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The Parliament Literary Journal

The Parliament

Literary Journal

Summer 2023 / Issue 10

Letter from the Editor

Make conscious the reality of death

Poems & Prose

Photography & Art

Click on the cover image to see a flipbook version of the journal or select individual works below.

Poetry & Prose

Poetry & Prose

Shannon Frost Greenstein
To the Med Student Whose Anatomy-Class Cadaver is My Best Friend

She didn't like pizza / She always shared her weed

Shannon Frost Greenstein
Your Requiem is on My Playlist

and sometimes I have to skip to the next track

Shannon Frost Greenstein

Shooting Stars Lose Their Meaning When You're Dead

I wanted to hate her because she was thinner than me

Bri Narick
Eternal Internal Cradles

I didn't mean to hurt her

Michael Brockley
Aloha Shirt Finds a Copy of Mein Kampf Among the Books in His Library

In his haphazardly-shelved library, he stares at the black cover with the infamous red title

Michael Brockley
Reporting to Mars from the Country of Archangels, Armadillos, and Apple Pie

Pulling the wool over someone's eyes is an example of a snow job

Michael Brockley
Trouble Ball

For months you haven't spoken to anyone without paying for the conversation

Bruce McRae
In the Elsewhere

Her death had voles and moles and indices

Bruce McRae
Death-Black and Starbound

This is the house of death, it's egg-and-spoon race, its unfortunate spree

Stephen Kingsnorth
Three Feet

... but hither, green green grass of home

Stephen Kingsnorth
Committed?

I'll make fake news, a cover up, a cocktail, bottles down the drain

Stephen Kingsnorth
Sleigh Bells

Skeletal tree beneath the yews where youths cavort

Stephen Kingsnorth
Dust

The prompts surrounding on the shelf bring within reach that love I've known

Christopher T. Dabrowski
The So-Called Lesser of Two Evils

The plague spread rapidly

Bob King
Prolific Ghost Fuel

Soon enough we're all CliffNotes, obituaries of longing

Bob King
Dear Sadness

You unite us, Sadness.

Ellis Jamieson
So Long We Become the Flowers

I might crush him and not feel a thing

Jeremy Mullen

The sound of the Apocalypse

Then you hear a gunshot in the distance

Jeremy Mullen
The Family of the Grand Matador Kept His Statue of the Bull

that el toro was a symbol of life

C. Graham Campbell
Spiritual Growth Boot Camp

Death and I looked each other in the eyes and 'decided' we would hang out together for a while

Doug van Hooser
Coda

I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.

Even in December be a leaf the wind cannot twist free

Fred Zirm
Matryoshka

And so the generations nest inside each other

Jason R. Montgomery
This most recent apocalypse

She asks me if my brother sent me Potassium iodide yet

Liz Lydic
God intentions

I didn't know someone could die from Elmer's glue

Doug van Hooser
On My Last Day I Will Know Jealousy

I have never known how to forgive the flowers

Fred Zirm
Shadow Walking

My this measure, each block I circle is half a month

Nicholas Barnes
charon's obol

either god's not real or he's impotent

Edward Miller
That High Lonesome Sound

He came onto the porch hodling the stock of a Remington under his arm

Doug van Hooser
Calving Glaciers

There is a constant gentle knock at the back door

Fred Zirm
Oral Hygiene

So much floss is loss

Jason R. Montgomery
Folar de pascoa

Jessalina told me the bread was pregnant with the body of the world

Nicholas Barnes
bloody town

city morgue lockers. gentrified hipster locales.

Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes
Worn Days

My life will shrivel while long weeds thrive

Bill Baynes
matters of importance

and that thing old men do

Art & Photography

Art & Photography

Humera Alisammond
Death, Personified

Janis Butler Holm
Skull Vase with Lilies

Diego Gonzalez

Diego Gonzalez

Diego Gonzalez

Alan Bern
oh Winnie

oh_Winnie (1).jpg

Alan Bern
light enchapeled

Salma Lentini
Death, Personified

Kevin Vivers
In Mourning

Kevin Vivers
just some bones on the forest floor

just_bones_on_the_forest_floor..._.jpg

Hennesys Martinez
Death, Personified

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