Most read stories

Feast

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His long black lashes stir, flutter a wink. His eyes catch yours through the dark reflection of your face, illuminated from beneath by wavering candlelight. Reflection obscures his features; they become yours.

Good Grief

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Slowly slowly the veil is lifted

Snow Angel in the Sand

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"It goes to infinity and back.That is how much I love you".She looked down into the sandplopped down and made a snow angel,Pushing the mudwith her arm and legs,like windshield wipersof a caron a rainy day"Auntie ... Auntie,How much I love you".

Where Has All the Laughter Gone?

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The despair that comes and goes is here again I saw a woman who was holding herself As she walked past, as if a fire were about to Lunge out of her parts She was in such great need of being held The despair that comes and goes is here again

RONNIE AND RACHEL

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Silent defenders of penumbra one

I fell in love with jackal face

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As we stood there, my hair slung over his shoulder like uncooked pizza dough, I updated my wish.

Women Meeting new Men

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WOMEN MEETING NEW MEN up suddenly from a new fire we each rose up suddenly columns of smoke wrapping around one another parts of us touching and matching fitting and twisting tightly becoming one over this poem…

Wilbur

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This girl who looks about ten years old and her Pomeranian puppy are staring at my left arm and my right hand keeps filling out the form and I know I shouldn't but I say what she's been begging me to for the last half hour: It wasn't Wilbur. It was a woman. A girl,…

Nascent Talk with the Gypsy

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She was having a laugh, but I didn't know what about. We were sitting in a big house that was on the top of a large incline. All these books were scattered around, and the walls and the kitchen, the doors and the quarter round and every other thing, was old and…

Champagne Velvet

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“So he rounds up three bums and says he'll buy 'em a case of beer if they’ll do a job for him. All they have to do is ride around in a car for his campaign. Of course they all said yes.”

Surprise!

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We were fleeing Hurricane Katrina We stopped somewhere in Texas at a roadside diner But found a sign that said it was closed All of a sudden as we sat there in our car The shop’s owner knocked on the window And asked what he could get for us

The Light Of the Face

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We all have our place But it’s always there, isn’t it Streaming throughout our lives The light of the face Where most of the soul comes to rest We see it best when the hard wind blows Cause in the course of events The wind will know our

A speck on the wall

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I’m leaning into my freedom and will have you take your portable prison with you and you can set those four walls across town.

Bukowski in Hollywood and the Collating Party at his Apartment

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They called him Hank. We piled in a car and drove up from Irvine to his little bungalow apartment on DeLongpre near Hollywood Blvd. for a collating party for this Mag he started with Neely called “Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.” No shit, that wa

The Museum of Inner Light

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On the way to The Museum of Inner Light Expect delays Expect bumps in the road Expect potholes and such Expect a murder of crows Rolling acorns over the rooftops But what I want to know is who Who eats a butterfly On the way to

Trope City

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If the pen travels over a sheet of paper, it is not long before a metaphor appears. A fast, beautiful metaphor like friendship, or deformity. Think of the pen as a penis and the ink as semen. I just sit and laugh. Time impregnates an opportunity and a lon

Second Nature

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Women can often be found Sizing up each others’ tits

Writing Poems

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We bring words together and set them up on blind dates. Watch them build a history together, get married and fight together. Make offspring syllables cradled warm in cribs of punctuation. Phonemes squeezed into existence by two parenthesis. Words…

Cleopatra Goes Shopping

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Cleopatra fills her cart with food and cosmetics until it is overflowing. She proceeds out of the store. The clerks stop running products over their scanners and gaze in incredulity, and confusion.

For Colleen McCullough

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She was reading The Thorn Birds. Always on her side, in a pink cotton housecoat. The Buddha rested on his side. And drank milk. We drank plenty of milk, but, being Catholic, didn't know anything about Buddha. I would sit there. Piles of books were around. I…

Let the Fat Man Sing

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For every Ruben Studdard, there are ten Mick Jaggers and, considered merely in terms of avoirdupois, the two sides of that scale would probably balance.

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

icing on the cake

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The sexuality comes over us in waves. We need to hold things, someone. The women, the men, side by side, our features blending together. We notice the small curved lines at the corners of the mouth. We notice everything. And the animal is still inside m

First sonnet

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Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

In the Beginning...

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In the beginning there was salt. God licked the salt and said it was Good. Then there was light. And then chocolate.

the sweet lunar springs

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Check the sweet lunar springs that we are still bathing in. The swelling in the genitals there. Check to make sure we are ripe, and in season. It’s our way of being willing, strong under the sweet icy waters, with that fertility that is derived from you

Nehwareven

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

Sonnet VIII, On A Lover's Birthday

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A short sonnet for my sweetheart's birthday.

Home Movie

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One hand holds the string-like railing; the other holds a bright silver toaster.

Cadillacs, Candy Bars and Boogers

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I won't ever forget the image of my father, behind the wheel of the Cadillac he so loved. Even as a ten year old, and more as an adult, I could never figure out why he loved that car as much as he did. I must explain that he was really my step father,…