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Ken Poyner • Persistance
... she sat aslant in bed, as always, sheet bunched at her waist, allowing me to fondle an unannounced, carelessly dangling breast while she tapped out replies, reviewed videos, evaluated the popularity of today’s recommended anonymous posts. I lose interest, but I fondle nonetheless, as I think that to do so is part of the role I am supposed to play.

Lewis Gray • ... Down For A Jack Move
Any minute now Joey Denton was going to walk through the door and it was going to explode. This was how it was every morning. Joey walking in, the nightmare from hell descending.

Larry Lefkowitz • Ben Franklin's Time Machine
“Peter, how would you like to see America in the future? — by then we may have reached the Pacific sea.” This as casually as if he were soliciting my opinion of the weather.
Carole Stivers • Faith
But there were things her mother didn’t know. She didn’t know that the phone had a name — Rodolfo. And that Rodolfo had his own voice — one that only Faith could hear. “Te amo,” Rodolfo said. “I love you. And if you promise to keep quiet, we can talk to each other for as long as you like.”

Katrina Marks • Leaving My Heart in Africa
I was proposed to four times in my first week. Most were young boys. Most were joking. The one I wrote home to my mother about was a member of the Maasai tribe. He claimed to have killed a lion, after all. And it always works wonders for the self-esteem when a girl knows her exact value in cattle.

POEMS:
Cathy Bryant • Such a Thing...
... the scan monitor
on which my heart leaps and dances
as I haven’t for thirty years.

Catherine Edmunds • Pinpricks
they’ve invented a new fish, a minnow, a silver-finned slippy thing ...

Casey FitzSimons • Reconstruction
They could describe the centrifugal blur
of asphalt, tell how road signs and headlights
were chrome-framed for that inauspicious instant...

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Marie Kilroy • GCHAT
oh man I just got a text from her
she wants to talk
NO DICE BITCH ...

Fran Markover • ... International Space Station
Do atomic clocks record their thirst for thistle?
Can astronauts on thermal porches sip ice tea ...
• King Tut Gets a C-T Scan
For a teenager, home should be a palace
filled with light, cousins gaming, beer,
not a lab to languish in ...

Nate Maxson • Tenth Etude
Who knows what trench warfare without an enemy would be like, you just wait faithful that someday there will be one ...

Anne McCrady • Repairmen
He comes when I call,
unlike the other men in my life,
and does exactly what I ask of him ...

Lee Nash • Musings on Mars
I’ll find a good spot in the ancient sea
to fashion myself an alien home ...

Jacalyn Shelley • Big Data Valentine
If person #2 likes aphrodisiacs & eats asparagus
(retrieve from Shopper Database) ...
• What I Mean When I Say Goat Rope
My grandmother held her story of flight
between her fingers: This is how we face
and leap into a man’s arms for a pas de deux ...

John Stupp • Instructions for Reading a Poem
... do not stand next to the poem
while operating a hydraulic lift—
do not read the poem
if you are pregnant ...

Laura Sweeney • I Kept Meaning To Cure Myself
of You, But Instead I Searched ...
the prose poem I Love Karate
the Russian New Year’s party
texts that say ‘move to Portland with me’ ...

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