Tip of the Quill: A Journal

Category Archives: Poetry

30:24 Shantel

She sweeps the floor of the bus station with the same broom she’s used for years, nothing’s different, it’s all the same, the kids are all right and her health is good, she has no need to wander or travel, and that’s what perplexes her – why oh why has she worked for so long […]

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30:23 Karen

She leans in close for the kiss but when he responds she loses all interest, she loses focus; her mind wanders because she’s caught his scent, not body odor or any cheap cologne but the very same smell she’d caught once when walking down some back street in Takayama, and instead of being aroused or […]

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30:22 Phantom Carnie

The ghost in the theme park is really and truly pissed because no one will take it seriously now because of that fucking Great Dane and those meddling asshole kids.

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30:21 Hipsters

The two hipsters walked hand in hand in the moonlight down by the canal laughing at the irony of the cheesy cliche and falling in love in spite of themselves.

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30:20 Dave

The glasses he wore were purely cosmetic, he wore them to appear smarter, bookish, even, although he hated to read. He wore them every day, every place he went, he internalized his look as a nerdy man, he would blink and squint in airport lines although his eyes were perfectly fine. In time he managed […]

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30:19 Beth

She’d always been fascinated by numbers, not as an accountant might be, but as a painter. She loved their curves and lines, loved the patterns traced by the empty space that yawned between them when you ran them in random strings and sequences. When no one was looking she would fish through the trash in […]

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30:18 Todd

He wished to God he couldn’t watch her move, wished he was oblivious to the way she walked, wished he was deaf so he couldn’t hear her voice, wished he had no sense of smell or taste or touch. He wished he was stone, wished he was dead, wished he was anything else in the […]

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30:17 Michel

The filmmaker sits in the barbershop chair counting to a thousand and fifty. The stylist trims as fast as she can, knowing that he hates this part so much, but the publicist demands the perfect coiffeur for the glossy magazine mandatory shot. He keeps his eyes on the circular hypnosis of the patriotic candycane of […]

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30:16 Allie

She wished she looked half as good in tight pants, wished the cellulite fairy would appear and poof! Suddenly her too-round ass would be neat and perfect, and then every boy in school would line up for a chance to hit that, a chance to party, they’d overlook how dull she was, how normal, how […]

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30:15 Cafe People

Nobody knew where the sign came from, what the words meant or why it was there, but it scared them for some reason they couldn’t say, it made made them uneasy, and made them afraid. They took it down, of course, but another one took its place the next day. The doors were locked, the […]

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