Most discussed stories

The Work of Beauty

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the steady, persistent work of beauty

Beard-Men

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Sometimes they bleat like sheep when I shave in the shower. They live in a complex social order.

Sleepless #3

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My ex-girlfriends live in a pastel-drenched cabin on the edge of a hemlock forest in Canada somewhere,

evening cigarette

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It's short.

The Judge's Wife Part 5

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—Jesus, that bastard has everyone in his pocket.

(2) 77 Words (pcs.)

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The sometimes shiver that arrives from awkward silences and the more often cold that comes from midwestern winters.

M Tractor

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If I saw a little old man out there, a fellow with a hunched up back, I shouldn't be afraid.

First Kiss With Rubber

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Julie studied her brush, plucking a strand of hair from it. She looked up and smiled. "My mother thought you were a peeper."

Mercury Unbound - 6

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Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor. I don't like it but I can't stop listening. It doesn't fit my mood, or the high plains landscape, or the early evening, pink and blue, pastel colored sky.

with and without absent lines

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Across the vacant vanished . . .

Downtown Milwaukee

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Downtown Milwaukee My feet are exposed, never been out in public even out here— …

what time is it really is it?

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. . . the roar of fire speaks lasting heat . . . .

the honey ant of Kaapa Tjampitjimpa

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1I'VE BEEN looking though books of paintings and I've been thinking …

(There) You Are(There Again)

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looking like you never once purposefully disappeared from our view. Like a river running clean through a fog's lying heart. Like standing thunder, suddenly gone solid enough, within a crazed hungry countryside, like a smile's radius, to be seen and heard …

The Man from OBERIU

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Elizaveta still wore her winning smile, the one that only charmed. She looked up suddenly: “Watch out, Pushkin! (falls over Gogol) “Watch out, Gogol!” (falls over Pushkin).

Atrocities

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My table offers up the gutted calf/ with carrots and potatoes yanked / alive and whole

Faces

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Three months had passed since the grease fire melted Jasmine's face.I sat beside her on the hospital bed and held her clamy hand as she trembled. "No more stir-fry," I joked. The doctor and nurse faked a chuckle. Jasmine might have, but the bandages muffled…

Fort Stark, New Hampshire

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Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get where you need to be.

No More Little Bridget

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I spend my time sitting on the back step—poison oak reddening my arm—under the eaves, waiting to escape.

Wandering the Streets of Fitzrovia

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I’m deathly afraid of the pub crawls of my ancestors, through Bohemia and Fitzrovia because of the ghosts of alcohol already etched inside my veins and the headlong loss of oxygen

Echo

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When the poet loves,/ I said, quoting the poet,/ he loves himself.

Crossing the Center Line

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He was a Decembrist but he was not / one of the hanged

Joseph Campbell by the Aloe Vera Plants

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There was man from antiquity that sat next to me. His belief in the healing qualities of Aloe Vera so pronounced, that the house brimmed with such. He had no use for modernity in any of its forms but was fond of supermarkets. When in one he was overwhelmed with an…

Seriously?

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Did you really think you were going to cure cancer with that poem?

Snatch XIII

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Yet...

SantaBot, Can You Hear Me?

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Mimi: Santa, I am so down with taking a number, but I really can't have you reading that particular story. Santa: Let me be the judge of that. I am Santa. I give presents to kids.

My Notes on "Quittin' Ain't Easy"

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Sorry, I think I was jotting and not writing. I see a dropped article that would clarify my interest. I purposely didn't describe my alcohol use. There, I just did.

Passion

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From words to meaning― how complicated it is.

A Body of Water Invites All Things

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My resistance sublimates. There is a long instant of absolute relinquishment, in which I imagine droplets of water plinking into my lungs in a slow, musical fashion, like icicles melting in a perfect cave.

The Trapper Boy at Work, One Mile Underground

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The coal carts come and go like the seasons, never stopping.