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Lines in Contemplation of a Tragic Accident

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There’s Julie-she’s the cineaste– Au courant woman with a past.

otherwise, chaos!

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The tongue touches the lip, looking inward, remembering. The head nodding yes. Staring directly at the memory like an animal, while the crowds pass by, and occasional phrases materialize out of the air. We live and love and create. Yes we do. Otherwise,

Lazarusfish

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Scuttling on his knees now, he crossed to the other side of the boat and dropped the fish into a bucket of water. He knew what he had to do next.

Up at Night

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made of meat and born to breed

Frankly, I'm Not Doing Well

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TW: Self-harm. I wanted to write a mental health essay that wasn't all rah! rah! and with as little sentimentality as possible. Out of everything I've published, I've gotten the most feedback from this--people telling me it helped them understand a loved one better, etc.…

Lemon Citron

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Here it comes at long last. We just can't do it like that again. We don't have the same time. But something's wanting something more to be more than this. Here it comes again. But you bailed on me the last time around. Went silent as a…

Goodbye, Me

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The racket of me left this morning

just one more time, God, I promise

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The last time I was with Terry, she surprised me by crossing herself just before we had sex. She too had been going out with this Mario pimp, with his ski boat out on Fox River. The guy who was going around sniffing after most (if not all) of my old gir

I heard you were a drinker

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Once we got to my house, Lynda had everything drinkable in the house open and in everybody's hands before I knew it. She tossed down a bottle of my father's beer, then started on a bottle of whiskey that was open. She took a straight mouthful and offe

Get More Protein From Your Music

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“Kids,” I say, commiserating with my partner Bink. “You can’t live with ‘em, but you can live without ‘em.”

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 4

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“So, vot you think?” Vladimir asked us. “You want to come see these paintings? This is once in lifetime chance. Not many left who know about these. And I know where they are.” All the while he kept looking around to make sure nobody was eavesdroppin

Poem for January 1st, Feast of Christ's Circumcision

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Who has the child’s foreskin The mohel has removed? Who took the bleeding piece of flesh His human nature proved?

Guy Who's in Love With Modern Notions of Love and a Good Thing Happens to Him After a Bad Thing

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Vince did a dance of love and courtship around the Camaro moving crab-like around it with his arms hung low, raising them only to lower his sunglasses.

Kitchen Consciousness

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she's bent over and reaching into the oven to pour fat over a chicken. I just want to tug those pants down and thrust.

The Last Remaining

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Barry Gibb, the last remaining brother of the trio to make up the once popular disco band, the Bee Gees, comes out for his encore, to sing a cappella, “Stayin' Alive.”

Where Do You Get Your Poetic Inspiration?

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The only magazine Auden subscribed to was Scientific American, a publication I had previously scorned as the trade journal of pre-med students and Nobel Prize winners.

Islands

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Off of the northeastern coastline there was a series of islands that won bread and butter through fishing. We walked off the ferry and through various docks while noticing vessels come in slowly boasting sides protected by worn plastic fenders on ropes affixed to…

The Transportation of Hens

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Sixteen hundred hens / suffocated / during the collection

Inaction (or a disease of consciousness)

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“... More weighty than wisdom or wealth is a little folly" (Ecclesiastes)

Night Letters from the Underground

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As ghosts, they became lovers. Rodion would strum the Underwood keys like a balalaika. Lizaveta would sing.

Wonder Woman Talks (On Rope) to the Foremost Job Candidates

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"Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow".. --D. H. Lawrence It's not about the lasso. That's so easily dangerous,…

the rest of sleep

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peripheral dreams fall out from the head / the body squirms then burrows abed: / “have you had a good life? you now have less! / —led a hard life instead? you soon will be gone!”

Heartbreaker

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He thought life was easy until he met you.With your vicious ways, your swirling hair and your radiant smile.All a man could want, all he could desire.And just that touch of strangeTo sway his mind like a siren sways a ship.But you refused, his offer didn't lureHis heart was…

Walking Green

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1. There is a crowd of people walking to a field and since there are over forty of them, the conversations become divided and then subdivided in accordance w/natural rhythms. I follow behind. It is a football game. Makeshift. Twenty aside roughly. Almost every…

Why Is This Woman Smiling?

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I was at the doctor’s office They had a poster of the Mona Lisa and the caption underneath it read: “Why is this woman smiling?” Well, it wasn’t because she was over 50 and had yearly mammograms It was because she was 20 something

Thick Air

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The only thoughts that come are old ones that are so needy they keep circling through for attention

Epicure

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Edwin was the last thing I bought. With his uneven eyes and curious leg stumps, he was a must-have. When I showed Edwin to my housemates he was hugged many times, and praised as though he was real. Knowing my housemates, Edwin may have saved some lives…

Let's Do It In the Mud

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Then I got another letter, but this time it was from my friend Andy, warning me that he’d seen Miller riding around with Lynda, driving her grandparent’s Dodge with Lynda sitting right up against his side, and his arm was around her. I saw red. I went

Demons

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Michael had become quite accustomed to his morning routine. He woke at seven, made his coffee, and stepped onto the front porch with a steaming cup and a fresh cigarette. He sat there for ten minutes or so, watching the neighborhood prepare for their d

how gravity keeps time

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into the Zone of Avoidance gazes sink/ ―and why not? a black hole at the heart of it,/gravity attracts even our vision when/ we lift our gazes . . .