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Poets Who Thrum

19461946 views1515 comments1313 favs

Poets who thrum jirble and thwack Poets who thrum eat quorn with raw swamms Poets who thrum are eristic (not shambolic) Poets who thrum deliciate unto kench when they freck

Memory Box

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Soft voices in private, in the street, city noise violence disappears she blinks her eyelids and I can hear the lashes intertwine and pull clear.

Oh, Dada!

19461946 views11 comment00 favs

Daddy? Yes, hun. What do you think about life? Did you ask your mother? I'm asking you. (lowers newspaper) Well, (squinting eyes) life gives you so much pumpkin. ! and (like a whip) and..? (brows almost touching the hairline)…

Cavity

19461946 views1212 comments88 favs

his perfect ivory voice telling me i brush too hard. …as if he cared

Arcana Magi - c.24: Desperation

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Oryn woke up in her desk. Sweat trickled from her forehead. Staring at her notepad, with her latest calculation, she forgot to go home. Her thoughts of Alysia calmed for now, but still lingered from her dreams.

Breadfruit

19461946 views88 comments44 favs

... we both know how we go to fresh air like fish, gasping.

The Long Grass

19461946 views33 comments22 favs

Julius winced, knowing there was no way out. Amy showed him every worm, every insect, every dead mouse she’d found when they were in the fields. She pulled him forward, making his bruised shoulder burn.

Things Found In The Wreckage Of Angel 1508

19451945 views33 comments11 fav

A canister of unused laughter taken from the mouth of a baby not yet born A splinter of wood from a cross, perfectly preserved in dark tea taken from the belly of a dead Irishman A milky vial of smog taken from the air of Los Angeles circa 1965 A

Pieces

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I was a whole man once.

Mostly I Want to be Walking

19451945 views1212 comments1010 favs

by myself next to just one wide-eyed moment of wild blued out ocean. You know the one I mean. I don't want to have to speak to you, or even- alone- to myself. I'd like to be left inside the poem it makes me feel without having to get up and pee every…

Orange Tears

19451945 views44 comments00 favs

Remember me? I am the large, dented acorn you threw at your brother, Ken, during the huge acorn war of 1969. You were thirteen. He was eleven. And the entire neighborhood was in your backyard that day. Steve, Jack, Jerry, Tom, Dan, Jeff, Drew. A bunch of the kids…

Common Sense

19451945 views33 comments22 favs

'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'

Galactic Butterflies

19451945 views2727 comments1414 favs

will we become artifacts?

Two poems by Raquel Chalfi in translation

19451945 views66 comments44 favs

On the Shore, Tel Aviv, Winter 1974 From the Songs of Crazy Dolores

Not Again!

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"People just weren't getting it," he continued, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and hiccuping mildly. "It looks like it's time to UP the ANTE!"

Summer Flip Flops

19441944 views88 comments66 favs

Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy.

Abu Arif & His Daughters

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I cannot remember what the celebration was for, but the baby was at its center. We passed him around, a sweet smiling boy about seven months old. The age when babies can sit but can't yet crawl and their thighs get plump.

Relationship S&M

19441944 views66 comments66 favs

"Absolutely. I get better at it all the time." he confidently replies. He reminds me that it was all her idea. They were online friends when she suggested it. "She loves it." he tells me again, but I think of her sad eyes as she walked upstairs to tend to

Red Left Hand

19441944 views55 comments33 favs

"I see a child's bicycle swarmed by bees. A stolen oil painting of a helicopter...no, no, that ain't it. Wait. A high school basketball coach will hang himself from a bridge you often think about. This man, now, he's a Navajo Indian.

Running Wild in the Neighborhood Today

19441944 views1616 comments1414 favs

The psychiatrist was a man who clearly meant to calm his patients, the students. You could tell by his sweater and his neatly combed, plumy hair and the wire-rim glasses he wore. But he was not good at his job. You could tell this by how bad he was at cal

The Prettiest Lie

19441944 views66 comments33 favs

Your life is going to change—how many times was that prediction offered in one form or another during my wife’s pregnancy? Mothers often said it with a bliss-touched smile; fathers with a smirk that was both sardonic and conspiratorial, and a distinct

Tadpoles

19431943 views2525 comments1717 favs

Whole frogs are/ too difficult.

Hollow

19431943 views88 comments77 favs

His mouth is a flesh cave where a grizzly slumbers and winter is the blank page of my face.

Becoming an Oates Girl

19431943 views66 comments22 favs

She walked, thighs flaming fire-cold, without complaining or grumbling or cursing the goddamn Midwestern winters the way the others did.

Animal Park (Part I)

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“The robin is the one. …

The Anniversary

19431943 views55 comments44 favs

.... The sun tears through the windshield as if it were an six-foot wide magnifying glass and for a moment it feels to them both as if they are in a manipulated universe of fire and ice, storm and heaven, as it does when the skies crack and spread open a

It Takes Three Heartbeats For Me To Fall In Love

19431943 views33 comments22 favs

...and 55 words to tell you about it.

The Kisses of a Satyr

19431943 views66 comments44 favs

“I better go. My mom needs me at home,” she says. Soft. Smooth. Firm. Sweet. Maybe I’m pushing too hard. I kiss her on the cheek and she stiffens in response. My heart bleats.

Etymology

19431943 views33 comments11 fav

In every word there is both music and history. Music from the way sounds come into union with each other, and history in how they get there. There is form too, sure, but I am not a calligrapher. I'm a scribbler if anything. And so my sentences look mo

About My Dad

19431943 views88 comments22 favs

My dad drove a Model A Roadster and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin with one leather boot up on the running board and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one My dad ro