Most discussed stories

The Suicide Lie

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I’m a suicide prevention counselor for teens. Most of the time I answer phones and tell kids not to kill themselves over their boyfriends and girlfriends and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, etc. I’m not even sure what the number is—1-800-DONT-DIE or something li

TWO STEPS

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It turns out I know a thing or two about momentum. I know, I know. Like the crescendo of your bicycle wheels. Like the force the florist put on the stems the day Linda died. The way my fingers spin between planetary mass. This is how I know I’m not real

Philip Guston and the Ultimate Mudball

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The huge mudball has rolled downhill, catching up one of them. Part of a leg sticking up from the surface with its shoe still on, but we can assume the rest of the human, or humanity if you will, is lost somewhere deep inside it.

Sisyphus

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He’s more than a little pissed at all this eternal boulder rolling.

The Perplexed Follow Their Own Guidance, Merci

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The generalized mania and rage was for anything prior, the rare and the bygone, anything that might have been overlooked, anything that might otherwise have been forgotten for good and forever.

To Make Way for the Future

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It was the shock of black hair twisted into a long thick braid that got our attention and made us want to find meaning here. Albert thought he recognized the hair in the grave.

Magdalena

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Magdalena followed the receding tide, her tiny feet leaving no rumors in the hard sand. She gathered only the most beautiful shells and presented them to her waiting Abuela. Her grandmother told her that the only things that a woman truly owns are her dreams. She told her…

London Calling

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Bloomsbury crowd

A Harsh Pep Talk

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You are nothing but a generic white man with average looks and intelligence, trapped in an indie romantic comedy. You sit in your overstuffed coffeeshop chair, drinking an impossibly befoamed cappuccino, the sleeves of your flannel rolled up to your elbows, mellow synth…

Hey Old Lady! Want To Buy A Reverse Mortgage?

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Facebook just hit me with an ad for coping with memory loss, probably because I just turned 63. As far as my favorite social media site is concerned, I am now an Old Lady. When I asked my Facebook pals who are also Seniors what kind of promotions have been turning up…

Goodbye, Me

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The racket of me left this morning

The Ex Flies

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"My ex Maxine claimed red wine was the healthy alcohol choice. When we were married and I still had money she drank the expensive stuff, as if drinking Chateau Montrose 2005 instead of two buck chuck made her any less of a wino. She would have been better

The Year Of Our Lord, 2020

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There is loneliness in eating garbanzo beans all by yourself on a Saturday afternoon while drinking wine and watching Hulu. Teenage angst still lingers.There you are on another Saturday in 1975 staring at the boy next door through the kitchen window.And what of it?You…

My Summer Vacation

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Apple is apple plum plum that is a kiss without a tongue

At the back of the crowd

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They were all celebrating something, but she couldn’t see what it was.

15 Restatements

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I arrange 15 restatements of how lovely you are forward then backward, horizontally then vertically then along the diagonals.

Call Me Rust

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Call me anything but Ishmael. Call me Enamel.

Wildfire

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Those resting in clusters of bones, Cradled in ashes of what once were homes.

Sisyphus takes the day off

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what-ta-hell, fuck this he snorts brushing the dust from his shoulders

Waiting for Lunch

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The banality of his own state of boredom, a luxury to be satiated with violence, to hack with an axe the exposed neck of his friend.

I Don't Know Why People Still Read These Things

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POETRY IS DEGENERACY / IS A DISGUSTING HABIT

Prime cut

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1I don't like it when they leave the heads on.I mean it's not nice, is it.The idyllic order of the abattoir.Mary is on stunning and bleeding.She prefers evisceration.Still, the work's ok and it's her day off tomorrow.Deft hands perform their daily ballet.Mary had a…

untitled

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I am a sunflower. I turn my yellow and black face, bruised, to the sun, hoping its light will heal me. With my eyes closed I can see my stamen, veins in my eyelids, bulbous where they intersect. The sun feeds…

a song for the sun

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what lion lies/ o king of flame/ upon your golden crown?

Only losers reminisce about their show & tell days

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Somehow I always had to sit behind him. I remember because he had a constellation of skin tags on his neck. I thought about drawing stars on him; I thought about creating a new galaxy I would rule. I should have been learning math instead. I still can’t

Charms L.P.

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Funny, you can drink wine and eat stale crackers, but you cannot suck a simple lollipop? Where does it say that in the bible? Nowhere, that’s where.

The Big Tits of Beth in L.A.

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Next, through my grad student apartment at Verano Place, came Beth. Big tits you could suck on all night long, just don’t touch Pussy. Beth held me all night one night when I was totally freaking out after smoking what I thought was normal dope at a poetr

Walking The World Alone

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Yeah I walk itWithout a companionOr friendI walk the world aloneIt seems right to meI don't like the moviesMost television showsOr most popular musicI walk the world aloneUnable to buildAn emotional attachmentWith anyoneI walk the world aloneWith beer as My…

Nascent Talk with the Gypsy

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She was having a laugh, but I didn't know what about. We were sitting in a big house that was on the top of a large incline. All these books were scattered around, and the walls and the kitchen, the doors and the quarter round and every other thing, was old and…

About The Author

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Gnarly Berger was born in a guitar case in Istanbul. His mother was an Iranian singer from Israel accompanied by a Turkish santur player & a French guitarist (Gnarly's biological father) and into whose guitar case Gnarly entered this world, somewhat by accident,…