Most read stories

from Abel, to a reproachful correspondent

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when you betrayed the vain ambition of my death,/I did not complain.

A Broken Frame

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The photograph has no date,but these are my long-ago kin,ancestors just before the boat,six stone-faced on the English shore,sepia on cardstock under glassstill clear in severe, dark clothesexcept one who has been markedout, maybe with black wax,which runs to the bottom…

A Ship of Bones

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Make paddles of his hands Use his skull to bail Rig his thigh bones for a mast And his skin to make a sail

At the Jr. Algonquin Roundtable

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“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

The Beethoven Delusion

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"It is my argument that a pious fraud has been perpetrated so as to subject mankind to the most humiliating of intellectual enslavements."

Climate Change

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Every year I have a birthday, and every year another of my friends succumbs to cancer or suicide. That's a shitty gift. That is devoutly not to be wished.

Old Joke

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How many exceptional people/ does it take to change a light bulb?

“Honestly, I’m Not a Fan of Your Poetry”

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I will admit it. // I cannot write poetry / to save my life—

The Gift Garden (Extract)

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Now I hear a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, like I know her, but in my daze it is slightly distorted, like I am underwater and she is calling to me beneath the waves. She tells me not to be afraid. Her words are calming; they soothe away the panic and confusion. I…

things to know about the people parked along the road that runs though Humboldt Park: part 19

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And he was wearing a mask. Gorilla mask over his gorilla face.

Unibrow: A Confessional

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I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "unibrow" except Tsing Tao, which is a brand of Chinese beer....

falling

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I arrange my stones in circles

Coated FOGRA39

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try to keep him from eating the children

The Madwoman Who Called on My Wedding Day

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She’d reached me after running through the directory, alphabetically. Apparently no one in the a’s or b’s or c’s before me would talk to her.

Free Form Jazz of Spiritual Harlem

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we are one

Freedom

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the darkness held frieghtened by the surveillance of a distant white shimmer.

Passing by Pallanteum

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Passing by PallanteumOr ‘Dido's Song' Form: Double Sestina, iambic pentameter, rhymed Who knows of hell, knows less of paradise? I've known them both, when vanquished in your eyes, When draws the kelp where lost men had their graves Below…

Remember?

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We'd been talking about the baby, about what we would do, when the women began fighting after the wedding held in the church next to our apartment. Their fierce and piercing arguments crawled up the walls to the second story window we sat next to. We'd looked outside…

Fire In The Heart

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The woman leapt from the top of the burning building. The flames reddened the faces of the watching crowd. The heat pushed them back. The woman hit the ground. The crowd oooooed. If only I'd been a firewoman, I thought, with a ladder as tall as a building and a…

I Go Cold Keyboard at End of Day

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Excuse me, can I now ask to change my favorite childhood color from green to yellow?

EXAMINATION

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I had the idea while I was in the county jail. I would get jail glasses; I wouldn’t be me; I’d be some other person. I could pretend that it was someone else rotting away in that 8x12 cell.

Poet Found Living Near Berkeley!

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Reports have been spreading fast that an actual living poet has been found right outside the borders of Berkeley Rumors grew into a wildfire of speculation Saturday night when one of them a tall graying older specimen more or less in the

No Collar

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Eating my teeth off pulling the silk from my lips and swallowing each kerchief wholejust trying to find the priest who has his heart set on a motorcycle

Billing Notice

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Due to recent enhancements to our billing system, the rate per unit for your basic service can no longer be determined.

Night and Day

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The muezzin calls the faithful, his voice soaring over the rooftops, over the trees and the brooks,

Museum Story Listening

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A sort of invocation of the open sky, in contradistinction to the dark of the Earth whence came the specimens, a figurative marriage of the literal darkness of exploration and the figurative light of knowledge.

Gee, If Only We'd Known!

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As soon as those planes hit the buildings on September 11, it was pretty much all systems go for Cheney's long-planned Iraqi invasion. But first he had to shitcan an aide who showed him in detail how Iraq would eventually…

Greetings From Karma City!

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A friend of mine died and went to heaven. At least I thought he went to heaven. I mean Freddie wasn’t such a bad guy and if he had any faults they were mild peculiarities. Like his girl watching. He was a champion girl watcher. Even in this a

summer fields

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we ran that afternoon/across Bayshore lanes/into green blooming fields, beyond all those

Puffer Fish in the Infinite Laboratory

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They put me in charge of developing a drug that stifles fear.