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there's a light moving toward me in the sky

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There’s a light moving toward me in the sky. How often at the edges of reason, the howling desire has taken me. Howling desire! How often it has taken me in its mouth, naked, and shaken me. And now there’s a light moving toward me in the sky. There’

food-cheated muscles recalling their sex

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What a world I imagined! Lacking organized armies, resting at noontime under a canopy made gentle by passing, natural creatures with large warm eyes, set afire by the influence of constant lust and destruction. Turned to marble by love. Who wouldn’t wan

The Death of Digger

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At the house one night we were all sitting around at one of those infernal communal meetings that go on into the night full of pot smoke and red wine, when the door was nudged open and a stray dog wandered into the living room. It was a strange coyote-l

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

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 58

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On October 14, 2009 Oriana Morosini appeared as the guest author on America’s most popular live television book show: The Author Answers

The Parade Route

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There will be no more internal birds like singing clocks, not like the lovely ones I know and still look forward to hearing, ringing like little bells in the church y belfry of the newly sprouting mornings to come, not unless the birds…

Sex Change Operation

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Her condition was giving her the blues ‘Cause her gender, was slightly confused.

Instant Messaging My Friend About Our Plans to Commit Suicide on Saturday on the Grass at His Garden While Wearing a Suit

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sometimes when i tell myself i want to die i’m like ok dude whatever join the club just the other day someone online asked me whether i knew where he could get a copy of that japanese book about how to kill yourself

In the Dark

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In the dark I rode naked feeling quite exposed...

Popeye

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In one of the cartoons I watched as a child, Popeye the Sailor gives Olive Oyl a bouquet of flowers. She is thrilled, he walks on air, thinking they will marry. His one-eyed heroism is soon challenged by Bluto however, who pours cement into Popeye's bath. It goes…

The Bar at the Folies-Bergere: a Manet Painting

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The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare. It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale And Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl. Two roses in a small clear glass of water. A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 3

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Then Vladimir asked Ellen if she wanted to try out the dungeon. And she looked at me, and smiled. “Well, yes.” “What?” I said. “No, Ellen, no! Do not let him lock you in here, whatever you do.” “Do not worry. Do not worry. I am Janovsky, no? I hav

Inexperienced MIKE!

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#bitch -- #bitchedybitchedyBITCHBITCHBITCH ;)

One Night Stand Before Finals

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There was one girl from Ireland, with her thick Irish brogue, who came into my bedroom early on the morning before my final exam for my Master’s degree in the writing program at U.C Irvine. She knew I was so nervous about taking the exam that I hadn’t sle

some god

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I remember a painting of a young girl (this could have been me) who had just given birth. She was almost smiling while she slept. Her upper lip was violet with exhaustion. One hand left up behind her head where it was thrown during the exertion of birth

I Can’t Wait To Develop Patience, But

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And they let the angels out at twilight, the dark twins of bats, and their troubled undersides. Never were the bats so disturbed. Never until now has true evil been so see-through, and clear.

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."

A Most Uncertain Fiction

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It is equally likely that just as the rate of melt continues, the rate of melt will also continue to accelerate.

Acknowledgements

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I sit in a café and watch the near palms of summer swaying against the far ridge of hills and young girls walking along in their sleeveless summer dresses. Their shoulders speaking their long history of sex and future children,

The Swan On Earth

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I saw God sobbing in a wheelchair. I saw God on the ceiling of your bedroom on Illinois Street while you were inside me the first time. (I remember so many things… Do you remember who I am yet?) I saw myself, far away in a window – the swan on earth

Perils of Poetry in a Pandemic

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...the bulk of poets are amateurs.

God, the Father

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I was right to fear the God of my father He is a monster.

pop music till yer brains bulge blue!

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every color of sound turned to green / human beasts’ treadmill tastes must be trained: / we may yet starve to death, but we’ll die de-brained!

Late July

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The cicadas struck their soundsTheir ribs made a clicking drumThe sound was formed over buckling ribsvibrations sounds like a maracas bangle beatingShe sat up in a lounge chair trying to sleepThe tiny ants she found tickling her armThey crawled from some hole…

Tuna Salad In Cat Heaven

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I ate a tuna salad sandwich for lunch.

Chicken Sexers Set to Go For Gold in London

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Green Ridge, Missouri features a horseshoe pit on the town square and not one but two full-time village idiots.

up to our hips

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This is what we will remember of each other. Right here. Another night where we prepare ourselves, as the full moon rises through the murky blue and smoke-filled sky, where the rose mist simmers above the land. And you are out there, somewhere. Only our

Five Million Yen: Chapter 27

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Gabe had told the stewardess that he wanted to talk to Ben. Her name was Claudia and she knew whom he was talking about. That foxy musician Ben, thought Gabe, he probably boned her on some previous flight.

Gravity

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It's only been about three minutes. We're moving a bit faster now and many of those around me have already been taken out by the debris. One guy had his head smashed in by a rogue swing set that came out of nowhere. I envy his demise, at least a little…

One-Nighter without a Stand, Even

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She lay down sideways on the couch with her large breasts spilled out toward my face, as I sat cross-legged on the floor, so that they were more or less right there in my face, and well, you pay attention when tits are hanging out in the open like that. S