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consolations from Cold Mountain

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not otherwise employed, writing verse,/ line by tenuous line the substance of pulse./ ―but no one collects unemployed verse:/ self-lacerations must yield blood, not ink.

Why Is This Woman Smiling?

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Because someone whispered Mona Lisa in her ear.

Night fear illusions

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Sometimes/in the middle of the night/awake under a panoply/as caustic as Doré/illustrating Dante

You Were On Top of Us Freely

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You turned to the beautiful youth because we were light, because we were so full of life that our skin alone could not seem to contain us. We were burning on all sides for the world. Shade, shadow — nothing. Nothing the moon. You lifted the cloth and peer

What We Have Now

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Who was that human who first began to walk on two legs as he crossed golden African plains?

Where is His Grave

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She took a desolate road as the wind blew.

AltspaceVR

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BelizeIn Belize there is muddy water. Rivers turned brown from the silt and clay of the soil. Water that looks like chocolate milk but the kind of chocolate milk that came in a box like a juice box and not a carton. That type of chocolate milk.Belize comes from an old…

Remember the Albatross Around Your Neck Was Once Your Choice of Ocean

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All haters have small ducks for brains. Look. We came here to do a job, to make a beautiful thing rise up, sprouting like the new moon out of a harsh sunlight blaring off concrete, to blast a…

A Walk on the Moon

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I used to say I’d rather walk on the moon with my own rapacity, and you can easily say things like that, given the luxuriance of youth. But it was a lie, if you want to know the truth, so much hot balloon air, puffed up in the chest. That is not how i

with and without absent lines

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Across the vacant vanished . . .

Switchback

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I realize I am standing with my hands on my naked hips, my panties and shorts are clumped around my left ankle.

The Endless Dream of Humanity

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Pigeons are really the souls of what were once beggars in the endless squares of Paris, Venice, or Jerusalem. They are born with the soul of a beggar attached to them. It is stuck beneath their wings. They cannot fly without it, and they ar

So Little

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I must apologize for only having words to bring todaywith me. They seem so little to give and not much tooffer you. All their silly little hats seem to have been around with us now for quite some time. Others before me have certainly worn them farbetter…

BEACH

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It's just me.An October afternoon.Ocean and Ocean and Ocean. if you keep looking, down the coastthere is fog.Only fog and me and sea.I imagine him before I see him.Slow walk just above the water line, the fog catching up behind him,fantastical cape.The rational…

Reel

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They left their great need behind When they were taken out of the country. They seem to live without thought of that blood. They do not respond to anything that calls to it. They seem shallow. They feed on image alone. Blood does not shake the

One Of These Dreams ...

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Imagine a morning without dawn, without daylight ... The night birds still hoot, the flowers wait for the light to change their make-up, black birds have locked their beaks. A morning unlike any other ... The moon above continues to reign over the milky way, the stars to…

A Body Divided, 1

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"Polio?" people wondered. They asked: "Is that contagious?" Nobody knew. It was 1953. The epidemic raged on. Children in some towns were being made to stay indoors during the polio season for fear that the disease was airborne. It was putting an unnatura

All of My Facebook Friends Are Gonna Be Strangers

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I once knew a guy named Ian from Manhattan Who liked looking at New Yorker fey cartoons.

Red

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I'm in a pediatric emergency roomThere are teenagers who don't want to liveAnd babies who won'tBecause viruses still spread and people won't learnThe election results are coming inAnd somehowFucking somehowUnderqualified, overly bigoted politicians still winUnder the banner…

there was a shameful attempt to steal fire and now the vultures always come for my livers and my God I Am sorry

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The Divine and merciful Understanding Calls out to me But let me not speak its name. You are an unworthy hearer And I am a secret-keeper, cunning With keen thoughts and prayers of swift Justice Single is our thought and act And when we pray we know not what it…

Here, You Cry

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Once a week the kids at school got ice cream and popsicles. You didn’t, you never had ice cream money.

The End of Civilization as We Know It

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The End of Civilization as We Know It Question is, how many carpets did you see flying in close formation? Question is, which hand would you use If you were asked to choke yourself for the sake of civilization? The real question is, if you could

FRAT JERK (1960s)

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I threw my cards on the table. The jerk was playing his classical records again. I could hear that lousy music a mile away and he was the kind of kid that makes your skin crawl. But he had a CD sound system and it was up loud this time so that the house

(girls in their summer dresses)

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The life, the burning up that works up our loveliness, hot under the surface that is tempted to show forth its parts after being confined, enclosed, shut in. Beautiful honey-water sliding out of long bleak skies, after all the howling of our legendary you

Now Fox News is saying

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We were in love with the same disease.

At the Cafe

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The light on his face from a lamp Felt hat with a black band Scrunched down The nose creating a strong shadow With dark, straight eyebrows under the hat Red and orange beard Leaning forward at the café table, watching A damp curl of ha

untitled

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fallen leaves, broken limbs fron wounded trees

Cambridge Vignettes (from the 1960s)

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I wanted none of her. But also that day I had just finished The Story of 0., and my mind was full of sadistic whimsies and the mood of anythingness that the book instills: the pound of fleshness. Anyway, I sneered at her and told her she bored me, and sat

Short Blonde, Long Red

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Natalie blushed the vodka with an almost pointless twist of the fruit juice as I fought in my inside jacket pocket for my wallet...

Izyum

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The fire was so fierce,so fair like an opal;the most primal burn."Death haunts these trees,"the woman said, as she held the potof beetroot soup above the fire.They spoke from the basement; living in the dark space,nerves too locked up to to look out the windowand…