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A Harsh Pep Talk

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You are nothing but a generic white man with average looks and intelligence, trapped in an indie romantic comedy. You sit in your overstuffed coffeeshop chair, drinking an impossibly befoamed cappuccino, the sleeves of your flannel rolled up to your elbows, mellow synth…

Upon A Time

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What we did was walk in on an amazing starfish convention, everyone lazing about, softly frozen against the timeless drooling currents like strange looking wind socks washing up and down with the sun. I am empty, hear me roar in blubbery bluster and…

Mail from the Ungrund: A Tardy Preamble

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nevertheless, this crowd had come up with a universal cure for humanity, and regardless of consequences . . .

My Love Affair With The Unknown Comic

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At least, I think it was him. It sure looked like him.

Detroit: I'm Emotionally Invested

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I grew up in Detroit, and even though I haven't lived there since I was 18, I'm still a Michigander at heart. I'm also a (retired) bankruptcy attorney.You can probably tell where this is going. I own a Detroit municipal bond. It's a sewer bond, which means…

Desert Storm, an Infrared Dream/David Avidan

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Desert Storm, an Infrared Dream/Poem by the late David Avidan On January 17, 1991 I woke up at 02:45 from a neo-surreal dream with a slight not very serious feeling of suffocation a pre-asthma attack instantly stifled with the inhalation of Ventolin an

Boner

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What if blood engorging your penis could be the result of emotions other than sex and violence? Wouldn't it be nice if your dick could be used to express the lengths and depths of other feelings?

Aged Beef on the Senior Meat Market

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Burger King has rekindled Flame, its $4 broiled-meat-scented spray.

On Perfect Marble

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So the subtle shadow settles onto perfect marble on the floor of the ocean when the sunlight blooms over space and time but only in the near future as it has always been

The Tracing Game

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Shadows skipped across the bedroom wall at 80 km/hour. It wouldn't be so bad if people wouldn't use their high beams but it's the price you pay for living on a dark highway with low property taxes. “How do you sleep in here?”…

Four Death Poems, Written in Blood

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The warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem. Sometimes the samurai would begin the ritual and write his poem in blood.

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…

The Lesson

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So, when Daddy grabbed that cock by the neck and threw him into the hole that he quick covered with dirt, I knew right then that men would play a subservient role in my life going forward.

The Other Side

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That was the first time I went over the wall. No bird opened its mouth to chirp. No wind blew. I staggered a little on the stony edge. And dropped down. I changed in a cafe. Shaved. Emerged as that rare thing: a new man. My clothes were old, saved for

Fifi Climbs To the Top!

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Fifi is one piece of work, from the Ann Coulter Tits-And-Ass Rattlesnake School Of Broadcasting Venom And Bullshit Like Goebbels...

Home in Biloxi

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Her father stuffed years worth of stories into the phone, a sort of begging: how the new dog rode in the golf cart and retrieved lost Pinnacles; how the garage’s rent was too expensive; how the doctor gave him new pills and how he had lost weight and cu

Edward Ogle the fourth

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Charted stars by the dozens / with a side of frizzle onions / dawn showers us with glitter.

Things As They Really Are

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I slide my CD toward Eric Burdon who sits, smiling and gracious and fatigued from Seattle traffic, at the table at Silver Platters, where I have just purchased ‘Til Your River Runs Dry, and stood in a line of old gray heads to have him sign it. I remove my hat and…

Becoming an Oates Girl

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

Into the Mystic

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Writing opens doors to perception. For example, the glockenspiel smells of gardenias, but the catwalk is opening a can of Franklin stove. It emits fumes of fairyland and olive. And in the green and pleasant country of Scotland and England, vintage trains go…

Path of Least Resistance

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I followed the car-path tendrils/ further and further north.

This is Paradox

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Concupiscent you cling to a truth like a demon,but please, contain your self.By all means, exert, but once in a while,rest, the illusion of love is love and you have always known this, like cherriesand ice cream and pictures of Mount Fuji.One who has found yourself in a…

The Deepest Cut

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Smoke is pouring outta my ears! (And outta my mouth and nostrils, but that's normal.) The Fast-o-matic Supermart has changed their coupons. Now you can't swap them for plastic surgery. So all those tubes of New Orleans-style Cottil-i-Lard dog sausage…

A Few Good Band Names

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Auto and the Grease-Pits Sugar Cube Full Frontal The Holy Grill Crazy Al and the Squirrels Talk Is Cheap Grilled Cheese Sandwich Cold Zippers Destiny Howl Epiphany Critter Cold Kneecaps Crepes Pulled Pork Baby Seals and the Club

Curtains

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She wants her mother back and all I can give her is this—over and over. She doesn't want my mouth, wants no kissing anywhere even. Just this. Like this—quiet and rough. Quiet because her stepfather is napping in the bedroom next to…

Professor _________

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"First we’ll get a good workout at the discotheque where my lady friend works. Don’t worry, she’s already arranged for a friend of hers to attend so you won’t have to suffer the indignity of being a third wheel."

Poem before Video Store

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Last night was full of little fists

Alyssa

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Before the paint spikes Coney Island to the wind, I walk home through the strum of a shield, colder than the one he left behind. For the hour I sprawl along the sidewalk in her laugh, crater's shadows for Wonder Wheel, he is midnight sun in The Last Waltz. Where the glow…

Nodding Off in the Paper Airplane Assembly Line

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The world's anxious fire breathing mob still wants in, but they don't know what in the smoke they are looking for. They aren't really thinking in that intellectual direction. All these wonderful, friendly books you see do not hold the answer or…

Too Many Toys

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But the boy next door is worse than a dweeb; he's a prima donna and a bully and a little shit to boot. The divorce will only make him more.