13-21



Tri Semi

Semi Truck
a whole truck enormous truck, not half a truck
a piddling proportional truck, a wish-to-wannabe-truck
partially plated tucked truck — No, a sporting cavorting
amalgam of truck, yea conglomerate kingdom
of plucky truckdom, a luminous bear in the woods,
swell lucky duck truck — and red, but it's stuck. Yuk.

Semi Colon
a pair of dots, spotty dots, gotta lotta tottle dots —
or sometimes flighty innards, partially plumbed
sore as a mummy's torn tummy, all glummed and forlorn.
Returning to health, one might hum and then slam
each sentence to come with flimflam, humdrum semaphores.

Semi Precious Stone
jovial Peruvian gruel at mostly formal affairs
frocks from a box, damsels fox-coiffed and shorn
abhorred careers, jettisoned jewels, to attract bored
surrealists who blatantly stare, half-shocked
at each beauty's bared bosom, cruel to the core.


by Sandra Soli

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Edmond, Oklahoma writer and editor Sandra Soli facilitates workshops in poetry, fiction, memoir, and improvisational writing. A lover of wordplay and ridiculosities, Sandy has published pieces in more than sixty journals and received an Oklahoma Book Award, the Eyster Poetry Prize, and two Pushcart nominations. She admires pluck and will happily energize your conference for jewels or cold cash: sandrasoli@cox.net

13-20



Keeping Score
Sex is like tennis. When you play an inferior opponent, your game suffers.
- Edie, Desperate Housewives

I didn't know she was
keeping score but when

she told me the results—
six orgasms to none,

her favor—I knew I was
too far behind to make

any sort of comeback, so I
did what I usually do in those

precarious situations—I packed
my racket and looked for another

partner, who wouldn’t keep score,
who was more into volleying, who

would be delighted if I just got the ball over the net.

by Hal Sirowitz

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One critic said of Hal Sirowitz's work, "You don't have to have a sad childhood to be a writer but in Mr. Sirowitz's case it helped." Robert Frost once said free verse is like playing tennis without a net. But, that's the way Sirowitz likes to play—less hindrance at keeping the volley alive.

13-19



Prequels to Famous Books

Young Man and the Sea
A Portrait of the Artist as a Fetus
Many Mohicans
Two Fathoms Under the Sea
A Hello to Arms
Lady Chatterly's Acquaintance
Ball Three
Prometheus Bound
A Couple Hundred Arabian Nights
The Ugly Egg
Atlas Twitched
1983
To Do Bodily Harm to a Mockingbird
Girl Bovary
Richard II
The Spring of Our General Malaise
Journey to the Mantle of the Earth
The Lord of the Maggots

by Jonathan Shipley

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Jonathan Shipley lives with his wonderful daughter in Seattle. He's written for such varied publications as the Los Angeles Times, Venuszine, Diner Journal, Fine Books & Collections Magazine, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and Welding and Cutting Magazine. Seriously, he once wrote some homoerotic welding poetry for the trade journal. He was shocked they actually published the stuff. Jonathan is really skinny and pretty bald.

13-18



Tourette's

I was the kid they didn't give the chocolate factory to
matter of fact was so bad and oppositional and had
such an attitude didn't get the walk through and as
always got kicked off the tour and put on lock down
with the loompas who like every c.o. i've ever known
were sadistic and tried to put a scare in you and licking
their chops saying they were gonna eat me up for supper
i laughed hysterical and said "o yeah! you and what army!"
and stared through the bars brooding and full of melancholy
watching the other spoiled brats being sacrificed and going
through their trials and think probably deep down inside
from experience and knowing what it was like to suffer
deliberately set myself up so i don't know guess perhaps in
the future won't compare wonka to the wizard but who knows?

by Joseph Reich

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Joseph Reich is a social worker and displaced New Yorker who really misses dis-place and lives and works out in the state of Massachusetts; He has a handsome little 6 year old with a nice mop of dirty-blonde hair, and a wife eleven years his junior, who must have the patience of a saint as is raising two boys; He misses Shanghai Joe's in Chinatown, all those wonderful Polish diners of the Lower East Side and Dominick's in Little Italy, the Little Italy uptown on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx: He hopes one day to return to play and pray and contemplate with his wife and child in all the wonderful parks along the river on The Westside Highway.