Category: articles
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Black Sonnet: Judith and Holofernes
On Francisco Goya’s painting of the same name. And, merit fate, the wine had overflownHolofernes’ wrath; Judith’s blade shoneAs, to the nurse, she confided her plan: I’ll slay this man by beheading him twiceIf you’ll watch the door. She leveled the knifeTo equal her own head, and entered: War,Who played your whore, might have stayed…
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Black Sonnet: Saturn Devouring His Son
On Francisco Goya’s painting of the same name. Can you propose a more appropriateResponse for Ops when she illuminatesHer husband, elbow-deep, in between chews? The muted slurping your abuse made beforeWas punishment enough, she snarled. When goreRemains unknown, blackness paints barbaryMore wretched than reality. I thoughtTo see your sin could not be worse than whatMy…
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Bright Flower
Perfection placed in broken arms that dayYou came out screaming, wrinkled, pink, and breathedRelief, for you, miraculous new babeWere proof God watched, still cared something for me. Your garden chime echoed beyond the door,A Christening gift. “Watch over her heart,”It whispered. “She’s your little girl but more,She’s ours always, on loan, heaven’s fine art.” Today…
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So Long Ago
When green fields grow barren And life grows all too much I sit fixated on the sound Of the steel birds That grace the sky above. When flowers bloom And then grow dry Under the fiery sun That makes water run dry And lands grow barren Do I see the happiness I had once in the pastSo long ago And now escapes my reachLike salt…
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Novel Assassination
This morning I murdered a book, as I laid in bed with my dozing pitbull,watching her breath move the blanket,her paw twitching against the mattress and my legwhile sunlight submersed the room into existence. The plot had some sort of twist that I hadnot recently seen in film or book;or, at least,I don’t think so,for…
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Heat
Yellow popcorn curls and June bugs, girls named June and May and April too. Southern summers smell of 1950’s funnel cakes and fast boys, faster cars and jars of strawberry jam. Brown skin kissed by boat dock bruises and cool evenings on porches older than plantations — haunted like them too. Drive-ins with Bobby and…
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From the Burrow’s Edge
There seems to be more every daycoming and going through the old grey double doorsMob of Mason Bees buzzing without terminustwo to a room, fifty in total and they’re all flying solo Three bees, five nightcrawlers and two flat-nosed bats sleeping the wrong way upSingle misplaced souls in a realm owned by seven billion The…
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What is it then between us?
There are, they say, endless criteria that make “a New Yorker,” as opposed to someone who just lives here for a spell. Some say it’s three years minimum before you’ve earned the title. Others say five. Six. Ten. Still others say you’re not a New Yorker till you’ve hit a milestone like crying in public.…
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Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Author Irène Némirovsky penned the following lines in her journal: “My God! What is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let us watch as it loses its honour and its life.” She wrote this a year into the German occupation of France during World War II…
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G E R M I N A T I O N
Life becomes alien in my hands a sniffle a startled sneeze that pursues comicality in irony, ever so foreign in every repetition. A tree grew out of my ears, it was planted when I was small and my father had opened up my skull to look for a foul germination; something must have fell in…
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M I D A S A N D C O L L E G E B O O K S
Tyrant stains within the spaces of my fingers; If you will take a ship from my wrist to these, Astrologers will sing ‘no’ in a chorus for my market value was next to none and the production cost alone took a small library or a two. Turmeric thumb— snap like the summon of a magician,…
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Americana
The TV set centered in the airy living room,breakfast flowing out of the kitchen, a fruit salad, garishly and gorgeously colorful,flavors waiting to be accepted into our plates.The screen door lets sunlight casually stream in,providing a view of rows of unextraordinarily neat suburban houses withthe greenest grass you ever did see.Next to the door, the…