To go back to last week
____and tell my subway self it is ok to make
________eye contact: the eyes of the terrified
beseech. If only I had smiled at her,
____introduced myself (never mind the stutter),
________made that self-deprecating joke
I’ve been saving, then maybe she
____would’ve laughed and caused eyes
________to flit up and dart around, and the
musician next to her could’ve
____added his two cents, and she might’ve
________pointed to his saxophone, and perhaps
he would’ve begun to play, and surely the
____other passengers would’ve stared and chuckled
________and clapped until the hurtling hearse filled with
________music and movement and touch and dance—
I am on the ‘L’ now, departing for downtown, and
____cannot hear the violinist playing against the station walls,
________unnoticed, to the left of the descending stairs.…
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Like a love bomb with shrapnel made of satisfaction guarantees, the Siren’s song pops. And, like a customized Pandora’s boombox with the listener, as the artist, genre and track, it blasts a powerful force. Classic translators of Homer’s Odyssey, for centuries, have earned their academic laurels in rendering the blandishment and flattery of the Greek Sirens’ song and the rest of the Odyssey into English verse and prose. The Sirens woo ruthlessly, through the friendly fire that proves to be terminally complimentary to anyone hearing it.
What You May Not Know About the Song of the Sirens
Sirens are everywhere. Their song calls familiar and true, 24-7. On the world wide waves of the Internet, sailors are constantly serenaded by similar seductions, the urge of a sense to “act now” with temptations and come-ons that will never be fully consummated, but play on the strings of desire, directly to each and every listener.…
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i told my son you can reach me i am not the weather the same way my father was the weather i am not mystery or storm or the perfect day apology for the storm you can reach me i am willing to be shaken i used to be shaken all of the time you you you son you can reach me i have built a table too small to eat at so that we can sit there and hold no pursuit other than me what do you need
– Darren Demaree…
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“Well, if it doesn’t jell, it isn’t aspic, and this isn’t jellin’!”
—Psycho
Brine shrimp spawn a galaxy in a fishbowl.
Ergo, sea monkeys exist.
So do Higgs bosons and demodex.
These last look like scorpions
and live on the canopy of your eyelashes.
The difference being they’re not sold
at toy stores as a novelty item.
PETA has so far remained notoriously
mum about sea monkeys.
Long before that Nazi sympathizing
corpolite von Braunhut patented his presto shrimp
aquariums in the late ’60’s,
Kubla Khan’s gift to Marco Polo when they first met
was a porcelain bowl of sea monkeys
swimming in unfettered motility.
Michaelangelo sculpted a frieze
of sea monkeys once.
It’s now in one of the nine circles
of the Vatican, next to Pope Joan’s feeldoe.…
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The past year gives one the suspicion that American society is dysfunctional. Our Congress is useless, our institutions inept. Faced with the terror of existence, young men react with violence. Faced with manageable problems such as reforming health care, our democracy self-destructs. Anger is everywhere; understanding is nowhere.
Although a democratic society cannot function unless its citizens are able to rationally debate one another, rationality is missing from American politics. We assail our political enemies with intractable opinions and self-righteous anger. An ugly bitterness pervades everything. Meanwhile, our country is slowly but surely committing suicide.
It seems to me that this dysfunctional political dialogue, which stems from the iron certainty we grant our opinions, is the most pressing problem confronting 21st century America. In fact, it is a crisis.…
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A bird spills its codes into the air,
resting in the long arms of a tree.
You, stranger bird,
who set you singing
in the secret leaves of coming summer?
It’s busy work, stitching the sky to the river.
Some think the job’s done
when cloudy stories turn the great wheel
and currents sweep deep disturbances.
But as the river shoulders its way to the sea,
the pattern’s still weaving.
Foam is written on the water,
calligraphy, a certain alphabet peculiar to
this river of specificities.
Rain is coming.
Mountains shrug against the horizon.
A branch shudders with its burden.
Eddies swirl in the water.
– Carolyn Adams…
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I levitate to the thirteenth floor
each time I proclaim how desperately
I covet connection,
and once the capsule jerks to a halt,
and my stomach drops,
the light blooms,
the imperceptible chime rings,
but the door won’t budge
because sincerity is too much,
and the floor was never there.
– Brontë Pearson
Author’s Note: “Triskaidekaphobia” was written for a poetry exercise called The Fish Tank of Rage, where you are given an abstract emotion and a random object and must craft a poem combining the two. “Triskaidekaphobia” was the product of “the elevator of rejection” and plays upon the idea of many buildings lacking a 13th-floor due to superstition. …
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