Year: 2023
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Origin Stories – Mary Makofske
Borders by Mary Makofske Drawn in ink or blood, they unspool from history to split mountains and valleys, meander in rivers that twist and turn, dragging their banks to new configurations, adding to, subtracting from, this dominion or that. Invisible, except when a fence or wall defines them, ramparts that open only through drawbridge or…
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Origin Stories – Patricia Ware
Creation Story by Patricia Ware After Rita Dove When she was born, the sun fled from despair and the earth gleamed. She was a fresh brush waiting for permission to paint the sky. When she was young, she sliced up sad till it bled. There were ghosts to flee from, daydreams for delight. She was…
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Origin Stories – Virginia Smith
Ukrainian Easter Eggs by Virginia Smith There in our snug living room, a TV tray her craft center, my seventies mom laughed at Carol Burnett, M*A*S*H*, All in the Family, her pop cult cover for pysanky witchery, gently pricking a hole with her needle at egg’s two tips, blowing never-to-be chicks into a bowl for…
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Origin Stories – Jeanne DeLarm
Swap Meet by Jeanne DeLarm A round kitchen clock, batteries corroded, displays the correct time, some time. This glass baking dish, we can use in our rental. Rubber dolls play inside a mini house dressed in swatches of dirty fabric. Cowboys, Native American plastic men intertwine. Vinyl rodeo corrals tangle with palm trees. Army guys…
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Origin Stories – Stellasue Lee
Her Honey-Bunch, Gum-Drop, Sweetie-Pie Is Gone by Stellasue Lee Saturday, no calls I have to make, no plans of any kind, just this cat looking deeply into my eyes, questioning why my husband isn’t here— and if she could, she would order me to bring him back— When I try to hold her, comfort her,…
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Origin Stories – Sharon Scholl
Stolperstein* by Sharon Scholl One by one we can take them in — those names that once were flesh and lived among us. Neighbors disowned when they were politically inconvenient. People in the prison camps disavowed even when we smelled their corpses. One by one, their memories, insistent, take their former places in our homes.…
