven or Hell
and I'm getting way ahead of myself 
 
but like I say, after class I told her
that everybody sins and she told me
that yes she knows and that's in the Bible
that everyone sins, not that Miss Hooker
knows, and didn't she point that passage out
a couple of weeks ago, All have sinned 
and come short of the glory of God and
I said Yes ma'am, I remember, which I
don't and so I guess I lied and lying's
a sin as sure as you're born but if God
sent everyone to Hell for only one
sin then there would be Standing Room Only down
there and I even told Miss Hooker that
but she didn't crack a smile, she takes her
religion seriously but any
-way I told her that even Jesus must
have come pretty close to it, sinning that
 
is, grazed it at least, because didn't He
worry Mary and Joseph by hanging
out at the temple and confabbing with
the older folks there and astonishing
them with what He knew about the Torah                                           
or whatever it's called, may God
forgive me, and astonishing, now there's
a word and I think it means turn to stone
but anyway didn't Jesus come right
close to sinning by worrying His folks
is what I asked her although it wasn't
really a question but a statement, for
-get I couldn't make a question mark with
anything but my voice on the page of
the air, speaking of figures of speech a
-gain and you could've knocked me over with
a cherub's wing, do cherubs have wings, when
Miss Hooker exploded and I don't mean
merely burst into tears so I had to
 
help her into her chair, her face was flood
-ed with tears and she couldn't see to see
so I lent her my only handkerchief
and she messed it up pretty good or is
that well or is that bad or is that bad
-ly but when she passed it back to me I
took it and wrapped it in a paper towel
which I'd gotten out of the machine, it's
a dispenser is what it is and stuck
it in my left coat-pocket and I guess
I'd better fish it out of there before
I go back to Sunday School, I wonder
if I've sinned again but anyway then
Miss Hooker smiled but I could tell that she
was embarrassed so I told her One day
we're going to be married, goodbye, see
 
you next week and I left without taking
any more care of her, what could I do
but come back on another Sunday and
try to help her atone, I don't know if
it's in the Bible somewhere but
maybe a Sunday School teacher losing
it in front of a repeat-third-grade student
is a sin, maybe even one that cuts
both ways, I'm in on it, too, praise the Lord
and like that. By the honeymoon I'll know.

AUTHOR
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in several countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.


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Callie

9/11/2019

1 Comment

 
by Miranda Holt

They say it’s better to love and lose
Than to never love at all
Even though the love she felt
Was within a heart so small
It will always be unconditional 
Forever pure and true
Never be tainted, never be scorned
Never be angry at you
She will never be scarred, never be hurt
Never be broke by the world
She may now be one of God’s angels
But forever, she’s your baby girl.

AUTHOR
Miranda Holt is
A ChristianA yogi
A nursery teacher
An unpublished, aspiring writer
A wife and “mother” to a bunny and puppy 
A cheese addict

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CALL ME MARIANNE

9/9/2019

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by Paige Foster

yesterday i cried 
when my lover left
on a sunny thursday

i replayed scenes
of former loves repeating yes
                yes
of course i still love you

the tape always cuts out just
in time to leave room
for that thing with feathers, and

your city
and all its exports are
forevermore
yours

watching old lovers
with new lives and new homes
talking and crying

from the comfort of my bed
i came across that familiar tightening
of the heart, that mark of kinship with 
anna karenina or 
marianne dashwood--

that specific and universal thing--
the yes of course i still love you
murmured over a tequila shot
or train tracks

or more likely never spoken
after all, it is not my business
to speak it


AUTHOR
Paige is a Californian writer and photographer based in Paris, France. She holds an MA in sociolinguistics from the Sorbonne Nouvelle and has previously been published by One Sentence Poems. When not writing, she enjoys cooking with too much garlic and taking photos of everything she finds beautiful or interesting.
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