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 Dec 2012 lemon
Brandon Webb
He pulls my hand
and I stumble up the stairs
holding two backpacks, four books
and a lunchbox full of old toy cars,
nearly tripping
but landing instead on the second floor landing.

The blinds covering the window in front of me
split slightly,
just enough
for me to see her smiling eye watching me.

I don't know her name
and she doesn't know mine.
we've never said anything real to each other.
we know nothing about each other
other than that she spends a lot of time there
at her grandparents house,
speaking Portuguese, Spanish and English
and listening to Spanish rap on the balcony
loud enough to hear through the floor
of the apartment I only spend six days in a month
and over the occasional fight between my family.

That's all she knows of me;
my fleeting ghost walking with my brother past their window
thirty or so times a month,
talking
but almost inaudibly, and never to her.
wish i knew her better
than as the eye peeking through the blinds



©Brandon Webb
2012
 Dec 2012 lemon
Daniel Magner
I      miss      the       days      when
   things        were      good    or
bad
© Daniel Magner 2012
 Dec 2012 lemon
Daniel Magner
None of this seems quite
                                    right.
I heard it starts around this age
I might just have lost it.
© Daniel Magner 2012
 Dec 2012 lemon
Tom Orr
Albert Camus
 Dec 2012 lemon
Tom Orr
"A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously."
 Dec 2012 lemon
Daniel Magner
Words poured out like a salad
She wept and cried
yelling at the jumble
"You won't get me!
Just a big pile of salad words!"
Her dad stood in her doorway
while someone whispered
"It's not real, you aren't even her."
But she was on the phone with me
I heard every word
"I'm scared..."
fades out like the giggle she
keeps hearing and the
little girl that she has seen
"I was possessed once"
she told me, "maybe twice."
then we walked on the beach
everything seemed calm
two weeks later hearing
arms scratching the walls and
her dad standing in the doorway
is it real?
real?
rea
re
r
© Daniel Magner 2012
First Draft
For a friend...
 Dec 2012 lemon
Hannah Johnson
I grew up in your tattoos.
the gentle curves of dark blue lines held me as a child. now sometimes when i can’t remember your face i color in between those lines and let the rest of it fill in. the rose on your shoulder. the fallen angel on your ankle. the heart on your hip, the cherubs on your back, ever since i was little i wanted to be that permanent.
when i got older my fingers started to itch for something to hold onto in your absence. i tried to tattoo myself but red isn’t permanent and scars fade you said, ‘wait’. and since then i have never been so impatient. i tried scratching at my own skin but found i wasn’t cut out for art so i took to using the pen instead, scrawling hundreds of over used words and when they wouldn’t flow i used red again, unable to decide on what sorts of lines i want to replace you with. i’ve taken to writing on my wrists and found a substitution for scarred skin i think i have decided. this is the tattoo that i’m going to get:
See you in Hell, scribe.
Well, I thought. Probably.
But not today.
 Dec 2012 lemon
K Balachandran
Love has tattooed
gloom on her face,
Love in black
that pays only in terms of pain.
 Dec 2012 lemon
Ben
on tattoos
 Dec 2012 lemon
Ben
the*                                
parlor   air smells of  
   antiseptic and alcohol    
               while the white gauze chair      
         *sings a        sirens song
        
of    
pleasure      and pain    
                     painting reflections of myself on  
a living canvas greens
blues purples yellows
mingle freely                
with the red                  
     ink drawn                          
from my                        
veins from                    
another br                     
ushstroke                      
puls                            ­  
ing                                
at                                    
10                        ­          
0                                    
0                                    
r                                      
p                       ­             
m                                      
**V.....................­..................
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