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Working: Volume 2, Number 1 - Issue 5 Spring 2023
 

Taurus ​​Zodiac Highlight

Roll Up Your Sleeves
Calvin McCauley
I’m tired
My back hurts
I need a day off
 
No
 
I’m sick
My baby
Mom is in town
 
Sure
 
My neck
My glasses
I need a sleep day
 
Cut the crap
Get to work
And roll up your sleeves​
Previous Highlights
 

Aries ​​Zodiac Highlight

Uncomplicated
Bailey Daniels
Don’t get me wrong
 
I am very strong
Just like a ram
And a little wild
Like a firecracker
 
But I like it easy
I like it simple
I like it when I
Can live in my optimism
 
No consequences
Just jump
Don’t think
Just dance
 
Let’s just spin around
Until I fall
And I’ll deal with the pain
When I hit the ground​
 

Pisces ​​Zodiac Highlight

Waterboard
Girard Balson
When I was a kid
I never learned how to swim
My dad tried to show me
By throwing me in the pool
 
I think I swam for a moment
But really I mostly sank
And sank and when I hit the bottom
I imagined that I was a mermaid
 
I wanted to be
I thought I could be
But I wasn’t
I was drowning
 
After that my father
Would threaten to waterboard me
Whenever I misbehaved
 
I was a good kid
 
I thought about what it was like
Being smothered
Being suffocated

​Drowning
 
I didn’t drown
I didn’t suffocate
 
But I remember what that was like
 
I like waterboarding would be worst
 
Because that would mean
Someone wanted to hurt you
Previous Highlights
 

Aquarius ​​Zodiac Highlight

High Society Socialite
Brady Clover
There you are
intellectual and creative
independent
that's you

I knew you never liked
to be told what to do

but it society, it's rude
not to participate
the way you do

but to be close 
​the way we were
it hurts not to be near you
 

​​Capricorn Zodiac Highlight

Dark Side of the Moon
Diane Fraser
My sister was a blur. As soon as she could walk, she ran.

I was six and she was four. Mom made us matching outfits to wear to church.
White with green leaves and pink flowers.
She spent an hour tucking in our lace trimmed blouses and socks, taming
Dawn’s ringlets and setting the barrettes just right.

She pushed us together and snapped a polaroid.
There, don’t you girls look beautiful.

Dawn looked at herself, flattening her hands over her jacket
as if she were wiping something off.

The Moon is always female, mother.

We stepped out into bright morning sun, budding trees, pine.
Dawn ran to the right, around the house.
Mom sprinted after her, hobbled by her brown pencil skirt.
I waited.
Dawn zipped around from the left, feet bare and jacket gone,
pulling off her blouse as she flew past.

Mom huffed by a minute later. Hold these, she pushed
Dawn’s discarded shoes, jacket and socks at me.
She circled and returned, Dawn’s blouse and skirt in hand.

Help me find her, Mom said, her face an imploded mask.
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Copyright © 2023 Empyrean Literary Magazine, L.L.C.
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