snickerdoodles by John Grochalski

snickerdoodles geri sees the big fat president on tv and says she hates all white men then amy says to her well, why are you dating one? living with one, if you feel that way? geri sees the genocide in palestine and swears she’s going to move there to help save lives and alleviate her …

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Accounting 101 by Paul Ilechko

Accounting 101 We lived inside our weariness      shattered by the level of force required to drive a post into the ground      the ice having only now melted      it was our town our inheritance that spent decades expanding or contracting      until it finally settled until we accepted the settlement all around us cheerfulness and fences and …

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The Restaurant by Charles Rammelkamp

The Restaurant “The menu’s got a faux-proletarian vibe,” my friend Luke described the restaurant ahead. So often ironic, his jokes not always obvious, I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, and I googled the term on my cellphone. “Common choices include salmon, tuna, sardines and trout,” the text read. “Chicken and turkey, which are …

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THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER: The White Trash Devil by Karl Koweski

The White Trash Devil “Ellen’s invited us to her church to see Lovella get baptized,” the wife said, having busted into the bedroom like a snack cake chomping dervish. I sat there at my desk frozen for a moment. An untrained eye would have mistaken my industry for literary endeavor. The reality of it was …

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Caused My Heart to Bleed by Dan Provost

Caused My Heart to Bleed Not about who you are, or where you’ve been, or what you’ve seen, or when your huge creative act is going to freak out the Earth. It’s that you’re still here—still stepping two tone with the air, keeping you alive vs the reamers who darken the pest of thought—fighting for …

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Learning to Drive by Zak Mucha

Learning to Drive Leaving the warehouse and tattooing every viaduct from Broadway to Pulaski Jimmy learned to drive feeling his way with each corner of the 42’ straight body truck whose keys the boss finally handed over on a Saturday morning after a passive protest of hungover no-call no-shows from everybody else following Friday payday. …

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Diminishing Way by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Diminishing Way It was never a cleansing rain, the mammoth clouds brought to dark extinctions, nothing breathed back into a former life, just wet against bone, really: eating through threadbare layers, awake with the dumpster diving coons, a concealed blade for when the shrill of the world came shrieking, the cap of the bottle loosened …

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Performances by Jonathan S Baker

Performances I envision a near future where every inconvenience or failure that the president faces leads to a false flag staged attempted assassination, bullets whizzing safely past by his ears or gunfire in his general vicinity every time the price of gas goes up, every time the Strait of Hormuz opens or closes elaborate plots …

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Birthday by James Babbs

Birthday -Tomorrow’s my mother’s birthday- I told her I picked up my beer and looked at the bottle -Oh she said she shifted in her chair -Are you going to go to the cemetery- I took a drink of beer and looked out the window -I don’t know I said -Sometimes I do but not …

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I Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks by Mark LaMonda

I Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree my wife chides when I’m a wee bit churlish— Outright rude actually. She says it, knowing how much I hate her saying it. It conjures images of the man described by more than one, as the most stressful person they have …

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