Tag: love

Sticks and Stones

Jacqueline Cioffa

You are better than that, so much brighter than spewing and spitting rhetoric. You are morally responsible and dignified.
Honor is your middle name.
Youth, pay attention you are our
Salvation.

Jacqueline Cioffa

A retired, international model, and celebrity makeup artist. Co-Author of Model Citi Zen, the guide. Founder of http://modelcitizenmakeup.blogspot.com/. Author of numerous prose pieces in various literary magazines. Most recently published in Little Episodes Brainstorms the anthology, among esteemed artists Sadie Frost, Melvin Burgess and Todd Swift.

Day 302: Bye, Felicia.

Amye Archer

I have written a million poems about my body. How she couldn’t stay in her lane, fit in her assigned container, listen to directions. How she never did what was expected, lived in the fray, wandered endlessly from ship to ship.

Amye Archer

Amye Archer holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her memoir, Fat Girl, Skinny, was named runner-up for the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award, and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has two poetry collections: BANGS and A Shotgun Life, both published by Big Table Publishing. Amye’s work has appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Hippocampus, Mothers Always Write, Nailed Magazine, PMS: Poem Memoir Story, PANK, and Provincetown Arts. She is the creator of The Fat Girl Blog.

Right Here

Ann Klotz

The April Mom died, I resisted going East, believing that if I didn’t go, she wouldn’t die. I did not want her spry, wise, funny light extinguished. But my second daughter, then fifteen, looked at me with scorn and said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m going to Read more

Ann Klotz

I am a writer and mother, living in Shaker Heights, OH, where I am the Head of Laurel School, a girls' school. Our house is full of books and tiny rescue dogs. My work has appeared in Literary Mama, Mothers Always Write, the Brevity Blog, Mutha, Mamlode, The Grief Diaries, Manifest Station and elsewhere. My essay about becoming a teacher was recently published in Creative Nonfiction's anthology What I Didn't Know. I blog semi-regularly for the Huffington Post.

Five Year Gap

Judith Staff

Five-year gap It could have been ten, I was so young then Just sixteen, you were just ‘old’ Policing my youth, like you always knew better Me and Molly, your mall rats We partied late into the night and brought you coffee at sunrise You scolded our morning-after-those Wildberry Vodka Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

West Of The Deuce

Dori Owen

The town was Show Low
named for a poker hand
way up in the White Mountains
of wild western Arizona
how very ironic
we met in a poker room
at the Dancing Eagle

Dori Owen

Dori Owen is a storyteller, writing from small town Arizona, after living a few decades in California as an LA Wild Child, with a brief stop in Reno. She settled into grownup life as a project manager, collecting an MBA and a few husbands along the way. She is a shown artist and her favorite pastime is upcycling old furniture and decor she finds from thrift stores. She lives with the cat who came to visit but stayed. The love of her life is her grown son who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her essays and poems have been published in RAW&UNFILTERED VOL I, StigmaFighters Vol 2, and Love Notes From Humanity. Her blogs have been featured on The Lithium Chronicles, Open Thought Vortex, Sudden Denouement, and The Mighty.

Still Waters

John Michael Antonio

there is so much beauty and so little time

which makes me tearfully treasure the breath of life

and your sun kissed shoulders and smile

John Michael Antonio

John Michael Antonio is a freelance writer, photographer, poet and screenwriter. He claims his Midwestern roots while at the same time admitting his incurable and insatiable love and addiction for all things New York City. He has been the husband to his wife, the love of his life, for almost thirty years and is a father of three wonderful children. He is an unapologetic male feminist as well as a passionate lover of fashion, art, movies and music from all eras and genres. An endless dreamer, John Michael is also an avid historian, ex-punk rocker and a legendary Internet surfer who sleeps, on average, about four hours a day. His work has also been featured on The Good Men Project.

The Perils of the Business World

Allison Ricks

I touched upon my entire anatomy of silver ribbons and glittering intentions and deep black tar of unidentifiable insecurity without first learning how each part of me functioned.

Allison Ricks

Allison Ricks is a high school senior in New Jersey. She can't swallow the world so she reads books instead.

The Wonders of You

John Michael Antonio

for my part I don’t deserve you
but yet you believed in me
before I believed in myself
and on one trembling knee
I am humbled by your love

John Michael Antonio

John Michael Antonio is a freelance writer, photographer, poet and screenwriter. He claims his Midwestern roots while at the same time admitting his incurable and insatiable love and addiction for all things New York City. He has been the husband to his wife, the love of his life, for almost thirty years and is a father of three wonderful children. He is an unapologetic male feminist as well as a passionate lover of fashion, art, movies and music from all eras and genres. An endless dreamer, John Michael is also an avid historian, ex-punk rocker and a legendary Internet surfer who sleeps, on average, about four hours a day. His work has also been featured on The Good Men Project.