Most read stories

Daily Living

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When we are given eternity, as a night is eternal

Destiny Narrowly Avoided

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Then it started extruding tendrils and tying them all into intricate knots.

Love Las Muertas

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a dozen girls with Encarnación's face flit past, whispering kisses along the part of my hair, tickling their hems along the cuticles of my nails.

A Strategy to Overcome Rejection

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“If your work is good you will get published. Just keep at it."

Bookstore Reading, Telegraph Ave, Berkeley

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There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

Mon in the forest: a fragment

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Mon wakes up surrounded by trees. The light is grey, the trunks black.How long have I slept? he wonders.He doesn't know which way to walk. In every direction, the same prospect of trees. He looks up at a blank sky. No sign even of the sun.***He starts walking. Slowly,…

Johnny

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He also had OCD. He had to kick every dog he met. Johnny killed a lot of dogs and was bitten by many others. He was a cruel bastard.

I Dated A 50 Foot Woman

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There was no need to drive. She could travel ten miles in ten minutes. She merely had to be careful not to step on any cars or trucks.

This Is How You Make The Bed

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He disrobes; shoes, socks, shirt, belt, pants. He smells of hard work. The nude whisper of everything else.

Sort of Like Bukowski, But Completely Oblivious

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My eyes don’t close but hers are shut tight, and something inside tells me that to this girl, I could be absolutely anyone.

Have You Seen Me?

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It’s as she reaches into the fridge for the carton of half-and-half with the grainy waxy photo of the little girl—Last Seen 10/2/06—that the memory surfaces: “Hey. That’s mine.”

Love Story

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I fall in love with a second cousin at the picnic. I make sure I sit next to her.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 20

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The Gropers of Prague were there, all around us, in spirit if not in fact. Was it KGB? Was it a ghost from my past? Or my own hand? Stop guessing. It was Einstein himself. The KGB had taken him into custody somehow, though by what authority? All the

#32: Deep in Structures of Awareness (Structured Poem)

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In ashen hills of yonder

Poem in A Dead Language Only I Understand, Translated for You

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I used to be a poet, you know. / Better, in many respects, than you.

19.

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They made posters and hung them everywhere. With the passing days she became the photograph at its center: hair always in the same ponytail; always with the same smile

End Scene

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In the fall it is especially beautiful with the blazing orange oaks set on fire against a crystal blue sky. It is here that she frequently daydreams of her demise.

Flash Gordon in Iowa

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I will show you how, in the spring, the sidewalks here look like a crossword puzzle resting under a glass of lemonade,

Glossolalia

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Method of divination. Open a book to any section. Drop your hand onto the page. Read that there is an exorcism happening in the other room.

Myself Today

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Suddenly I'm not feeling it anymore. / Poetry has become insufficient. / I can't do it like I used to.

Event Particle (9)

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leaves, starlings and other words fall into thickets of orange or green grasses or tendrils or snakes

In Dubai

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I do not know the species of birds here. / The two I see playing on the balcony at night / I can never call back.

Accepting New Patients

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You've had some truly awful shit pumped into your brains for years at a time now. The practice started a long time ago. It's not always your fault. The only lasting way to get it out of your head is to go and figure out exactly where…

On Clearance

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She clutched her fat rolls and tugged on a pant leg. "I'm so embarrassed! You caught me on a bad day!"

Imported Beers of the Romantic Poets

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She burps in beauty, like a frog Who sits on lily pad so green, Resounding nightly in his bog But to my eyes unseen.

Heron

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. . . nor did mine eye apologize.

Solution

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I wrote her a poem.She said, “I hate poetry.” I said, “OK, just read the words then."

One Sick, Two Sick, Red Sick, Blue Sick

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I found a diseased fish / wedged between some boulders near the pier

Natural History

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It sits up tall on its hind legs to take in all of whatever this is, big and bluer than the sky, death's own taxicab parked on its doorstep.

Aurora Borealis

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I recalled the one night stand I'd had with the girl one balmy summer night in Minneapolis. We lay on my bed in the moonlight, and I touched the nipples of her tiny breasts with the thumb and pinkie of one hand.