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Пушкин и Baudelaire, via странников

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—but night does not reduce me to sleep / the dragging minutes keep awake / the dark that only opens its deep . . .

A Young Twenty

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This is no age for love; this is a time for discovery. So no time for me to sit around my candle is slowly burning, while wind combs my hair. If this is what loves comes to then I predict in the eventuality of me being an old woman by the sea living with her friend, the…

Nehwareven

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In the switched-off time of day's blackest rest-

The Party and the Body

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The Party and the Body The party at my mother's ended Saturday night deep into Sunday's morning. I tried to remember the exact circumstances of the end but although they wouldn't come it didn't worry me. I knew I would remember at a certain point. It…

Gone

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She exists behind closed doors. An open field, on the edge of a moor. Her stare belies her hardened heart. Her soul in fragments. She has lost faith.Never happy. Never understanding. Never accepting her sadness. She walks every evening at sunset. She remembers her…

The World Passing By On a Double-Decker Tourist Bus in NYC

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They’ve got the tourists On the top deck of the bus Wrapped up in large yellow Plastic garbage bags Riding through the City in the rain The yellow bags flapping in the wind Yelling in the numerous languages At the top of the world The to

Just Before the Funeral

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We had been on the way to the church when we found them. The handkerchief in my breast pocket was folded just so and I'd tried to recreate the perfect ribbon in Ashley's hair, …

Right Here on Our Stage...Tonight

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When Madeline became beset with a malady diagnosed as Harlequin's Syndrome she had to learn to overlook the muffled, but audible, guffaws about her excessive perspiration and slightly stooped posture on stage. She was a trooper and said she knew they came from those who…

A Borrowed Barrow

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It was a battered, creaky, rickety old thing, this wheelbarrow. It had two wooden handles with cracks running through the wood, a fat rubber wheel and a deep tray encrusted with the mud and plaster and grout that it had transported through decades of heavy use. Based on…

Mister and Miss Marital Bliss

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The canvas bag lay crumpled and moaning in the middle of the room as Mister and Miss Marital Bliss contemplated what to do to it next. Spots of deep crimson blossomed like spring flowers all over the white sack and a large pool had gathered underneath. Rivulets of blood…

Little Ditty Down

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I got caught writing poems at the paint factory several times before they fired me I got caught in the middle of one of my best lines but can’t remember what I meant to say anymore, but I know, just know it was something real good,

Art Survives

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Forget the salt erasure of Carthage,/ all the Meso-American artifacts/ smelted to float the Armada

hump daze

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Before you start reading this it is important that you understand that I know nothing about the evolution of horses or camels. I mean, I literally know zilch about which came first or if they are even part of the same family. In my head I imagine one of those charts…

chelsea wolfe

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exiled from hell where no torture could touch you to a cloud in heaven where no…

People's Park at Night

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“You got a cigarette, man?” “Hey, mister, you got a cigarette?” “You got a cigarette, mister?” “Hey, mister, you listening to me? You got any spare change?” The voice was coming from the…

Skins of my past

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The past follows, battered, bruised, always behind

strapped to the mast

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The light streaming out of the background of things, in the absence of memory. That’s what I’m talking about. Prepare to let out all your light from night until dawn, if you want to be in the middle of life. I never wanted to stay at the edges. It didn’

End of Wendell

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...though in reality it is a dirty white with brown splotches now appears to him as a fluorescent green garden snake.

From Day One

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On the first night I met you, you fell in love with the waitress. She had a loud voice and a strong Irish accent. She wore an oversized t-shirt to minimize her large breasts, and baggy jeans. No makeup; crooked teeth. But you…

The End of the Gig

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His throat had turned red after a few days of singing, and when he looked in the mirror he saw little sacs of white pus, like pimples, in the back of his mouth. “You got to pace yourself,” the big black woman who sang at the other beer garden told him.

The Book

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“Are you comparing the communists with Hitler?” “Are you telling me there is no comparison?"

Conversations in a Chinese Restaurant

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I'm feeling almost better than you know A little bit better than the day before Waking up to a deafening scream Please, please don't hurt me no more Why do I feel like a lost dog? Staring outside the window pane How come I become dark? When the clouds begin to rain…

How Filthy the Human Mouth

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When he saw me, he jumped faster and faster, wild like something rabid.

The After

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I watched her look at mewithout any eyes.She turned her head as wesat on the edge of the bed.Instead of eyesthere were hollow indentations of soft tissue,bulbs, and closed,tissue sown, pinched togetherwith pulls and zigzagslike crosshatching, where…

Pink Slip For Mitt's Mutt

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(Recently unearthed from a “Lost Luggage” travel trunk abandoned in a train station in Salt Lake City, Utah) Dear Seamus: Boy, we sure did enjoy having you as a member of our family all those years. I would have to say you…

On All of Those Bad Guys in Movies

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What about the poor nobodies to somebodies being tossed like wet rags onto more wet rags?

The Fixer

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When someone asks me what I do, I tell them that I am a fixer. I fix things. There is nothing that cannot be fixed. Will it ever be as good as new? That is subjective, but I will fix it for you.

Road to Pucalá

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I even killed a man.

Resident

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You will know the country for fences, for feces, for cows, or, You will know the country for the smell of hay and manure blowing over the hills to you.

Brand

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Nobody buying...