Alexander Kemp | A private pain

February 8, 2018 Today was another bad day. My hand is hurting, so I’ll stop writing. *** February 22, 2018 Last night I dreamt Violet was next to me in bed. Her face was inches from mine. I could feel her breathing. She opened her mouth, releasing cold air. The bedroom door burst open and two masked men entered. As I was pinned to the floor, I tried to scream, […]

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Kimi Ceridon | Trapped

Over the last ten days of my mother’s life, my brother, my sister, her husband, her son and I had holed up in my sister’s home. The house took on the smell of four able-bodied adults and a toddler on top of each other for 240 straight hours, living. We stood vigil over our dying mother, waiting. **** When my parents were dating, there were clues about my father’s abusive […]

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Rizwan Saleem | The distant shore

There is a better world out there Said my father near the shore We’ll be safe there my son You’ll be scared no more There are schools and playgrounds And happy people too A new beginning awaits us All there on the new shore We will hide no more No loud sounds to hear Plenty to eat And nothing to fear The sea will roar But hold on tight Till […]

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Janet McCann | Death poems

ON THE WAY TO THE OFFICE every morning crossing campus I walk between the two tall buildings where two deaths happened just months ago one a suicide, one possibly an accident and I can’t look at the tops of the buildings from which two men descended through the air nor do I want to walk too close to those walls buildings absorb what happens there at night as the walls […]

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