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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.…

Spiritual Awareness

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Amir was a ghost, and he was terrible at it. No one had taught him how to be a ghost. There was no orientation, no welcome packet, no handbook. Ghosts started in limbo with only a name, and nothing else.

There's Always A Tree Dying Somewhere

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Bonus included.

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 . . .

Reciting Verse on the Toilet

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He is the kind of boy that is so handsome / you already expect there is something wrong with him

eritis sicut deus

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—but neither Lenin’s serenity nor Voron’s could last for long!

The Hot Earth

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don’t let them take away our youth, even if we have to beat the paint out of birds the way we did when we were young. I knew we could do anything, so let’s go back into that world and describe the new dawn all over again, even if we have to use the frozen

sirenia sirenia

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He leans back in the desk chair in his home office. He clicks on “Inbox” in his Gmail. He spins around in his chair. He clicks on “Inbox” again. As he spins again, he realizes how silly it is to keep clicking “Inbox” when Gmail…

In Which Lovers Separate, As Always

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We used to find ourselves watching a World War II documentary, but from the periphery of our vision; because our tongues would be swishing against each other, and we’d be breathing each other’s wind; and we wouldn’t be as in to it as we used to but we wou

Lavender Blur

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Donna and I get out of the car...

Thick Air

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

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…

Born of Flight

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I can walk among words, Scatter them like birds, to compose two thirds of a poem, when they settle on nearby wires, in an order inspiring wonder. What do they think, when I scatter them asunder. Bring them disarray, Shape them to a…

The Thank You Parade

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Let's go now with those precisely marching shiny cloud band members, so eagerly clanging their golden sleeves togetherover there in the valley of new light, for instance. They can lift wholeoceans up, like baby children, for a seriesof smooches, all of…

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,…

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 Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

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Now your dreams are headed for the Rhyme or Reason Convention where they try to convince you you can do this Trying to make sense of everything

This End of History: Day 94

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Crashing icons.

The Problem With Oils

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If you were a painter, and I a poet, we could have conversations about Picasso and Bukowski, and how neither one took a sober breath.

No More Ideas

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And then, one fateful day, the world ran out of ideas. The last one was gone, floating away like a balloon full of the helium we had already squandered.

my own image breaking and falling

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What went racing through my mind as Lynda was telling me about the farmer she was seeing out in Western Illinois with his 12 inch dick? She was only 5’2”. “It’s so big I can barely get it all in me,” she said, with her mouth part way open. That old look

A Slippery Slope

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a distinct hardness that translates into solidity, and a lightness that translates into beauty, and I thought I’d find you there,

Frozen

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The early morning temperature was a typo

Cocktail Pianist

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It seems the law of gravity will exert its influence even in such mundane matters as the afternoon rush hour.

Pimp and Circumstance

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You may want to know who wrote the book of love, but all I really want to know is who, who sprayed the dinosaurs with graffiti? Not some poser Not some Svengali Not some last minute giraffe Not someone from the all girl’s band kn

8 zero+1 scarring digits tic toc glossie phanein and coy constellations or blood by boards avadhoota where no divine mthrs stay

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I am seven and it is in one of those spring stretches where temperatures proceed enough to make walking acceptable if not amicable. Pop cans and chip bags once boasting glossy surfaces and daring hues now faded to match asphalt fields. Other bits of things…

Everyone... out

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The room is cold, like an icy bath. Enough to make Earl's testicles shrivel up in fear. He could hear the angry children outside act out a primeval play, where it sounded like bones were being slammed into rocks with clumsy small hands. The edge of the table…

Galactic Bow Shock Romance

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Somewhere outside of the future I am seeing Weinberg, the duplicate failed mimeographed onto the front of ourselvescompromised composite grown from a codependent blastocyte talking to the boxes on the edge of tomorrow, collectiblecrystal lined folliclesharvested at the peak…

Confessions of a Latter-Day Computerholic

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Boy, it is weird out there, talking to real people!