Category: Creative Writing & Short Stories
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Be Gentler Still, Unquiet Sea
Be gentler still, unquiet sea; again shesees her city days. She only ever saveswhat memories are not too heavy to carry. The pigeons want to know is she happyor does she ache? How many of her daysis she still in the unquiet sea?Just buy the ticket overseas already;forsake those days on planes and the acheof…
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Poem by the River
I don’t want to write about the river / that can’t smooth stones / nor the bird drawing he gave me / on Valentine’s Day / I don’t want to write / about the poems I put down / the poems I ran out of words for / the poems I buried / in the…
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Poem of what goes through my mind when she tells me I don’t have to be brave and I try to believe her
Beneath the wood we stacked in the takeout containers—to save money on the heat bill—is the life we’ve made. A life made of letters, made of all the ending lines, of all the poems I never sent you. I flinch at your touch but eat your frozen udon and day-old empanadas like we still have…
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DIY Pancreas
The hook weaves through the yarn, and, in it, I see the breaking, flowing loops of a body. Being diabetic is just like making a sweater. The needles come in and out of the skin, the stomach, the soft parts of a person you wish to keep tender. The hook does one chain stitch, then…
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“Is anyone listening?”
My hands find their way onto the spaces between the piano keys. Even when the amnesia takes me over, I know, / I will still remember music. / I can’t picture where the notes laid on the lines, but I know every feeling in my fingers, where they seek to belong. I will still remember…
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My agent asked for an updated author bio
This poem was written by a monster; this poet, too. A story of life when remembered by my mind would be an itemized list, which certainly tells a tale but not a very good one. I have dreams of another life. In between the joy of a memory, I pick apart my life and find…
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Bottom of the Mountain River
Today, you are a river otter. You slide into the stream from the slope of the shore, watching the silver shiners swim in every which way. They are fighting for their survival. But so are you. It’s dinner; you must hunt. You work until you catch enough to eat yourself, and then some extra to…
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Oceania: The Last Beach
Humanity had lessened since its peak of billions; selfishness proved to be as mortal as they were. Now there is only one beach. One final shore before the abyss of clouds. Sky void remnants of what no longer shines. A woman stands before the water. Her toes feel the sand. Plastic. It feels like plastic.…
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Same Tunes, New Radio
there comes a time when the memory is so vivid it turns a double truth the grape pain meds and the stinging burn when it goes down dulled by time it all comes back when the music plays. remember when it was only words? the noises and these pitches have since become us every sound…
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Infelix
When the car headlights flash against the ceramic flowerpot, still sitting on the corner of the porch where you left it, I see your green feline eyes. Still waiting where I left them. Whoever first said black cats were unlucky never got to meet you. Every time I cried, you found all the hurting places.…
Hazel J. Hall 