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I was amazed by how many people were stuffed inside my uncle Henry’s corpse.
My aunt clung to me for the first time in her life, bird-bone brittle and ashen pale, while the mourners breathed crowds of ghosts into the icy morning air.
The coffin swayed...
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Day 1:
When Coronavirus Comes Calling
A five-year-old declares, 'I wish to always have my favourite pancake in my world.'
Day 2:
An E-mail of Hope
He sent the e-mail to the school reserving seats for his daughter for the fall session. It’s in the new city they...
Read more: 21 Days of Lockdown
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Burnt toast, avocado, honey, two poached eggs laced with turmeric and garlic, and a new vitamin concoction that makes my stomach churn, and still, I guzzle half of it down with gusto, as if it’s our first Godfather Cocktail at Carlo’s Bar.
Why, you ask?
Because...
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Madeleine saw the visitor in her Sunday school class, a man her age, maybe fortyish —she considered herself a youthful fifty —with a deep dimple in the middle of his chin. He wore no wedding ring. He introduced himself as having just moved to Cannington, and was the...
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First, there was dust everywhere, but now, far worse, there were chickens everywhere. They were pecking through the yard, leaving puffs of dust. They were roosting in the pine trees. And they clucked from morning to night. The five roosters vied for which was loudest and shrillest. Amanda...
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I buried him in the backyard one night after a rainstorm. The soil I removed from the hole was thick and sticky and clung stubbornly to the surface of my shovel.
I connected the hose to the backyard spigot and used it to clean off the shovel. Then...
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The young lady entered the laboratory with her eyes cast down reverently, as though entering a church. When she reached the gurney, she pulled a chair close to it and placed the things she was carrying on a nearby table. She removed the sheet covering the body and...
Read more: The Anointing of Mary Ballard
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I am in a meeting at our England location in a typical rectangular conference room walled off from the real world of work taking place outside. Suddenly, I am a spirit floating above my colleagues, as though I had died only seconds earlier and am waiting to be...
Read more: Beginning at the End
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We were isolated that summer from the rest of the world. The excessive rains had pounded the fields into mosquito-infested pools, destroying our harvests of corn and beans. We heard it was worse in the cities. As food supplies depleted, guns decided distribution. Friends and families banded together...
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As a little girl, I had this recurring dream that would cause me to wake up in a cold sweat. A grand celebration was going on in a great hall, where my mother and father sat on gold thrones at the end of the room overseeing their subjects...
Read more: My Carousal of Life
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Red Bull is engraving the Eye of God on your chest. “It’s a private tattoo over my soul and conscience,” you murmur. “I’m an atheist, bro,” you continue, thinking of the Chotta Bheem rakhi on your wrist eons back in time. I will be brave like Bheem someday, ...
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‘I am a writer, but I wish I could write like that,’ said Durga, seated at the head of the rustic green, rectangular table. There were nineteen women on the sides, who turned to look. Then, some picked up their beverages and sipped them. In the background, a...
Read more: Booklovers’ Paradise
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Tony Spencer applied the first coat of wax to his prized possession, a 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix. Oh, sure, it had flaws, like a smashed door and a dragging muffler, but the interior was a beaut. It had bright-red bucket seats with a gleaming silver gear mount between...
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The rain that had pelted the high mountain jungle all morning stopped abruptly, and the sun gradually dissolved the lingering clouds. Insects hummed again, birds burst forth in joyous song and flowers lifted their dripping heads, spreading their petals wide to receive the sun’s bright blessing. The People, ...
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Standard Police Report - Inventory of Possessions - Portbou, Catalonia, Republic of Spain
27 Sep. 1940
Location: Hotel De Francia
Noted contents of subject’s hotel room as follows:
- a large steamer trunk containing books in various foreign languages, for example, Les Fleurs du mal, ...
Read more: Standard Police Report
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We sat, you and I, alongside the lake, watching the sky spread above us in an immense starburst, the Milky Way threaded through its center, seeming to beckon us to follow it.
"A reverse inkblot," you said.
I thought, no, no, nothing as mundane as that, but all...
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There is death in my house.
“It's gone to a better place,” she says. "Now flush it down the toilet and wash your hands. Breakfast is ready."
Like that, she cans Juju, our goldfish. She did the same with Didi, Ma’s parrot, ...
Read more: There Are No More Pets in My House
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Tom Whitehead: (In the deep husky Marlboro movie guys voice) HEEEEEEEEEEEER FISHY, FISHY, FISHY!
It was an early Saturday morning. He thought it was just another day of fishing, then all of a sudden out of nowhere he...
Read more: Revenge of the Fishy
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David Porter watched his wife and two sons as they played on the monkey bars at the park. He smiled in contentment as peals of laughter rang out. Two short weeks ago, he’d been in danger of losing his family.
...
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Samael and Malachi, two brothers working for different bosses, sit on the fence dangling their booted feet each on their side of the divide. One pair of boots is caked in white droppings; the other scrubbed clean. It’s like a dare. Trespassing? Not quite. ...
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An elderly woman shuffled up the sidewalk and took a seat on the bench across the way from me. I watched her slow steps and noticed her feet stuck in matted slippers and her swollen discolored ankles. Breathing a sigh of relief, I felt grateful...
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We sat around a campfire in the backyard that evening, our parents and us four kids, aged four to fifteen. Dan, the oldest at nineteen, was in the Army serving somewhere that Mother didn't want to tell us. "You don't need to worry," she said. "I'll...
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The global wealth distribution has been heavily off balance, the scales of capitalism have plunged so far into disproportion they will fall before they will be fair again. Jack and his widowed mother have economically crammed a century of mourning into an egregious year but failed...
Read more: Jack and the Beanstalk
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Smelled: a gamey odor downstairs in the basement. Searched for its source but couldn’t find it.
Found: one dead mouse with reddish-brown legs and a white underbelly in the basement bathroom. A deer mouse. Picked it up with tongs, took it outdoors, and tossed...
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A deep sigh came just as Jason was pulling off the highway onto Route 11. He was close and could feel his back tingling as if his whole spine had suddenly fallen asleep. This happened every time he headed into a small town, no...
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Saturday mornings were special occasions at our house when we were growing up. My friends begged to spend the night so they could be part of the Saturday morning ritual.
Mom would take out her green plastic bowl and splash in a little water, a little cocoa powder, ...
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When I was a child, my mom and Aunt Leona would pack us six kids into our blue Chevy Belair and drive to a local mobile home dealer (they were known as trailers back then). We would walk through the new homes, just for something to do. How...
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Autumn is falling in Maine, harder this year than I remember over the last few falls. We've had two nights of close to freezing temperatures, not enough to ice over the birdfeeders or kill any of my plants yet, but cold enough to turn the furnace on. My...
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Every year shortly before spring, the Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Co. catalog shows up on my doorstep. The cover is plastered with a WARNING label in big black letters informing me that if I don’t order now, this will be my last catalog. It also has coupons: $100...
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Mornings, I like to have a Kindle eBook open on the dining room table so I can read and look out into the backyard to see what might be happening.
I live in a raised ranch with an attached two-car garage. My deck, which is off the kitchen...
Read more: One January Morning
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A book club I’m part of recently discussed The Ruinsby Scott Smith. It’s not a book I would have finished reading based on the first 50 pages, but sticking with it afforded me insight into what a narrative voice can do. The story is about a group...
Read more: The Ruins and the Writing Technique of Negative Space
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Go to work every day. Do your job. Do it well. Always learning, getting better every day. Soaking in the letters that become words, that lead to success.
Meetings, instructions, to-do lists, directions — the words start to drown like a river of brown muddy water rushing through...
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On our homeschool adventure today, we dreamed aloud of the places we would travel to if we could. My kids and I agree: Ireland and Scotland are our top two places to visit. We played music from Spotify and sang aloud to the merry tunes of the Irish.
...
Read more: Canada, Marty, and The Exorcist
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I had no idea what milkweed looked like because I'd never seen it, but I'd always wanted it to grow in my yard so I could see the monarch butterflies.
For the longest time, I've hoped the patch of wonderfully fragrant plants with pale purple flowers growing...
Read more: Monarch Butterflies
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The monarch caterpillar couldn't decide where to turn itself into a chrysalis. He wandered across my front stoop so many times I was afraid I'd step on it so I stopped using the front door. One time, he'd be crawling up a post of the front railing. Another...
Read more: A Monarch Chrysalis
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I am twisted, bent, and deformed on every side. Everyone trying to use me to serve their own purposes, to justify their own beliefs and actions. Their eyes constantly sliding away from my pure, unaltered form, too brilliant and painful to behold without their chosen filters to dim...
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On a Monday afternoon, I carried a bucket of water outdoors to refill the birdbath. A male goldfinch jumped down from the bath’s rim, and hopped away as quickly as he could to creep beneath a nearby spruce branch. I thought how odd he was...
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What does a hero look like?
George Bailey is a hero.
George Bailey dreamed of traveling the world.
George Bailey gave up his dreams to care for his family and community.
Rudy left his family...
Read more: Of Heroes and Holiness
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Another rejection letter and I feel like a loser. Yeah, I know, I’m not trying to make a living doing this. I even claim to be “writing for myself.” Butwe all want validation and, let’s face it, us writers want readers. So here I sit, ...
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In June, I will expect to find my special place in Townsville, Queensland. Last year it was in Darwin, Northern Territory, and today my place is in Hobart, Tasmania.
We live in a truck, a 2004 Isuzu 350NPR turbo automatic...
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This past summer and fall upturned me. The birdfeeder, usually so generous, abdicated her job, and I had to scrounge for food during the long wet season. My mother told me it was unusual to have such a rainy August and October. She would know. I was born...
Read more: A Red Squirrel's Narrative
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This essay is part of a Talk-Back series – I owe that title to Karen. A Talk-Back is my response to a chapter in a WVU textbook, my communication with its author.
This Talk-Back is a response to the exercise in Lia Purpura’s chapter, ‘On Miniatures,’ (Flas...
Read more: Talk-Back, Dear Lia, on FnF
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“Why the F--- Do I want to see
The last time I hung out with my Uncle Dan is when I dragged him to Gatorland to do something touristic. ...
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“Does he look at you?”
My cousin’s innocent question triggers a flashing red warning light in my brain. My baby doesn’t look at me. I assumed he was too young still, but my cousin’s baby is only four days older than mine, and they are...
Read more: A Fear of Broken Things
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It is a joy to hold a lovely scene, a delightful moment, in memory.
~Marjolein Bastin
Frank was four and I was five and getting ready to start school when Dad and Mom moved us into a new house on Glasgow Avenue—a three-bedroom home that wasn't quite finished—in...
Read more: Wild Roses Growing in the Ditch
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At some point, everything comes to an apex. Status quo can only persist for so long before the natural balance of the universe calls for consumption, and then it all comes down to a choice. That’s it, a lone decision that ultimately leads down a pathway to a higher level...
Read more: Hazardous Happenings
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Sending your writing out into the world can be scary whether you write poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. But, at some point, if you are a serious writer, you will do it. Getting a rejection letter back can be more devastating than asking a girl out as a teenager and...
Read more: Dealing with Rejection
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I took an hour to walk outdoors in my yard, first to clip dead honeysuckle branches, pluck dandelions, and then to fill the birdbaths and feeders. And to ponder what to write about one of my backyard neighbors, the gray squirrel, Sciurus
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My four-year-old son has a friend over. I overhear my son’s friend tell my two-year-old daughter, “Gracie, you can’t come in here.” Then my son’s voice: “It’s okay, she can play with us. Here, Gracie,” he says, presumably handing her one of the toys they are playing with. My
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I can hear my parents’ raised voices upstairs. They are fighting again. I turn on the sink faucet, letting the sound of the running water drown out their voices. I thrust my hands in the nearly scalding hot water and methodically scrub each dish in the sink...
Read more: The Weight of Emotions
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After a hard day of labor
As I was hurrying my way back home.
A black Carriage stopped...
Read more: With Emily on the Death Carriage
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DNA's protein coat-
Stripped me of maskless days, now
I eat popcorn alone
Are you kidding me!
No...
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Time flows from infinity to infinity,
with no beginning or end in sight,
unlike men and women who...
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Oh! My motherland, my heart and soul,
as I watch dark clouds hover in your skies,
my eyes...
Read more: Some Heart-felt Emotions about My Motherland
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I am once again a youth in my teens,
dreaming of flying high up into the clouds.
I...
Read more: A Dream, A Fantasy, Flying into The Unknown
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I miss the way
you sat on your stool
by the kitchen window,
meowing goodbye when I left,
...
Read more: Missing Miss Pickle
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I stare outside my window
as snowflakes swirl,
cover my garden
with another white blanket
my Vancouver Island...
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A poem is a spark sprung to life.
A poem is a magic inspiration.
A poem is a...
Read more: Definition of a Poem
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reading about the 1918 Spanish flu
shows mistakes made by history:
parades, train trips, troopships,
overcrowded hospitals
pandemics...
Read more: Lessons from History
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I look at the deep blue sea,
stretching endlessly before me,
as I sit on the sands, alone, ...
Read more: I Go Picking Seashells
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sometimes social isolation
is a requirement
to write a poem
in times of self-quarantine,
loneliness hovers...
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I. New York City
Around the world, we few gals hunkered down
around our computers, tablets, and phones,
...
Read more: The Lockdown Cyber Trip
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Greene’s’ farmhouse
took on smells of hay and silage
cow and sheep scents brought in
on men’s overalls and
...
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One day after I die I’ll have a shiny dedication plate nailed to a bench
along a trail...
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I can taste you in my coffee,
So I no longer drink it black.
I can feel your...
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We neighbourhood children gravitate
in the late afternoon to the large empty lot
at the corner of Scotia...
Read more: Our Neighbourhood Playground
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It’s 100 seconds to midnight
with nuclear arms re-normalized and
climate change addressed by fine speeches,
while on...
Read more: Immediate Action Required
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For years I tried to remember the moment
as less heartbreaking, somehow —
the day a dad realizes...
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At the foreign arboretum
we zigzag among species
which may or may not
be poisonous to our love
...
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Half the week you live a very full life. The other half you pretend not to care, swallow...
Read more: Monday/Wednesday/Friday And Every Other Weekend
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Oh, what I'd give for a peaceful soul;
my mind at rest I'd want no more,
content amid...
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today I meet Walter
for the first time
I know my brother-in-law
only through pictures,
from his mother’s...
Read more: First Impressions – Walter
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lichen covered, grey
boards, paint free,
the old house sits
surrounded by poplar trees,
and overgrown grass
doors, ...
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I sat down to do my work today,
but a visitor came calling
and distracted me
I meant...
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(with input from Farley, Yanni, Glory and Blake)
A cat is a stylist who licks your locks.
A cat is...
Read more: How to Define a Cat
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I am old now.
I drag myself to greet my day now filled with the fog of medicines...
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The wind excites me.
It speaks of adventures
I dare not journey.
It visits me
to speak to...
Read more: The Wind Excites Me
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we learned to lie
in the garden
behind the mask
discarded innocence
aware now of space between
bride...
Read more: listen to the wind words
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I will be the people’s tears
I cry for justice
freedom
respect denied
I cry for lies
told...
Read more: Commandment VIII Hiawatha/Geronimo/Sitting Bull
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I followed the familiar trail
through maple and pine
along old logging ruts
crossing Plank Road at the...
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the day I under
stood
the birds echoing chirps to the squirrels
chittering to the trees and to...
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You cannot take someone else's land,
because you stripped and overpopulated your own.
You cannot spew poison in...
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