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Calm and Level

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The funeral grounds look level and calm. We leave the urban world behind for an instant. The other world has claimed someone. But we are in limbo. It is a terrible thing when a connection or breakthrough moment is not achieved or granted by the universe. …

Annabelle

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Jess threw her books on the bed then grabbed a notebook from a shelf and slammed it onto a writing table. It made a hard pop gunshot sound. Flinging open the book, a page tore. Her diaries were named Annabelle. It was with a blue felt tip pen that she wrote: …

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…

Mar–a-Lago

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A petition submitted to the Planning Department of Palm Beach Florida requests a zoning variance applied to Mar — a — Lago. Studies, backed by research, have defined Mar-a- Lago, an ideal location for shelter and protection for immigrants, fleeing from…

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.

Prowl Car

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Mischief / has marked the bone marauders for doom.

Home Movie

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

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.

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,…

The Joint is Out of Time: A Journal of the Plague Year, Day 108

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History in the unmaking.

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…

Stanley

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For some employees the job was simply a job, another day towards another paycheque towards another Friday night spent at the bar wondering just exactly when life decided to start with the kidney punches.

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

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

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

Vostok

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"[A]ppointed an official supplier of watches for the Ministry of Defence of the Soviet Union in 1965."

Quay 19

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Through by the sands and the rocks we were going and the lake liquid had tumbled the stones by the thousands so that while the water was still we could see agates and yellow jaspers and other or even the odd and misspent piece of rounded glass green or white safe…

the musk and the drama

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Shame must search the soul, broken, original, with its primitive juices stirred. Moved until now only by the musk, only the stroll you lived with, the worry, the sorrow, the drama – may I never conceal or recover from it! Yes, I might beg or steal the

Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

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Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

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

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…

Good Grief

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Slowly slowly the veil is lifted

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.”

Old Soul

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She’s an old soul who was scattered to the winds like a thousand butterflies and a moth She has no center and flits from event to event and can’t miss out on a thing, because crikey, what if she missed something important? And the m

Beside the Swing Set

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Julie had a thousand freckles the color of mud.

Your party invitation just arrived (guest poem by Carolyn Martin)

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"I’d rather move a word around a page than raise a glass or pass a plate or work a room immune to poetry."

Kneecapping the Muse

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In 1997, I was exploring a used bookstore in Camden, New Jersey, when I stumbled across a two-volume hardback copy of The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić, a book I had been meaning to read since it came out in 1984. At $10.00 for the set, I couldn't pass up…

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.

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.

Love Makes the Boundaries Disappear

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She was asked: “What would it mean to be in a great earthquake to you?” She said: “It would mean that I might never see him again.” Then she panicked. She came to me and said: “Do you mind riding in the other car? I have to ride in the same car wi