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Why~ By Molly Halpin

5/12/2015

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I see him from across the room and I think I know
As humans do. I stereotype and I judge and place him where 
I am sure he belongs. 
The next time I see him we skipped class 
Skipping the luck getting stuck with each other 
And mob movies.
The next time I see him I am surprised our avoidance
Is becoming painful making our topic out of reach and
Our research rushed. But he shows up confused and frazzled 
More prepared than me leaving me unprepared to 
Categorize him a second time. His notes that hold 
The entire fate of our presentation in his scarred and swollen 
Knuckles. He stands tall with the presence of a labored statue 
But he speaks unsurely about the severity of his insecurities
Causing the statue to crumble 
Leaving him nothing but dust I feel I can blow away. 
My own fears throw themselves in front of the fan I would use to send
The confidence that scares the twelve year old girl who controls who I talk to
To make him no better than myself. 
I stay away letting his nerves chip away at my sure statured bullshitting.
Making me nervous like he is, hands shaking knee bouncing
Each bounce sends a particle to the ground and soon I am a 
In a dust pan next to him because I want to understand 
Why he is the way he is and what he does and how if he is so tough
Can stand up and defend until his knuckles are 
So beaten if he can’t stand in front of a class and show a movie clip
Without leaning on a crutch in the face of unpreparedness.
Because he conflicts me. 
I see him but I don’t know what I see and I know what happens
I have done this before 
I have let the mystery consume me and let the severity of 
My mistake consume every healthy relationship I ever had the chance of having. 
Because my trust was sucked up into the vortex that she was whirling, 
a minor loss since I barely saved myself but now
I can’t face anyone I find interesting because
I see them and I run the other way. 
She rung me out like a sponge, so dry 
And dropped me in a bucket of self-denial and insecurities 
That I will never be able to wring all the way out.
And now everyone, who seems like a puzzle 
Whose pieces I have but am too afraid to put together 
Because I am afraid they will be like her 
Like those hands around my neck
Squeezing the curiosity out of my lungs
And watching with pride as I crumble to the floor 
As my own fallen statue 
Suffocating in my own dust. 


Author Bio:
Molly is a student at Endicott College where she is studying Creative Writing. Molly Has been published in the Endicott Observer and the Endicott Review. She is from Saratoga Springs, NY. 

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Blue~ By Abigail George

5/11/2015

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In this story there are two sisters.
One is a case study being held under observation.
Her day starts with pharmaceuticals, pins and needles.
Good morning. Tell me. Confess this. 
You said last week you would make the effort. 
Set the wheel in motion. Release all the silver 
Linings of the clouds of your surface tension. 
Tell me the words you would like to hear. 
Make yourself happy. It’s a sin not to try. 
Blue is the sky. Blue is the swimming pool. 
Blue are the building blocks, paint, and the box of rye 
Toasted crackers, the earthenware, the plates, 
And my high school swimming costume
With the white stripes that I changed into in 
The school bathroom. Lap after lap. I felt lucky.
I use blue crayons to draw vowels and consonants.
I’m chained to them. Built a home for them

Mapped out inside my mind’s eye’s atlas. 
I want the beauty, the purity, the suicidal illness
Of innocence, the pleasure of English literature
And the withering heights of it. I fell for you
Because there was something about a paradise
About you. Something exotic like an avocado
In a suitcase in Sylvia Plath’s iconic bell jar, like 
An American who puts on a fur coat before
She turns the key in the ignition and fills her lungs
And head with carbon monoxide. I am a Romantic.
The war poets dead and buried. They never 
Completely recovered from the war. Slaves every one.
In the end aren’t we all slaves, take the housewife 
For example, the poet or the Romantics?
The other sister is bored with life. She has so much
Money she doesn’t know what to do with it.
So she gets a visa and goes to America, Thailand, and India.
She never has to phone collect from overseas. 

When I look up at the night sky I know
There are stars, the moon, the Milky Way.
Perhaps Milton is looking down at me a father-figure.
Inspiring me like Rainer Maria Rilke or Goethe. 
As they stretched their arms outwards
Toward imagination so do I. Imagination 
And the ‘voice’ can be complicated, complex, 
And psychological, and I’ve learned so can I. 


Author Bio:
Abigail George, is a feminist, poet and writer who contributes bimonthly to a symposium on the Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine. She is the recipient of two National Arts Council Writing Grants, one from the Centre for the Book and the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council. She was born and raised in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, educated there, in Swaziland and Johannesburg. 

She has written a novella, volumes of poetry, and collections of short stories. She is busy with her brother putting the final additions to a biography on her father’s life. Her literary endeavours has been anthologised in Poems for Haiti, Animal Antics, a South African Writer’s Circle anthology, the Sentinel Annual Literature Anthology and The Sol Plaaitjie European Union Poetry Anthology IV. She has been published numerous times in print in South Africa and online in other countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey and Zimbabwe, Canada, England, Finland, and the United States. All of her books are available on Amazon.

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Highway Obit~ By Virgil Saunders

5/7/2015

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Meredith lives on through two loving sons,
a burden of a husband,
and her dear Senior--
Junior having been humanely
pushed to “pass on,”
so that someone may comfort her
as she greets the drunk that was Pappy
at those pearly—well…
in the afterlife.

Her co-workers,
Denise, Eileen, and Gertrude,
knew Meredith best.
She came in every morning
with…something to say,
always willing to share
the very strong smell of her chili lunch.
Denise, Eileen, and Gertrude,
along with all other mourners in attendance today,
are encouraged to contribute to the offering basket.

Dying is costly.

Our dear Meredith left us too soon.
But she departed from this world with a smile,
knowing that the son-of-a-bitch who cut her off
would be joining her in Hell.


Author Bio:
Virgil Saunders is Maryland native with a passion for language and literature. While Virgil has been writing since childhood, it was not until the University of Maryland's Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House came calling that they were exposed to what creation could be. Exposure to various forms of life through the work of journalism has led Virgil to a more realistic sense of storytelling on subjects such as Rwanda and the world of retail. A thirst for learning new languages is only one aspect of Virgil’s appreciation of the art of words through syntax and sound. And indeed it is an interest that has led to many travels. Drawing on life spent in the Washington, D.C. area, Montreal and France, they have crafted poetry published in NEW MAPS and Blackberry: A Magazine, with much more going towards the re-telling of world events.

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Coquetry~ By Alexandra Honaker 

5/6/2015

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Steal a girl
and steel a woman
evermore— or
seasonally wretched.

Deed wrecked garden
with sin-tempt instead of fruit
that was fruit, Man
not to be conceded
girlish open legs.

Both tasted fruit and garden;
he let the snake in Now
the clap’s
hers and her.

“Sister, pick up your skirt and talk to your preacher.”


Author Bio:

Alexandra Honaker is the literary enigma of musicians and gourmands. The singularity of musical expression, its divinity and the dedication of those who live for craft, has greatly influenced her creative process. She strives to write toward the condition of music—close to truth and God. She is an autodidact of literature and feminist theory, concentrating on erotic feminism. A very old twenty, she is coasting in Hometown, MT working on her first novel.
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The Original Beauty Queen~ By Haze Smith

5/5/2015

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I am…
Far more lovely than any rose up in a tree.
Far more graceful than the dolphins in the sea.
Far more precious than a shell beneath the sand.
Far more desirable than any woman to hold your hand.

Now…
Who could ever match the poise of a God?
Who could ever taint such a beautiful façade?
Who would ever spill their love out like mine?
Who would ever provoke such a scorn so divine?

You’ll…
Watch as my scallop shell washes onto the shore.
Watch as my naked flesh leaves you writhing for more.
Watch as my luscious touch clings fervently to your skin.
Watch as my gentle voice seduces you from within.

For I…
Beauty, such a liar so humble, yet true.
Beauty, shall deceive even the wisest of few.
Beauty, the Queen Temptress of mankind.
Beauty, ensnares all except for the physically blind.

As…
Love, a blossom well-kept and rightfully earned.
Love, I give those who sought more than they yearned.
Love, what many think they have found with ease.
Love, forgets the ignorance that follows my tease.

But…
Jealousy, of what or better yet who?
Jealousy, of no one, especially not you.
Jealousy, of that one who stole my Eros away.
Jealousy, in my heart for her will always stay.

So…
Dance, as the swans sway only for me.
Dance, as the sparrows hum their tunes in the tree.
Dance, as the doves pirouette across the sky.
Dance, as there is no beauty greater than I. 


Author Bio:
My name is Haze Smith (yes that's my real name) and I am a Writing and Linguistics major at Georgia Southern University. I have always enjoyed reading poetry while drinking a nice glass of scotch and listening to the hit Donna Lewis produced so many years ago. I hope you will enjoy piece about Aphrodite as much as I loved writing it.

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who looks for me~ By Bridgette Bianca 

5/4/2015

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lined eyes and smeared lips
prancing from pillar to post
your moonlight marionette

wandering alleyways
kneeling before shadows
for favor and mercy


Author Bio:
While working in her middle school’s library, Bridgette Bianca met her best friend - a book of poetry written by a teenage girl in Harlem almost two decades before. She checked out A Screaming Whisper by Vanessa Howard so much she committed it to memory, down to the spacing of the text. That book held her hand until she was ready to write her own poems. Now, she writes poetry and hopes it can keep someone else company. Bridgette Bianca is a native of Los Angeles where she teaches English at the college level. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design. 
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At Their Mercy~ By Lu Pierro

5/1/2015

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Fixed round my throat
a three pronged collar,
the choke of silence, non dichia niente
endured by grandmother, mother, me.

We were voiceless wrens: insufficient, meager, 
allowed only 
the mumbling of prayer,
the whimpers of acquiescence.

Words, swallowed for years,
took root,
their spiraling tentacles
sustained by wave after wave of women:

Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan
Shirley Chisholm, Rosa Parks,
Joan Baez and Janis Joplin.

Women who unsnapped, unhooked from convention;
who burned their burdens
to rise whole,
to rise ruby- throated, 
queens of their larynges,
their pens their scepters,

and in discovering their voices
I heard my own. 


Author Bio:
Lu Pierro is a Creative Writing Major at Warren Community College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ars Poetica, Natural Awakenings, US1, Blast Furnace, If and Only If, and Threeandahalfpoint9, East Fork among other journals. She is the recipient of both the Dodge Foundation Scholarship and the Dorothy E. Laurence Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center in 
Provincetown, Mass. 


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