By: Catherine McGuire Inside the Green Cross boutique, white walls, clean lines of an optometrist’s glass and steel you can’t afford us counters; soft, sleek lamps spotlight glass cylinders, discrete labels: Headband, Girl Scout Cookies, Blueberry Haze. Young budistas cheerfully advise….

from a mis-read headline By: Catherine McGuire   The portable dust-bunnies need no help. Snuggle-lint nests in corners of my flannel jacket; they feed off the lining. Don’t worry. The rain-dyed wooden clothespins like hobos seeking shelter are merely misdirected —…

By: Chuck Orloski Late Friday evening, July 15, I tuned into CNN and learned about the astonishing Turkey military coup attempt. In awe, given Turkey’s key strategic NATO membership and its hard nosed intelligence service in league with the mighty CIA…

By: Chuck Orloski “Pretend that you owe me nothing, and all the world is green,” Tom Waits, from the L.P., “Blood Money.” In December 1989, two months married, I shared good news with my lovely bride Carol. After a job search…

By: Chuck Orloski That day in the Mediterranean Sea, Jonah took leave of the whale belly and exited his reconnaissance trance. Upon surfacing, the USS Liberty afire, and Jonah heard no thunder from D.C. High above the American dead, Jonah saw…

By: Linda M Crate   you wanted me to crucify my dreams and hopes and aspirations to be content living behind the walls of dead dreams believing in the vanity of scorn and judgment, but i could not be death…

By: Linda M Crate   i can be soft as petals, but i can be cutting as thorns; gave you my worst and my best thought inbetween the scars we both had that we could find this thing that is…

By: L.D. Diem I never thought about killing myself until I imagined losing my daughter to some horrible disease seeing her deteriorate like I did my father- for eight years of his life it was something my 23 year old self…

By: S.D. Lavender After breakfast, before she left for work, Doris went into the living room of her suburban St. Louis home where her husband Milton sat on the couch in his kimono eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. “Honey, listen…

By: Zunayet Ahammed The night sky calls me To see her sapphire The deep dark forest requests me To be his bosom The lonely clouds offer me To soar very high In the naked heaven Only you don’t ask me…