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Explaining That These Hands Are Not Uncalloused by Work
Woodshop, workshop: with the grain, against the grain: searching for splinters with bare palms, learning where to sand a proud surface flush and true.
By: Patrick Thomas Henry
Tributary
Tributary: skinny, vertically challenged stream, longed metamorphosis into a full-fledged River (like a caterpillar to a monarch), but didn’t want to be a run-on (sentence??), running on from its mouth, which would indeed be inappropriate, I mean, it didn’t want to run its mouth, so Tributary asked its friends Colon, Comma, Semi-Colon, and Conjunction if they would help, and in an upending of tradition, and astoundingly, they said yes thus transforming Tributary into a grammatically correct loooooooong Sentence (I mean River) and then the five of them, long river, colon, comma, semi-colon AND conjunction, jumped in a boat; sailing away.
By: Martine Rife
Fun with Y’all
Y’all are reading this story as y’all’s eyes flick —
A duo of dashes —
Pl
um
ett
ing
and then coasting y’all’s gaze
Back to the
Left.
By: Alex Meyer
Every Single Draft Is a Dead-End in a Text-Based Dungeon Crawler
You wake up. The draft on your desk is a pale sheet. Either the wind ripples it or the light has riffled the pixels. You must draft.
>>>Type story.
Cannot type story. You must draft. For help, type HELP.
>>>Place fingers on keyboard.
Cannot place fingers.
>>>Describe desk.
Desk is wood. On the desk: notebook, pen, computer.
>>>Write something.
Cannot write something. You must draft. For help, type HELP.
>>>HELP
Acceptable terms TAKE, USE, LOOK, GO. Acceptable directions UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST.
>>>go desk
You sit at the desk.
>>>write
Cannot write. For help, type HELP.
