Most discussed stories

on the morning of my final

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And there was one girl from Ireland, with her thick Irish brogue, who came into my bedroom early on the morning before my final exam for my Masters degree in the writing program at Irvine. She knew I was so nervous about taking the exam that I hadn’t sl

11am, Sunday, in Green

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The eyelid of the sink blinks silence. The clocks choke on smoke.

Knowing the Ending

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“No!” Shouted Jon. “I don't get it!” Clarissa stared at her hands in her lap and tried not to cry. She knew it was her fault they were there. She was the one who cheated. But she could not understand why Jon wanted, no needed, to…

Five Million Yen: Chapter 33

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This will take forever. I’ll never get to Antibes to meet Isabella, much less make it to Marseille to deliver the picture and then catch the overnight train to Paris. I may have to call Jean-Claude Lyon, the orchestra manager of the Monte Carlo orchestra,

The Last Appearance of God

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Talking about the event years later, all of the observers agreed to a surprising extent on God's details. God was not an old man with a beard, nor a halo of light, nor a burning bush. God was an absence, a disruption of vision. When you looked right at Go

Getting There

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Her light blue eyes fixed on a point to our left, past one of the church steeples poking out of the flat, charred ground – like a toothpick protecting a birthday cake from its cellophane ceiling; an untouched bethesda keeping the never-blue sky from crash

YOU ARE A FRIEND, SEWING TRAIN

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over taking the sky before near blindness, a clipping occurs

Metro Blues.

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She had no eyes that I could see. Just a pair of lips; they looked soft

5 Poems In The Shape Of Other Poems

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the things we will accomplish, the things we will leave to others

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.1

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A Nocturne, whose grey mana seeped out of it mouth, grabbed the roof of the building with its large claws. Using it as leverage, it stood itself up, hunched over, its long whale like head roared like a loud horn.

The Messenger, Chapter 2

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"Something happened to me, Rasul, and I got these powers for a reason ... then I just happened to have a karaoke buddy who happens to have grown up in a family of magicians, who knew something about what I was going through?  That's *fate*!"

Castor and Pollux

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Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.

The Fields

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Swat at those screeching children with tufts of harp-grass. Flail, mad eyed and sad sighed with all gleaming hope gone out of the daylight. Swat and screech swat and screech. We continue until their thick bark-like hides are smooth and polished. We sand them with…

Here's a five (5) question 'POP QUIZ' about ME!

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Which well-known Portland celebrity did I at-first-unwittingly accost at the Aug. 2007 Thermals show, hitting them up for $0.50 so I could get a slice of pizza ?

With Every Word

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The bedroom was still as our conversation dissolved into a heavy silence broken only by the ticking of the clock on her night table and the occasional sob that hadn't yet been swallowed in her pillow. I stubbed out my cigarette and leaned forward in…

Hyperbolic Doubt - And Wherever After To Discover The Truth Behind That Some Timely And Malignant Demon Bad Luck

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The toilet paper had been the least of the issue. It was just something else for her to yell about. See, what she was really upset about was the bank account. The bank account had been his, then theirs, and now it was his again.

Trapping for Poetesses

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So many traps for catching female poets have been invented that it is a rare editor who ever really sees one. H.L. Mencken

Coffee-Stained Fangs (excerpt)

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I’m not dog-like in any sexy manner, like a Wolf Man who kills livestock and lurks in the shadows on the outer fringes of society, mouth bloodied at the tips, and waking up as a fully functioning human naked in some field. Instead, I lurk among rows of cu

Coming From Alabama

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In the state that the stars fell on, Love and I stumbled upon bits of God where he forgot sky and moon, too.

He's Sarcastic

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I got kicked out of a soup and salad place last week for trying to buy a large soda so I could sit and eat my sack lunch there while I read “Love’s Desperate Creatures” by Dorothy Danville. Have you read it? Its great. I’ll give it to you when I’m done

This Is A Warning

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Walking home, carrying his guitar case, Jed felt the sums of his life adding up to dangerously high numbers, the deadly inertia of vaguely comfortable apathy swallowing his time. His moment would soon be fading. Because, like many young men before him, Jed…

i've worn it like a trophy all day

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if i could i would leave/ my beating heart like flowers/ pumping blood upon your doorstep/ in gory testament/ to the way you make me feel.

Break-up Bars (A Recipe...)

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2 sticks soft (like your heart) butter... ... 1 cup crushed (like you) walnuts...

Punkboy vs. Planned Parenthood

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I am gonna pound you face through that plate glass protective door until everyone who needs help can get in without your judgy face looking at them.

The Blue Jay

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His mother hated blue jays, hated them with a passion she usually reserved for no-count trash who drank beer on their front steps and worked on their cars in the street.

Young Turks

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There was a whole group of us Young Turk poets who hung out at the Savoy Tivoli in North Beach. Most of them drove cabs, (whereas I was now working in a damned gas station for Angel, my publisher’s man, who got me a job there.) They would double-park thei

To Sleep

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The woman wrings her hands again and again, reaching up to place one under her chin, then to her cheek as though there is some pending trepidation no one else can see...

El Gabacho

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She turned to the window, staring into the dark. A smile crept to her lips and she laughed softly. “No, we can’t. I’m Mexican and we speak Spanish.” The smile vanished and she moved to leave. “No sé qué decir… sólo puedo llorar. Nada

Pets

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But in the dust bunny there was an equally relentless and sneaky foe. A brilliant General that silently marshaled its troops under tables and chairs, in obscure, shadowy corners, and along the unsuspecting flat surface of things.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...