Tag: poetry
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OLD MARILYN DOWN ON CEDAR STREET
Folks used to razz me about it, but we’ve all gotten old and I don’t think fertility is what it was before the mill went down and the school closed and folks called me Sterile Marilyn behind my back. It never got to me. Back in those days, lots of gals here wore their kids…
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BOB OVER ON 2ND STREET USED TO BE A PASTOR
I parroted the company line until one Sunday I finally told them the truth about me. My experience of the Divine Christ. I’d been in such darkness. Unimaginable in its gravity. Advisors encouraged me to pray and embrace the answer when it came, so I kept praying but got nothing. Nothing. Finally, I prayed, I’ll…
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MONA, WHO VOLUNTEERS DOWN AT WOMEN’S CRISIS
I sensed a shadow in the living room when I toured the place, so knew it was possible when I signed the lease. And I had also seen it in meditation. I moved in anyway. Rentals are hard to find, and I feared people would start talking again if I spoke about what…
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JERRY, WHO WORKS OVER AT SCOOBY’S TIRES
Years ago a fortune teller told me they’d come. I was at Garibaldi Days, drunk and with a woman who believed in all that kind of stuff. She did a lot of those woo-woo meditation things; I was crazy for her. Then she went off to one of those naked retreat places and wrote me…
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Prufrock’s Peach
Recently I read a book in which a pastor asks her congregants their #1 most frequent thoughts about themselves. People wrote these thoughts on sticky notes and posted them to a giant board inside the church. Thoughts like, “I am not enough,” and “I won’t be okay until I lose weight.” If we’re honest, as…
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Flyer Poem #150: Verbal First Draft
Should have said it anyway. Should have traveled the road not yet taken. Should have gone to the spirit of the stairway. Should have had the decency to listen. Now, the pale ice caps have liquefied to the bottom of the river of grandeur. The heat wave has frozen over as a new age hell.…
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Flyer Poem #79
The suburban oculus, keeping the metropolis to itself. The outdoor cathedral’s eye sees you all. Gargoyles, stone-faced about life, stare off into the brink of the city. They have no discussion value, so why would speech be necessary? Awkward silence at its finest, but the stones break it each time.
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Giorgi
I do not extinguish the candle of the moment. The moment is not blue at all. Opinion and reconciliation my thesis is light blue. Come to me with frost from behind, the star closed her eyes from the steam, the most important of the trembling guards, my century or a half. In pain and doubt,…
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Flyer Poem #128: North
I felt your sarcasm in Cook County. Into this world, I land on the ceiling. Born in the heights of Arlington and raised in the culture of Wheeling. Discovered and connected, forever part of this Midwest city. Chicago, baby: my drug, my love affair. Redesigned and resurrected, a whole new man with none of the…
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Flyer Poem #74
Spirit lady, you are now a mental maybe. Hard to shake off the tribal dance of heartbreak. A hall face, a yearbook picture, forever wandering into the ether that we all fear the most. She is the unknown, but we are unknowing of her next critical move.
