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The House of Zabka by Marcus Slease

Marcus Slease

House of Zabka

Mind the ice, says Didi. We shuffle across the parking lot. My stomach rumbles. Have to feed the monsters, says Didi. She reaches inside her yellow trench coat and pulls out a paper bag. She opens the … [Read more...]

Let Me Tell You About the Fistfight I Got Into Last Night

Amy Fusselman

912 - Denise Enck

My friend Mendi gave me a book by the Dalai Lama for my birthday. It has a color picture of him on the cover. The words are by him, all right. I started reading, I was sailing along at a nice clip. I … [Read more...]

Shine – Star Spider

Star Spider

Shine

She moves soft as moonlight, pouring across the concrete. She follows the sound of the music as it reaches out into the quiet streets. She’s been following the sound for eons and still it pulls her … [Read more...]

Inaudible

Dean Monti

Can’t anyone just give us a straight answer? He rambles, doctor. It’s dementia, isn’t it? I see no signs… Here we go. I see no signs of… Here we go… ‘no one can say for sure.’ I see no … [Read more...]

Heebling’s Journals

Dean Monti

Heebling's Journals

The recent, unexpected passing of Charles Heebling and the subsequent discovery of his “third-floor journals” are finally shedding light on an intriguing and relatively unknown area of scientific … [Read more...]

Red Warner’s Last Painting

Alec Clayton

Red Warner's Last Painting

Excerpted from the forthcoming novel, Visual Liberties He's now had his morning coffee and finished off a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and slices of banana. From the back of his closet he digs out … [Read more...]

From Notes of an Errant A/C Man: The Secret to My Uncle’s Jalisco Style Birria – jose arroyo

jose arroyo

THE SECRET TO MY UNCLE’S JALISCO STYLE BIRRIA i shouldn’t’ve opened my big mouth: where i’ve been accused by women of being ‘emotionally unavailable’, i make myself too available for these … [Read more...]

Chiseled in Rock

George Djuric

Alvin Lee, 1975 (detail) by Jim Summaria, http://www.jimsummariaphoto.com

Literature is a morgue: I go there to identify my friends. One of them evaporated yesterday, March 6, 2013. The last pic he nailed through the ether toward me had his Woodstock cherry red 335 erecting … [Read more...]

“Street Corner” and “Process” – Matt Hill

Matt Hill

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dandeluca/6778493258/ / dandeluca

A hypothetical encounter between poets Philip Lamantia and Bob Kaufman on a San Francisco street corner. Since both lived in the same North Beach neighborhood, loitered in the same cafes, and more … [Read more...]

I’m For an Art

Alec Clayton

bar via http://www.sxc.hu/profile/xramnet

1982 SoHo Painting can be an evil mistress. She can love you tender and she can love you raunchy, and she can rip your guts apart. When you put that last stroke on your canvas and you know … [Read more...]

Post-Zen, a reflection for Reilly

Jennifer White

collage copyright D. Raphael

When you were put away your car had a half a tank of gas. This surprised me, because I had only ever seen you put five dollars in at a time. While you drove I would watch the dial on the odometer … [Read more...]

A Curious Stew

Teresa Conboy

Los Angeles, copyright Aculine http://www.sxc.hu/profile/aculine

Silver Lake was a circus when I moved here in ‘92.  By day it was old buildings with peeling paint set against lush hillsides with hidden graffitied cement stairways and morning glories everywhere. … [Read more...]

Lost Angeles: Writers on the Storm

Jim Cherry

The Last Stage - novel by Jim Cherry

"Lost Angeles: Writers on the Storm" is an excerpt from Jim Cherry’s novel The Last Stage. We pulled up in front of a u-shaped apartment building that opened into a courtyard, the address the … [Read more...]

One Man, One Vote

Steven D. Stark

One Man, One Vote

It was Election Day and the lines were as long as anyone could remember. Even longer. To be sure this was the age of advanced technology so in many places people could vote on their computers and … [Read more...]

Students: A Play by Peter Rose

Peter Rose

Students: A Play by Peter Rose

The living room of a student house in London. Emma sits holding a mug of tea. Robbie stands looking out of the window holding a bottle of beer. She is twenty. He is sixty. ROBBIE:You think you know … [Read more...]

Dancing the Blues

Caitlyn Waldman

San Francisco at Night - Sam Goodgame

Friday night is blues dancing in the South of Market district of San Francisco. A small studio space filled with about thirty people freely moving to the music in a way that can only be described as a … [Read more...]

from a novel-in-progress . . . .

Paul Maher Jr.

i We backtracked from the northern path after losin’ our way, me n’ my brother, to Tempest County. We’d been on n' indian trail for three days, movin’ by night, restin’ in orchards n’ groves n’ … [Read more...]

Everything All at Once: A Short Story

Natalie Wright

Everything All at Once - Natalie Wright

I left my poetry somewhere...dropped it...didn't even know it was missing until recently. I found it tucked inside an old book given to me when I was younger from a poet with sparkling eyes. Given to … [Read more...]

Hollywood Rooftops

Teresa Conboy

Photo by Josh Rose via Unsplash, modified by EM

The ghosts of that 1920s apartment were in the air when we sat on its rooftop drinking wine, one summer’s eve at dusk. We could almost see old Betty’s skinny frame still making her way up Las Palmas … [Read more...]

Everything Must Go by Teresa Conboy

Teresa Conboy

Larry was a rare one. Very nice and helpful – he would expertly fix the leaky faucets when my landlord didn’t get around to it. Unfortunately when it came to most everything else, Larry was like the … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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