Most discussed stories

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.

Joe's Sniff Shack

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Joe's, always smelling of cherry chapstick or the breeze that comes up from subway grates, used to service some of the finest dupes in town.

My Grandmother's Wedding Ring

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My grandmother and her children spent six weeks living in barns, then were taken for a three day nightmare ride in hot cattle cars to Auschwitz.

Monaco Memories

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Back then he raced, grinding gears and skimming the edges of death.

Taikutsuna, Abburido, Boring

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A Beatles haircut and loose Khaki painters overalls rendered the child sexless. He or she walked over to Hugh’s side and standing tiptoe peered into the casket. She, for Hugh had determined it was a girl, stroked the silk lining.

Self Pity

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The army was bulldozing grandmother's house.

Waiting for Big Bird

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Jonathan jumps up from his seat, knocking over his mug of coffee, when Mona tells him she thinks she is in labor.

The Lightning

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IThe squirrels danced in the trees.They leapt from branch to limbto the struck down tree trunk,thick with bark.The creek was overfilled.Lightning had lasted for days."Just one more day,"she told herself"Just one more day,"before the sun comes out again.The lightning had…

Close to Ireland (for the Paddy Group Challenge)

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The closest I've been to Ireland is Conwy castle on the coast of Wales. It was summer, mid-way through college. I was naive and dreamy then. I wandered historic and literary monuments throughout England and weighed my future options.

By Derangement of All Our Senses

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We will collapse in a storm of images