Most read stories

Trash Burning, 1976

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This time the bag's bigger/than the boy and the door.

various verses

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in a willow garden lush shade/drapes dark the young woman's small house/with the lone window, the white door . . .

Meteorology

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Among the raindrops/ occasional plopping snowflakes.

Questions of Ownership

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Who owns the moon? What title search/ could ever make a claim?

Muffled

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A poem not about fog written in fog with an erasable pen.

Confinement

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Even music relies on what/ you know as music/ for its power to enthrall.

Secrets of Philadelphia

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Bruce Springsteen begins singing from the loud speaker he was bruised and battered and couldn’t tell what he felt.

Ritual

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The dance draws deeper whirling witches weaving rhymes The fire spits fierce in the falling rain soon the spell will spill from secret times

Napomo 17: April 25 - 30

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As air warms and warm/ winds stir, green becomes the force/ that surges the plains.

Easter: A Non-Fiction.

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Then I found myself in the water.

Speck in the Thrall of Cosmic Forces

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Fear the air and fear the fire./ Fear the land and fear the water./ Creation is out to get you, speck,

My Name is Luka

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The first and easiest reason was that he never hit me. Well, if he never hit me, then how could it possibly be abuse? Never mind the threats to stab me in the neck. He was only angry. He really didn't mean that. Never mind he restrained me, or cornered me

Gossip

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Gossip Betty Martini divorces husbands when they least expect it. On a seeming whim, she pays a visit to dear Arnold, who keeps her papers handy in his top desk drawer. She initials here and there, signs with a…

Esmeralda

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Being an uncredited bonus composition, written in the sublimest access of divine afflatus this poet believes his lyric verse has ever known. “In olden times, dark was not counted fair”: Those were the words, I think, of some old poet. …

Storm Chasers

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“Okay,” I say, “but my point is the only way you’d ever know if someone really loved you is if they put their life on the line when it counts. Otherwise you gotta take their word for it.”

Wonderland

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The bartender kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. “Everyone in Hollywood is an actor,” Doc said.

What He Lost Round the Mountain

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The plane passes the runway, dips sharply, its shadow straight down below, too cold in the cabin, the sun hitting your arm like a machete below, it is 94, the humidity too, it has just rained for 3 days, it never rains this time of year......

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 25

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It was 6 a.m. when the phone next to the bed awakened Francesco.

Downtown Milwaukee

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

A Day At The Beach

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Rothko and Stella loved the beach. To Jalapeno it was just one big litter box and for her it held no great appeal. She sprawled sunbathing on the dashboard lifting a lid occasionally to watch Lauren riding a wave. The dogs delirious with freedom romped and chased tight…

Showtime

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Showtime on Broadway.

The Element of Ritual

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Nurse Smithers straightened Dr. Baumgartner’s feathered head dress. it had slipped down below the caduceus so carefully painted on his forehead by the medical ritual staff.

No Good Hubcaps - song

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I got no good hubcaps My van is up on bricks It's held together with duct tape And a couple of crummy sticks I caught the guy who did this And tied him to a tree I kicked him in the windpipe And kicked him in the knee I'm a man witho

Excavation

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"the dark velvet slide of the tongue."

Napomo 17: April 19 – 24

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There are no inspirations./ There are only the things I like/ and the much more numerous// things I do not like.

To a Young Atheist & Intellectual with Dior Glasses

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You have such a complicated mind / for refusing to believe in God / just like any damned liberal / whose fingerprints / crowd the faces of a thousand / dollar bills / being passed around your great nation...

Sick Day

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Marcy was not herself today, her mother said when the school called. She was under the weather and she could not play with the other children. Marcy's mother began to suspect that her daughter was not herself very early on that day. Walking up the stairs Dolores…

Dumb Luck and the Fall of Empires

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At some point we all reach the end point/ of something. Something important/ if only to our fragile self esteem.

Her Man in the Navy Blues

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In that time when the trunk was getting cleared out and when it became only the empty shell of what had once been so important, many things hit the match. She burned an old black negligee, a picture competing with the likes of a Vargas girl and other thin

Waiting for Fireworks

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I take her hand. More grey dust rolls off the arms, over the railing, into the wind. It’s embarrassing and I let go. I think she told me to throw them away months ago. I rub her bare thigh. She laughs real soft like. The corner of her lip curls up.