Category: Writing
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The Bogeyman & Writer’s Block
Today I received an email newsletter entitled, “Are you SCARED to make Art?” (It’s from People I’ve Loved, makers of unique prints, paper goods, blankets, and the like. Check them out!) The body of the email contained really sensitive, genuine content about creative difficulty amidst depression. But I couldn’t shirk the joke of the subject…
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The Chinese Lessons
People told me that my daughter was fluent in Chinese, but before we went to Beijing together I used to have to take their word for it. She had been in a Mandarin immersion program since she was three years old, but since I didn’t speak Mandarin myself, I had to be satisfied with the…
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Split Apart
Ash shall mark my forehead; my lips shall feast upon stone— Lest fragments of breath fill me up; I’ll be cold and as dusty as bone. Let wine wet my forehead, let scales seal my eyes, let my hair be tangled in name— Let life bring me verses of hearts recognized; ignited twin spirits of…
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To Moor in Greenness of Early May
You feel gratitude for taking a walk in the meadow, like a brown bee drifting, to shun the fragrance of 5G networks— for the grass blades’ tenderness and caring. For the chance to fall with pale pink petals, lie in the clearing like a drunken cork, lie there long enough that, from your nostrils, some…
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we pick out our plots one afternoon
i want so badly to wither away with you to get sick and slow we were red and crying five days apart and i know you don’t want to get old but my mother says time’s hand blows soft against lovers one day our bodies will cave in and i’ll fold myself into you to…
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Rays of Starlight
Rays of starlight, scattered far, Come, join together in the night, A beacon for the ones who are In search of strength or hope or light. Bring a light to those who mourn, In memory of the one they lost. And comfort those whose hearts are torn, All those who in some storm are…
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A Ghost Wouldn’t Say That
One moonless Friday night in October, a man and a woman on a Harley came roaring up Illinois 440 with Spalding behind them and Colby City a few miles ahead. They passed the Christmas tree farm, they passed the hog market, they made the quick little S-curve without incident even though they’d never been on…
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damned girls
our mothers are given the hospital beds farthest from the other patients they say the nurses can tell, can figure out the damned girls from how the stomach molds around our damned bodies the indent we make around the belly button yes, we are life-sucking before we are life yes, our first words are short…
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Beyoncé, William Carlos Williams, and Poetic Stamina
The Third Law of Thermodynamics states that Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade must be viewed as well as heard, or American culture as we know it will cease to exist. If you haven’t seen it, well, you’re breaking the law. But those of us in the clear can listen to the sixth season of the Dissect…
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Naked Vicar
Ruth, Epiphany (Sunday, 6th January) She looked contemptuously at the portrait she had just finished; Mr E. A. Adonis had been dismissive and rude when she had gone to his house to take preliminary photographs for the painting and had then made several attempts to pat her bottom, and the finished portrait clearly showed her…
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Very much I need to be
Very much I need to be left alone, so I can figure out why no one speaks to me I’ve been learning to work out in my stomach what I cannot work out in my heart, or head I have transferred, I think all of my distress to my gut & my gut feels awful
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The Miracles of San Batista
One could argue that as a native Batistan my opinion of the events I am about to recount must necessarily be tainted by local prejudice and distorted by personal involvement. And, in a way, it would be true. But of one thing you can be sure of. I will tell you what happened as best…