Most recent stories

About The Author

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Gnarly Berger was born in a guitar case in Istanbul. His mother was an Iranian singer from Israel accompanied by a Turkish santur player & a French guitarist (Gnarly's biological father) and into whose guitar case Gnarly entered this world, somewhat by accident,…

Perils of Poetry in a Pandemic

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...the bulk of poets are amateurs.

ekphrastic and somatic verses

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in clotted abattoirs where Sorley saw: / no animals shorn of their skins and flesh / could spy with envy the men killing them.

Hey, Pistolero

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I'm complex. You're complex. We're all complex.Who gives a shit? Man's fallen and he can't get up.I consulted Jacques the Atheist for advice: he toldme to beat it. "But I lack the proper stigma!" I cried.Once a month, I volunteer at the dressage parlor.On Tuesdays, I…

Ain't the End of Me

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But even if the truth Never sets me free I'll know this ain't the end of me

Basement Dwellers, Liars, and Dignitaries All Love Jesuit Propaganda (Regarding The Deepest Mysteries Occurring Between 1914 and

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as an artist changes religious lore, it was not god who ordained the death of his son

from: A Body Divided

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When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it brought out the charity of the who

tiny thoughts

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what if I die?

Patterns

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He stood with his cardboard sign and watched the faceless occupants, watched for a car window to lower; there were few.

Nightbound

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Intimacy is safer in the dark.

Music

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Without a creator

Bruegel days, nights by Bosch

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no matter where we sit or how we stare— / all parades now march away to one day.

I Waited Too Long to Remember

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We're in a sedate forest next to a boisterous beach. The sky is sea green above the trees and forest green above Sinepuxent Bay. Chaste squirrels are keeping a lookout for bad-boy gulls. Kids on circus bikes ride out of the woods into their bathing suits. The…

Notes from a Quarantine

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EnzymesI enjoy learning about enzymes. In the human body, they're catalysts. They interfere, breaking substances down so they may be sent on their way to accomplish a task. Imagine a cluster of construction workers; shit-talking, cat-calling dames, engaging in mildly (or…

Shameful Maneuvers

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Most of the boys I pretended to marry thought my classroom seductions were funny, but there is a chance that one of the boys turned violent against me.

The Street Singer

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The Street singer gathers up his coins and counts to a hundred before The last string stops vibrating

I Still Miss the Sun

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I know I’m in the sky all night And can lie back and sometimes have some fun But these stars around me aren’t everything in life I still miss the sun After your first lover threw you back Into the frozen ocean of life You never came back

Night fear illusions

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

From The Plague Year 2020

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I went to Costco

Lavender Blur

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Donna and I get out of the car...

Where is His Grave

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She took a desolate road as the wind blew.

Extraterrestrial Bingo

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Let me tell you about extraterrestrial bingo: it's loud. They put the speakers over my head. And the microphone keeps moving. Most of the organisms here are old. And from another planet. I see a lot of tentacles. A lot of auras and bugeyes. Everyone seems to know the…

verses versus verses versus verses

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poetry less than poverty: / fair warning to poets, but a good sign.

Ode to Flannery O'Connor

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Gert sat in the car and wiped at the inside of the window while the defroster blasted at full strength. The shards and slivers of ice that networked across the windshield were just thick enough to hinder visibility. Bane wrenched the door open and shoved

Emily's Letter to her Husband's Lover

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I almost kept him on the shelf with all the trophies.

Texturality

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A.The poem of rational progression is dulling.Make the leap. Go beyond juxtaposition to collision.We like poetry that does double duty, triple duty, quadruple duty. We like poetry that mixes the grit, poetry that has the texture of complexity.Reason asserts an…

Two Drunken Elves Don't Know a Good Hobbit When They See One

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Wait for it. It's not the end of the world, it's the end of certain things. It's not that the sky is falling, it's that the coral reefs are dead or dying. I don't know how the ravaged trees have managed to survive this long with us breathing…

air hugs

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but all I can give them now are air hugs

Unnamed

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The child was delivered, set to breathing, and whisked away before Fae Anne could even catch a glimpse of her.

Warm Day, Virus City

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From inside the baking hot car we watched our father, nervous in his face mask and gloves, step through the wooden gate into grandma's front garden. She was waiting for him, thin and lonely behind the frilled lace curtain. She held the iPad in her left hand, and she…