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Bones - journal for the short verseno. 19
March 15th 2020
Bones
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Bauhaus -anchored ships that suit the wind
Adrian Bouter
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heavy bass the urban wilderness
Agnes Eva Savich
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the willow’s birdglints fiberoptic of butterlight fronds shimmerglide
Agnes Eva Savich
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a hypothesisoozing off first thaw
Alegria Imperial
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veined stone could be window dressedfor mastication
Alegria Imperial
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night gogglesin the haunting distancea thought is it?
Alegria Imperial
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tidal maw all in but for a platoon of ribs
Alegria Imperial
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contrived
crepuscular moan diluted with milk still mawkish even with a witch’s pheew
frost-devoured the name of a rose not just a notion Januari-ed un-trapped glass eyes possibly crumbed blunder-debris ocean discards split tongues wildly wagging about deliverance whopping cough in a while nose stalactites pool under bulrushes ashen dawn mid-wave an elegy lancing a sea crone wind-shift rocks bedded limbs drowning with basic stars undocumented since
“decayed” scrawled on foreheads of swine basso-grinding a retort on loose snouts
Alegria Imperial
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doctor’s widened eyes on the curves of ECG
Aparna Pathak
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the space because it is not scientifically proved
Aparna Pathak
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surely some day it will rain a holy river
Ashish Narain
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candlelightthe midnight hugof red parentheses
Bill Cooper
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dry cough the lion dancer flinging lettuce
Bill Cooper
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menstruation the screeching parrot
Carmela Marino
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wrought ironclad alibis
Cherie Hunter Day
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drizzle matrix without the rattle element
Cherie Hunter Day
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the abridged version viral load
Cherie Hunter Day
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Nocebo
The negative side-effects of a harmless substance work by suggestion.
torchlightrunning back to the hollow
Cherie Hunter Day
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You Can’t Tell Fire What to Do
Firebugs attend burning houses like weddings—the making of one body.
first respondercool where the firefliesdraw flame
Cherie Hunter Day
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silent crows flying to the edge of others’ raucousness
Craig Kittner
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more waiting before they consecrate the elements of gradualism
Dan Schwerin
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first day of springthe easing in each cellwill teach you everything
Dan Schwerin
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appointed to sunless days a saint stays in the glass
Dan Schwerin
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pronouns first a reading from the Exodus
Dan Schwerin
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when to stop the cloud never gets clear
Dan Schwerin
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a hard scriptureabout the bread of presencedrawing a fly
Dan Schwerin
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software updated to fry an egg with a smile
David Boyer
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the button we never pressed fish under ice
David Boyer
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that happy laughter in the distance always thin trees
David Boyer
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stochastic erasures to provoke the blood in deep winter
David Boyer
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in your town the story sold in slivers coated with hard plastic
David Boyer
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starlings synchronize in salmon clouds over ice
David Boyer
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those days of astral travel now just a skull in the bin
David Boyer
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Baily’s beads an orchard and its black fruit
David J Kelly
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cold as a stone is like a raindrop
David J Kelly
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further rotation severing the lunar limb
David J Kelly
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summerstillnessand ournappingand thesunlightripeningpeaches
David Käwika Eyre
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ex-conairconsitcom
David Käwika Eyre
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evening stars twisting the long arm of the law
Elmedin Kadric
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down to the bone holding its own icicle sun
Elmedin Kadric
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once bare trees spring to mind
Elmedin Kadric
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the sound of the key turning in the navel
Ernest Wit
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rubbingagainst your stigmasa pollen-covered bee
Ernest Wit
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you sometimes diein the afternoonscent of pine needles
Ernest Wit
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an ocean the sand an ocean
clouds in the ocean the ripples
the skythe soundof light
waves from the sky crashing down
the sandinside an ocean the sun
the sky an oceanwaves
wavesin the sunof sand
clouds and the ocean the sound
wavesof sandthe sky
crashing light the soundof sand
a grain of sand the sun
the sun and the sky an ocean
Fractled
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through the mouth of snowdrift a crow caws
shadows at flight a reckoning to behold under hoarfrost
Fractled
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briny bones a grand oasis in the black watch
Gary Hittmeyer
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a blueprint of forgotten faces as divine mosaic
Gary Hittmeyer
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next phase darkness reigns at the edge of reason
Gary Hittmeyer
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the well chilled handwill escape undergroundwith permanent textures
Gary Hittmeyer
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do not lean on the water
Geoff Pope
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godinink
Geoff Pope
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circles of waterskippers reshape the trees
Glenn Ingersoll
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not even a clothespin on the line blue
Glenn Ingersoll
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technorunesreading the monitorsin the er
Gregory Longenecker
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in the lead-up to lent, the ego sets upon the narrow road leading to its crucifixion
southern seas hidden wounds El Niño beneath the dark night’s the celestial stream stigmata of stars
Hansha Teki
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altar ego blank page a word for bread what species of treebroken apart died for this?
Hansha Teki
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pause within a pause figures in light does the gull crying above showing forth the obverseensure the sea’s sea-ness? in being observed
Hansha Teki
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“yes” a voicelighter than waves to lay all doubtsthe word to bear to rest
Hansha Teki
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night terror all alonedream-decembering silence beats harderbeing almost born lacking fulfillment
Hansha Teki
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a cat’s eye through the dark nightafflicted with the unseen loomsmetonymy eye to eye
Hansha Teki
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poetry reading word shadowsthe sounds of a hand-to-mouth adding weight to the gravityexistence of their situation
Hansha Teki
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beginning again eyes never meetingwind dialogue with rain while all the timeocean with rock overlapping
Hansha Teki
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an ear at day’s endpoised to sip the horizon on the brinkincoming silence of being afterglow
Hansha Teki
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subcaveemoji
Helen Buckingham
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flytippingpoint
Helen Buckingham
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nocartooncatastrophe
Helen Buckingham
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arcane darkroomundead negatives
Helen Buckingham
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leftover bread a conspiracy behind cawing
Hifsa Ashraf
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stepping over the shadow that goes north
Hifsa Ashraf
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work:
just twig being a clown one lifetime
Isabella Kramer
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work:
otters playing cricket while the moon is a disk overripe
Isabella Kramer
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work:
radiator blues every eleventh pling a gargoyle's giggle
Isabella Kramer
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apace for the duration bar tab
Jackie Maugh Robinson
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lost footinga finitudeof polar bears
Jackie Maugh Robinson
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last tobacco pinches moonshine lies
Jackie Maugh Robinson
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hearing a crack in the suicide
Jo Balistreri
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broken lips the kiss of sutures
John Hawkhead
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rock in the streamwater flowing left and rightis still water
John Hawkhead
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but moon
what shapedo you
shift into
whennew?
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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nowhere a smoke plumein the blue wash
of sky thepale runofffrom a
sunrise
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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in all of theswaying a stem
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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the gypsy’shorse
tethered toan open
field
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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nothing left everything
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a rockwaits
till nolonger
left fordead
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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the wordfor moon
more moonin which
tongue
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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the bay mirrored half moon dusk
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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Heaven& Earth
comingdown &
placing alltrust in
the stepjust below
just belowthe above
withinreach
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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Sea Wall(in multipleexposures)
the wallfrom thesea upover thewall fromthe sea
Joseph Salvatore Aversano
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Lightning Bug *
some of twilight clasped
a palm glows phosphorescent
a darkness grows small
* after a visual piece by Carole KimJoseph Salvatore Aversano
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first swing a unicorn gives birth on the back lawn
Joseph P. Wechselberger
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preferred pronountoday, an ice cubefor the orchid
Julie Warther
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did Ganga dream of being the city’s sewage .?
Kala Ramesh
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montage and the god of small things
bouncing shadows in dialogue with sunshine long corridor
Kala Ramesh
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or the fish homes become everywhere
Kat Lehmann
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bone brothel
Kelly Sauvage Angel
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daybreak your form fading into cats
Kelly Sauvage Angel
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where the truth tendrils into horseshit into god
Kelly Sauvage Angel
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were that you were tomato bug
Kelly Sauvage Angel
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the embedded code permeating into the shape of an egg
Ken Sawitri
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pea pods pretending not to know
Lee Gurga
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angelsabove thepath beyondbeyond dawnwind
Lee Gurga
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whatif desire what if what if what if
Lee Gurga
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whyor why not breezeends atthe sea
Lee Gurga
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Beatles 2020
all downhillan oil spill rainbowThe Fool on the Hill
runaway bushfiresravage AustraliaCry Baby Cry
police surveilpeaceful protestorsIt’s Only Love
royals optfor a simpler lifeIt’s All Too Much
COVID-19or AirbnbHere There and Everywhere
one war endsanother beginsMisery
polar ice calvesinto the sea It Won’t Be Long
LeRoy Gorman
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pitiless sun all in black the living
Lisa Espenmiller
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too slippery to peel a pregnant onion
Manoj Sharma
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the city can wait in the car park the moldau flows on
Marie-Louise Montignot
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red light full blast snoop dogg vs ludwig van not even looking
Marie-Louise Montignot
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unto or fromhymns
for less than a warm body
Markeith Chavous
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crowd around the Internet campfire eating someone’s leg
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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a dry age, the money locked high inside translucent institutions
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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giraffes live quietly now in the Midwest as orange daylilies
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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the horizon smoking a cigarette like a murderer
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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the missing two-holed button silently pleads
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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the money flows into the emptier rooms, revealing an elephant
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
129
remote viewing through a snowman’s eyes, blackbirds
Michael Nickels-Wisdom
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autumn fog her name not being autumn fog
Michael O’Brien
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autumn leaves mccoy was cooper
Michael O’Brien
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in the shade of jupiter Dolley serves ice cream
Michael O’Brien
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after turning its head the giraffe just stands there
Michael O’Brien
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autumn rainfinding its nationalityyour suicide
Michael O’Brien
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, whilst throwing snails at an apostle’s tent,
Michael O’Brien
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Incantation
elder alder ash . . . the litany of treeson the shoulders of
birch beech buckeye . . .an incantationto begin with
linden laurel oak . . .what strengthin the name of
willow walnut hickory . . .shaped by age intoelder alder ash
Peter Newton
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anxiety an ocean the children begin to drift
Rich Schilling
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city lightsbodies that movebodiesthatdon’t
Rich Schilling
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silentthe bread slicewith no mould
Robert Davey
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cocktailsshe runs her fingersthrough her genes
Robert Davey
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OWL of absence asid
e em
bold
end
upst
rike
back breaking pot belly
Ron Scully
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sunrise E
departures arrive crosscountry
ligature of shinning seas
Ron Scully
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sssnakessssssss
spineless, sideways, shadowless
begin and end with sibilants
Ron Scully
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one night stand with a shelf half as long
Rp Verlaine
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new thirst :: a hunter at a chasm
he wasstonewoodwaterempty
Samar Ghose
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a dead jackal slips its corpse
therainstood silent
Samar Ghose
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so many of the old have often praised so many
so far it appears
from
the joke
the quickand easy
is the flight
the oxen make this same flight
Samar Ghose
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staying on the bus
you are
the refrain
Shloka Shankar
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tomorrow crushed by the weight
Sondra Byrnes
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daylight saving clouds have their own say
Srinivas S
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first snow every time first snow
Srinivas S
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the daily transmutation of muscle into marble
Stella Pierides
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a woman’s work inside her locked spine
Stella Pierides
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twilight. Every seed in his spine thirsted
Tiffany Shaw-Diaz
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a rifle. Cast grey from intermittent rain, this dawn
Tiffany Shaw-Diaz
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if consciousness is #1 lacquered bread
Victor Ortiz
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then she gulped a dark passage tightening with every step the gorge
Victor Ortiz
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Editor:
Johannes S. H. Bjerg
Photos by Chris Dominiczak
Copyright © Bones, 2020. All works herein are the property of the au-thors and artists.
No work may be republished or used in any way without the explicit permission of the authors.
Website:www.bonesjournal.com
where specifics for submission of work is stated