My sincerest apologies to all our followers and writers.
One Real Story has been offline for way too long. Tough times. Starting next month, we will commence publishing and start sending out the long overdue author copies of the current volume. I appreciate your patience and look forward to getting things started back up.

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Do what I tell you to do
your face is like flour dough
your nose like a slant directionally
unknown like an adverb–
tossed into space.
Your hat is like an angel
wedding gown draped
over vodka body
like a Christ shield
protecting you in innocence.
It is here I kiss your lips as a total stranger;
bring myself closely to your eyes;
camp out on your [...]

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I see the spring dance all over your face in green
you were arrogant before you viewed my willow tree
outside my balcony.
Now you wave at me
with green fingers
and lime smiles.
You twist my words,
Harvard collegiate style,
right where you want them to be–
lime green, willow tree, and
dark skinned branches.
About the Author
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance [...]

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Salvation Army and
the Christians arrived today,
Christmas, like every other Sunday morning
feed the homeless, chasing the rats from the bathroom,
basement, kicking the dead flies out of the corner spots
where the cat used to lounge-
clean the toilet bowl, a form of revival and resurrection.
I privately pastor to these desires though I myself am homeless.
I forgot what it’s [...]

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I’m going to take Islam where their God has not been before-
to the garden of Jesus, olive oil presses, Gethsemane–
trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables didn’t poison anyone there.
Passion was sweat on the ground and brow.
There weren’t darts of hate, misconception or terrorism;
children on their knees five times a day brainwashed to hate.
Christ didn’t lead them [...]

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It’s calm.
Too quiet.
My clear plastic bowl
serves as my bird feeder.
I don’t hear the distant
scratching, shuffling
of tiny sparrow feet,
the wing dances, fluttering, of a hungry
morning’s lack of big band sounds.
I walk tentatively to my patio window,
spy the balcony with detective eyes.
I witness three newly hatched
toddler sparrows, curved nails, mounted
deep, in their mother’s dead, decaying back.
Their childish [...]

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Edith, in this nursing home
blinded with macular degeneration,
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace–
as yesterday’s winds
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.
“Oh, where did Jesus disappear
to, she murmured,
over and over again,”
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
“Oh, there He is my my
Angel of the coming.”
About the [...]

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A Métis Indian lady
hands blanketed over as in pray,
spirit gods inside her empty purse,
hang over a large brown fruit basket
naked of fruit, no vine,
approaches the Edmonton, Alberta
adoption agency.
Inside, refrained from life
with a wine sap apple wedged fruity
like a teaspoon of autumn sun
inside the infants mouth,
a shallow pool of tears form–
swell like melons in infant
native blue [...]

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Rebecca fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or a pull of a lever,
that one of the bunch in her pocket was a winner or the slots were a redeemer;
but life itself was not real that was strictly for the mentally insane at the Elgin
Mental Institution..
She gambled her savings away on a riverboat
stuck in mud [...]

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