Most read stories

The Casual Writer Reconsiders His Dick

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The casual writer uses the work "dick" often. Other words for this appendage he finds pretentious, emasculating, or too much trouble to look up. A dick has simple motives. It is an agent of birth and death, a divining rod for the dark wet.

The Monster's Other Face

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The yellowed and peeling posters of men and women with grotesque disfigurements under the slogan, “Know Your Criminals!” that peered down at him from the walls were a familiar sight. Everyone knew that people with faces like that were as monstrous as they looked…

Box Set

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Isn’t it funny how a mosaic of neurons in our heads receives sensations from the outer world and grows into postulates and letters?

Testament Part 3 of 6

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Against that, this testament, scratched/ with misshapen styluses, made/ from memory by unskilled hands,/ with a pallid memory of ink.

Another Crumb of Freedom

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I think I know these pigeons They were once beggars From another life Once I myself was stuck like them I was never Without the thought of food Or sex, or sipping soda pop Off the sidewalk And flying meant next to nothing But then

Strut

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The devil ran in my blood.Scars chase each other on my skin.One year old, I fell down the stairs in my walker.Five years old, I fell out of a tree while convincing my older sister to climbthe outlawed tree.At six I rode my bike down the biggest hill in the…

Forward

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Walking alone, underneath thin, moonlit clouds, the world began to unfold and shows it guts. Deep within the Colorado mountains, miles from the nearest convenience store or free wi-fi connection, I started to merge into the implicate.

TOUR GUIDES (Granada Studios 1989)

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Dancers, dunces and brides-to-be

Bulldozer

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First the room is blank white and then she is placed there and one by one everything is penciled in. Her, in a loose and flowery dress that conceals her feet; a black and white cat, who wraps her tail around her legs and looks up, head moving trying to interpret;…

Puppet X, 16

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When we lie down under the wind the trees swaying looking out over the fields soft cobweb of a brain exposed to hail exposed to snow trying to back away from it unable knowing the earth (the face it will take) our

Who's Going To Defend the Love

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we feel entitled to, so unwanted, afraid for, from the billions of stomping oafs, leaping onto our hearts like squishing jelly sandwiches for fun, bullies in power out there? To be brilliant onits tiny behalf? I forget, exactly whyare you still here anyway? Don't…

The Library of the Realm of Dreams

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I hold down the control-alt-delete keys simultaneously and the screen goes blank, sending Camus into a paroxysm of fear; for a guy who wrote an essay on facing down suicide, he’s kind of jumpy.

Totem Song

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Will you leave me, you, the one?

Job Needed

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I have enjoyed three paid teaching days in Minnesota, since my return in 1996. All three paid days were fielded through S.A.S.E., all three at Patrick Henry. I loved it there. I hope never to become certified to teach.

Sequence Instead of Services on Sunday

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We reach for things and objects// made of ever smaller things and objects

Message in a Bottle

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She eventually learned everyone had their own truth, and some of them were not true at all.

The January Oak

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tiny banners, browned/ and wrinkled by time,

At Risk

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I wonder if this is how my parents viewed their marriage.

Almond

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Almonds of childhood – fending off needless tears and chocolate impulses, almonds of my teens, slivered and toasted industrially baked settling in on egg washed croissant…mashed into the kitchen sink of the catch-all bear claw, then the taste and shiv

A Political Man

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There's a potent multimedia declaration Flying eagles starred and striped Mocking cartoon independence Where every promise shines Not every veteran's hero Chequered drug misuse Glorious public relations Concealed a…

The Kid on the Floor

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The kid on the floor couldn’t handle it...

Four More Haikus

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Death is like a warmcup of hot cocoa, steamingup into nothing. The sun rise will bringprison bars of light through thebedroom blinds again. Sorry about thefirst three hours of your deathI thought you were drunk. Across the park thestrange dog looks…

Unguent

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Spilled milk it is --lactate of common desire;water under the bridge, slow-moving, white. So this is what we feed on: the past and present here for the licking.Sweat is water too,for the hungry, and any past will do. Parched mouths kiss just as well as…

Sensible Things

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Thirty-seven stitches to sew your ear on, five more to close the skin above your eyebrow...

Hair

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I had a temperature of 105 degrees. I lost all my hair.

Soliloquies of the Interior Zombies

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My inner shape must be a ruin of organs,/ dead or dying. But do come close enough/ for me to hear. I need to know your story.

Mo Bands

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Beeswax Just Kill Me Beam Me Up Deep-Fried Twinkie End of Lust Hootchie and the Eye Patch Boy Crazy Instant Success Sleeping Geezers Cyber Shoes

I Know You, Ladies and Gentlemen

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On my way home that first night, I stopped off at a liquor store on San Pablo Avenue and bought a semi-expensive ($2.98) bottle of zinfandel, a real luxury for us. But I figured I would have a paycheck coming and wanted to celebrate my getting a real jo

This city like a squall

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Jackhammered men hollow out the building, cart away decade-old works of other men. Exterior walls stand. Rooms have been demolished. In another day see what came before progress. See trees. A squall is coming. Ask about the…

I Can Sing Like That

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Here lately Daddy's been talking bout' filling momma full of holes. Not like he would do it cause' he likes talkin' just to hear the words come out even if they don't mean anything to anyone but him. But just to be on the safe side I went and hid them shells cause' he's got…