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Be Beautiful~ By Taylor Shaw

6/30/2015

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Confidence is Beautiful 
No matter your
SIZE 
No matter your 
WEIGHT 

Be confident in who you are
And you'll be 
BEAUTIFUL

Just because someone 
Isn't your definition 
Of beautiful doesn't 
Give you the right 
To call them ugly


Author Bio:
Taylor Shaw is 14-years-old. Her hobbies are reading and writing. She inspired herself to write poetry and she loves it. F
amily and friends encouraged her to keep writing, all she needs is motivation!
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Chocolate & Cigarettes~ By Gwynn Marie Worbington 

6/29/2015

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Some days
You tasted like Chocolate--
And I sunk into your sweet laughter,
Coated in sunlight and serendipity,
Cart-wheeling infinities around the corners of your smile.
Enveloped and protected in your glittering heart, 
I clung to it, because I told myself it meant everything.
We painted constellations across our desert skies,
Weaving a dustland fairytale out of loose strings
You picked from our skin,
Wondering if heaven was not truly a place,
But rather a moment.
A quick, sputtering breath of time,
Where you and I find ourselves together, 
Arm-in-arm at the crossroads of a life
Whose whole was far more magnificent than its parts.
And you made me feel
Alive. 

Some days
You tasted like Cigarettes--
You swelled in my lungs, 
Crippling and toxic, suffocating me with the smoke of your words.
Salty tears became relief from your blinding selfishness,
Choking on “After all I’ve done for you.” 
Your radiating self-righteousness broke my bones
And your forked-tongue poetry tied my hands.
But I wrapped my eyes in naïveté, 
And stumbled helplessly back into your arms.
You became a bitter place of refuge,
My atomic drug for happiness.
I let myself believe that my place
Was at your side
On the warfront,
Ready to take the bullet for you.


Author Bio:
Gwynn Marie Worbington began writing from a very young age, her greatest editors and proofreaders being her younger sister, her mother, and her dog, Mattie. She finds stories to tell from the world around her, and often draws from her own experiences growing up on a dead end, dirt road in the backwoods of Texas, where cousins and aunts and uncles made up the majority of the neighborhood. Her writing is heavily inspired by her personal struggles with severe depression and anxiety, and has acted as a guide in her learning to understand and cope with the tools she has been given to live a fulfilling life. Gwynn is currently finishing her third semester of college, and when she is not writing, she finds herself on the stage, performing at the local theatre. 
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Addicted~ By Xezania Maldonado

6/25/2015

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I cannot help but stare, even though it’s too late.
The tears have fallen, and the breath has collapsed
in my lungs because your skin - hazelnut
cream swirl of sensational beauty
glistening – is all I can think about.
The next few steps I take are part of the effort
I refused to give you. For that reason alone, I am unbalanced,
begging forgiveness. I imagine a bum sleeping beside garbage
sweating addiction like me at a loss for your touch.
Your scent – caramel swizzle peppermint – leaves me
paralyzed. I know you are probably waiting for the L train now,
five minutes and inches of rain away from Chestnut.
Without fear, you wait, unaware and ignorant to me.
You must know the power you have in your perfectly curved
shoulders, your Mona Lisa dimples, your love,
and my audacity to ignore it all.
You’ve arrived at last and now you see me.
You can’t help but stare at my dead body:
sweet strawberries and milk beneath your feet.


Author Bio:
I am a Penn State University sophomore, majoring in Journalism and minoring in Comparative Literature. I have been writing since I was very little and love to write about personal experiences and realities of the world that people ignore or refuse to speak the truth about. I appreciate the views and voices of men and women who are strong, independent, and who create work that inspires others to indulge in their talents. I appreciate effective criticism 100% and hope that my work may be acknowledged.

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Robbed~ By Kauser Parveen

6/24/2015

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It was an illness that robbed us
It was an illness that alienated her
From “us”
The illness dimmed her sharp mind
Little by little
It confused her
We knew her
She did not know “us”
Anymore
She did not recognize “us”
Photos, files, prints
Of her youth
Seemed to surpass her
Still one smile
Enabled, encouraged
Us to galvanise
Our heart, our support
To keep her where she belongs
At home
“Us” to galvanise


Author Bio:
This is a poem about Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia. Kauser Parveen is a s
tudent, mother and wife. hustling to survive.  
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Cry for Help~ By Parnashree Kundu

6/23/2015

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A dark wintry feeling
Froze my
Lovely sense that awakened spirits when morning came.
There was no pain in my
Heart and no tears in my eyes
Going under the gust of happiness, no strain of mind
Endured. But afflictions of pain when comes to mankind
Who tells? Under the blue heaven
That was like an ocean
Skelton looking boy with closed eyes
Laid down on the hard chest of stony way.
No sense in him, only decay.

Dull gesture, deep brown skin, innocent face
Deserved for grace
Deserved for kindness.
But sense of mine
Under the warm sunshine
Froze at seeing how ignored he was!
No men saw, what the loss was
When an innocent life is seized on.
Many walking men there
Although looked at him but showed no pity.
Wounded face and bloody body were neglected
With hatred.
How kindless human and their humanity!

I froze and reached him on a slow walk
Around me mourning air and morning grim
Blogged my sense to return back to my destination
Telling me that he belongs to our nation.
I should show my love to him.
I should show my pity on him.
I should kill his pain.
Those thoughts awakened my sense
Keeping me in a clean conscience
That I should save that innocent life with the help of mine.
But heavy flow of blood and smashed bone
Made me feel alone,
Gave me fright
From where I saw no light.
My two eyes filled with hot tears.
My sense froze more than before.
I helplessly cried for help from my panic shore.
All giving one look, passed, but did not like to hear.
I cried for help
But I did myself.

I, in that selfish world
In that loveless world
I belong too.
Here no man sees you.


Author Bio:
Parnashree was born in West Bengal In Kharapur in 1988. She is an Indian writer and poet and completed her M.A. from Vidyasagar University in India.
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Life~ By Jessika Grindstaff

6/22/2015

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Where the people meet,
Starbucks is divinely fine,
Cookies coffee sweets.



Author Bio:
Jessika is a high school senior, and plans on attending Washington State University next August. Although writing is a creative hobby for Jessika she will be going to school for Biomedical Engineering. Along with writing and the sciences Jessika is also an avid musician, and will also attend Washington State for a Minor in Music. This is Jessika’s first publication.

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Snow's Wake~ By Lana Bella

6/18/2015

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The biting chill of mid-winter had marooned a heaviness on this gathering universe, and rhythmically turned it into an evening of restless ghosts. The air was frosty and carried that callous bite of rawness in it when the wind rose and picked up with it a stagnant cold. The crisp scent of moist snow-fused pines surged upward and drifted over from the neighboring grounds, made aglow by the brilliant gold of the moon; their shadows stood boldly behind in sharp, tapering silhouettes, gave way to the impression that a silent army hovered perpetually, and ever so in stealth silence, kept armed. 

After a steep climb from beneath a deep depression away at the inlet of the cavern, I lingered there, under the lined overgrowth, buried ankle-deep within what seemed like a mountain of virgin white. My left index finger cautiously stretched toward the edge of a jutting limb, poising just above the chalky tips, toying with the tiny droplets of the dew upon the bed of irregular shaped snowflakes. Then out of the thin air with speed at full tilt, a burst of red-tailed hawks and sooty ravens swooped downward from some aloft hanging branches, leaving a great flurry of pale silver in their wake. The discarded crystals scattered all around, buffeted by the wind, spun side to side as they tumbled then at once, sank to the drenched terrain throughout.

For a moment, everything was silent. I stood there heedlessly caved-in, conspicuously lost as to seem utterly posed, deeply unnerved by the otherworldly ambiance. With a large gulp of air dragged in and racked up in my lungs, I fell backward to the snow-veiled earth, where I sensed the ground sloping away beneath my back, uneven and powdery, and where I was found some time much later, staring upward in stock-still silence at the wild blue yonder above me. The distant moon was glowing a saffron-red, gave way to a mosaic slate-gray of the midnight sky a fluid pane of plexi-glass, sharply cutting in two, the jarring realm of the living from the muffled world of the dead.

 
Author Bio:
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than eighty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, elsewhere, The Criterion Journal, The Voices Project, Poetry Quarterly, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps. https://www.facebook.com/niaallanpoe
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All This While~ By Deepika Kaushal

6/17/2015

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All this while it has been so quiet
And I used to think I am facing the turmoils of life
In school, homework and good marks were the ordeal
While in college, it seemed so surreal
And now everything seems so futile
Because getting ahead is the only agenda in life
Was then, now and will be forever

When I get a few moments with my guitar
It feels as if moved beyond a chore
Beyond a race which I run every day to prove 
The reason of my existence which dupes
This wrathful race will continue as I age
And I will keep on getting chained with the coming days

And I was thinking that I am laden
Rather all this while it has been so quiet


Author Bio:
Deepika is a consultant based out of Bangalore, India. She has developed the art of writing poems in her late teens. Expression of thought gives her a sense of satisfaction in her mundane life.
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Trigger~ By Alaina Symanovich

6/16/2015

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I had to show off my dead grandpa’s gun
to the estate auction’s ready buyers.
The auctioneer shouted for me to cock
the rifle right, so I squeezed my eyes shut--
I didn’t want to see my fingers snaked
around that metal shaft, cold in June heat.

I hate the way men glare: the hot
leer that says they’re either gunning
to get on top of you, or get away. They’ll snake
off to a bar, a strip club, Heaven by
way of mannequin women who’ll shut
up and let them roost as happy cocks.

One Christmas, my sister’s husband cocked
his chin, fired a question that made me hot
with shame. Lips tensed, eyes shut,
I said I’d never heard of Driscoll or his guns-
bared, battle-cry ministry. Better buy
in, I sensed, or be blast out like the snake

from Eden. Not wanting to be the snake-
in-law of the family, I devised a half-cocked
scheme to be the perfect Christian, to buy
my saving grace. The Mars Hill bus was hot:
I found myself among people gunning
to get front-row seats before the doors shut.

Even armed with a plan, I got shot
down. I let a boy, David, snake
into my seat, trusting we’d begun
a real courtship. I was so cocky
to sit beside the purest boy, so hot
with fantasies of our godly ride. We’d buy

matching Bibles, devotionals—buy
happiness, too, so when in prayer I shut
my eyes, I’d feel more than just the heat
of the Holy Spirit. I let pride snake
through me, and David saw that cockiness,
consulted his youth pastor, and shotgunned

my marching orders. He said I’d jumped the gun
and needed to get right with the Lord—cocky
as Adam, blaming Eve for believing the snake.


Author Bio:
Alaina Symanovich is a graduate student pursuing her MA in creative writing from Penn State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Fogged Clarity, Switchback, Glassworks, Skin to Skin, and other journals.
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Heal Thyself~ By Patricia Brooks

6/15/2015

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"I am incurable.  I am sent away to the ancient one, who teaches me to float on the ceiling of his cave." Russell Edson

But I am weight, I say, I am the essence of weight.
It has taken these eighteen years to transform my body.

I will teach you to float, he says.

The wings began before birth, I tell him.
They brushed the walls of my mother’s womb, made her ill,
made her curse my body.  When I was born,
they gathered at the glass, called me ugly, an eagle’s egret.
My mother was ashamed.

I will make you float, he says.

Form a sac, the doctors told them.  Make it of leather and silver.
Leather shrinks in every rain; silver has weight, has value.

When it rained, they locked me out.
I felt the leather grip me and my flesh shrink.
In the rain my skin began to shine, like silver.

It took a very long time for the shrinking, even longer for the silver.
But with each year, the skin shone stronger, like armor.

You are becoming beautiful, they said.  You can be
a sculpture adorning a parlor, a goddess on a marble statue in a fountain.
I say you can float! claims the ancient one.
Now they come to worship at my feet, I tell him.  They say I am perfect.
Then why have they sent you to me?

For the children.
Such beauty should reproduce itself, my father says.
And the wealth, says my mother.  Such creatures of marble and silver
will bring a fine price.

Doctors were called.
She is beautiful, they said, but the condition is incurable.
There will be no children.

But do you wish to be cured? demands the ancient one.

I wish…to please, I say.

Then envision the immensity of Father Sky, the way the lily glows
just before it dies.  Feel the flesh pulled by the tides, the salt upon the skin.
Lick it as a creature licks the birth film from its newborn.

I do as I am told.  I float.
The weight flows from me and I rise to the ceiling of the cave.

I have cured you! exults the ancient one.

But out of the entrance to the cave, the first blade of morning sun
is reaching, crossing the sharp edges of the ancient hole.
All the bones in my body stretch toward it.  I begin to move.

You cannot fly, you know! he calls.  The wings are gone,
you can only float!

But my body does not pause.  It drifts like a gull over the waves, a hawk
above the mountains.

STOP! cries the ancient one.

But it does not stop.
When I reach the shaft of sun, my flesh leans into its warmth.

You will fall! the ancient one shouts.

The arc of sun is now vibrant about me, like fingers on my skin.  I move
more swiftly, out through the mouth of the cave.  I see the layers of cloud
and sky shifting, each in the embrace of the other, I see that they are never
still.  I stretch my neck and the wind catches my breasts, lifts me –

I fly!


Author Bio:
Patricia Brooks has published two novels from Dell, and is seeking a publisher for her novel And Whose Little Girl Are You? Her poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including The Rockhurst Review, Raging Dove, Out of Line, and upcoming in the pdxx Collective.

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