Category: articles
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I built a rocketship
I built a rocketship, with kraft cardboard and Elmers glue that stuck to the pads of my fingers the epoxy of eternity on my epidermis just a mess of chemicals but then again isn’t that just all of us? I built my rocketship and dragged it into the yard the grass was wet and it…
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Depression
Your minutes become the rooms of a labyrinth, one concentric womb en route to another mere membranes apart. Each labor awaits you. You yearn to scream like a saint robbed of words, to pray in tongues long dismissed. Your hands dam your sides, trammel your ribs, each one a wing for the sobs, sharp and…
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Cento for a Slate Day
Beyond the shale night the rooster jumps up on the windowsill. I raise the machete— East Ridge going to the abattoir. Poetry is not a form but a result: what’s true of oceans is true of labyrinths. “You lie,” he cried, And ran on. Lois Marie Harrod This cento (or poetic…
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The Testament of Algorithms
It had been a long year – not a good year, but a long one. When it was finally over, when the last bottle of cheap wine was upturned in the ice bucket, when the last guest left, leaving a wreck of their small apartment, Glen and Glenda turned to each other. The question…
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I think of Matisse’s goldfish
their reflection weightless on their painted water the way an ink blob might shoulder… … To unlock the rest of this poem, join the Circus! BECOME A MEMBER
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Confessions of a Non-Best-Selling Author
My overnight at the Convention Center started out about as uneventful as any other shift I had pulled over the past few weeks. I was already one month retired from the post office, in a funky college section of Boston called Allston, situated nearly dead center between Boston College and crosstown rival Boston University. Allston…
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Dreaming in Flatware
I begin with the dinner fork and the salad fork but the forks multiply, the fish fork and this? an oyster fork, are we having oysters? you didn’t tell me we were having oysters, the oyster fork which is the only fork to be placed at the right side of the plate says a voice…
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Yellowjacket Kid
We went around the cabin and each kid had to say something about himself. Uttie, our counselor, talked about the camp and meals and bedtime and everything. He had to answer a lot of questions because, even though our parents had only just left, already a kid had got hurt in a really awful…
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Legacy
Adam stretches his arm The tip of his finger, Few inches shy of the Immortal— Mirroring the painter and his brush Reaching for the ceiling chapel Praying for resurrection— Or was it the other way around? Did Michelangelo intend to show An old God, aided by angles, Bent on reaching progeny, Reincarnation,…
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The Alchemy of Advice
For Rhina E That poem that you have to write will make you write it, you told us, eventually. Before it even is, it makes us ache inside? Is that the way it gets to be, like other fruits of creativity? As seeds spawn trees, so, for the simple sake of what is not, one…
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For All One Knows
A man sees an old woman up ahead of him on the side of a desolate path. He is surprised to come across her, as he hasn’t seen anyone for days. By the looks of it, neither has she. She is leaning up against a tree, in the small midday shade, and even though she…
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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…