Ink Node

Nick Sturm, "I WENT OUTSIDE AND THEN I DON’T KNOW"

2012-01-26T01:43:24Z

Many different things have the ability to glimmer
and that is as much a reason for joy as for terror.
Do you think of the things you eat as having come from a carcass?
Does part of you not believe yourself when you call it making love?
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Michael Canavan, "Just Bodies"

2012-01-25T16:13:06Z

How a fire spooks a field out of its hallows,
prone raccoons trapped within,

hemmed by freeway rubble filthily burning.
Darker. How each one appalls a little wilderness

curdled in smoke. Darker still. How the moment
begins in space and...

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Jono Tosch, "You Know How It Is when You Go into a Room?"

2012-01-04T05:38:17Z

I was in the store when I thought barf structure.
Then, on a different day, I thought I should change my name
to Thomas—talk to my parents about it and get it changed
legally to Thomas—and then on another day
I thought barf structure in...

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Seth Abramson, "Speed Will Win"

2012-01-08T01:01:24Z

There’s a question lifeless in the snow
that was left
between two people who hardly felt it
going; there was a cannot
thrown by an infantryman right there
on Thursday
in Nagog Village to a news-seller’s boy
thrown jokingly
but caught by...

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Sarah Greenleaf, "“You Know You’re There”"

2012-01-04T19:35:19Z

You see the building,
a replica of one in Beijing’s Forbidden City,
you know you’re there.
After listening to white noise for up to a minute,
you feel yourself settle.
You see plaques on boulders
depicting the history and vegetation of the area.
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Sally Delehant, "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree . . . "

2011-12-20T19:25:31Z

These structures were not built to bend through Black Friday.
One frenzied angel topples from a spun tree.
We inevitably speak of fallen stars and a multitude of the heavenly host.
I stood six-years-old reciting the Christmas gospel from memory.
My family...

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Evan White, "filum terminale"

2011-11-22T03:53:41Z

In the man a garden was waiting.
Ever since, a genius for accidental finds.
Capacity so old that Ilium knows it,
knows an assault upon the senses,
an excavation gives its own residue.
Quickly the man was a family, daughters
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Evan Nagle, "sex"

2011-12-09T00:38:00Z

Sex is looking stupidly

Into the traffic of another

Person. Sex is oftentimes
Getting nowhere at all. Sex
Is that midnight drive I took,
Feeling horrible. Sex is yet another
Shoplifted posture.
Sex, twice on one knee.
...

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Ted Powers, "from PLEASE LIGHT UP"

2011-09-14T01:50:07Z

Because we are in love
I can know five or six things.
If the band plays inside the barn
and we stand outside the barn
we won’t need earplugs.
The next day the cows will moo
louder without realizing it.
Two down....

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Cecilia Llompart, "Considerations"

2011-10-23T22:08:22Z

Consider, O Lord, how You sit atop the sky; like a man
 in a glass bottom boat.

 Consider sky elsewhere; worn thin as a mattress.

 Consider the women, marbling
 in their corners
the men with...

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John Bowman, "Inscription"

2011-11-06T18:58:25Z

Zero

 (by lovers’ pen-knives –

 by sun-beam on Birch by

 stone tiles; by unknown

 traces light enters a grave;

 by all lost fossils touching

 refuge, sketch a limit by...

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Robert Moura, "No Tombstone"

2011-11-14T04:51:08Z
Whether she knew or not
I had three wishes for her.

The first was to replace
Those opal bones
And birch skin
With dyes from Agrabah,
The colors of queens on falls.
I needed flowers of them,
Those colors,
...

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Rebecca Hazelton, "You Make Me Touch Your Hands for Stupid Reasons"

2011-11-08T03:05:00Z

The air is the same

as when three-toed horses

walked the earth, tender on the rocks.

The river interrupts the land, and the black dots

on the hillside, the far away

or the tiny, might be people,

might be ruptured
...

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Sheera Talpaz, "COMMENT ON MIRACLES"

2011-09-18T12:26:30Z
The overcast sky is inept,
rainless. That’s fine –
we don’t ask for much.
All that the sky withholds:
lovers of rain, lovers
just the same, the right key
to enter the classroom
too cold for the students’
liking, did I...

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Sarah Louise Green, "Lake Merritt"

2011-10-19T15:18:03Z
To be one of the geese.
Unhindered and not-suffering by the Lake.

Souls go by on boat or foot.
Blue squares of water, blue days overtaking a year.

People clink glasses and talk of their invented selves.
Their selves living lives...

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Andy Stallings, "Harvest Fair"

2011-10-12T17:19:52Z
Do I look like him?

His children and wife have come quite a ways in a wagon.

A general might have dreamed
his thighs like calumns
propping up the piss-wire horizon.

All around his crown the dust of formulas
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Sara Guest, "Song for Valedictorians"

2009-06-29T23:06:22Z
Astrid looks away when it’s time to give her name. But not today. Today she shouts out,

I want to name myself winged-ornament. I want to name myself. I am a winged-ornament. I name myself and move into dubious battle with waves of the morning. The...

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Adam Day, "Badger’s Speech to the Audience"

2011-09-10T17:10:33Z
There are always two parties to a loss. Not only
am I lonely in my parts, but the parts themselves

are lonely, as when the glimpse of a particularly
sordid wallpaper unaccountably chokes one

with anxiety. As the...

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Emily Kendal Frey, "from SORROW ARROW"

2011-05-13T20:42:17Z
Even though I have this giant problem in my pants

I am not going to do anything

Today the ocean

I am going to move my one sorrowless byte

What would I say

London is...

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Nick Sturm, "A BASIC GUIDE TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY"

2011-08-18T00:56:01Z
1. There is a lot of room in my mouth.
2. I want to be more confused.
3. I want to put up some wallpaper and do a little singing.
4. Little to no time will be spent considering the role of heavy weaponry.
5. Quinoa...

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Debrah Morkun, "from THE IDA PINGALA"

2009-08-01T04:41:25Z

I.

Lichen-bearers root themselves
like midnight, vast
orion-body, turncoat:

O father, senseless, who lives by the lake,
says in twenty-five years this vast
water-body will disappear:

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Jaimie Gusman, "Sonnet for the Search Party"

2011-08-24T02:36:02Z
Lemon skinned moon

Purrs away, only skin she says

In a thousand mirrored pores

Sits a handful of feral stars.

Only face, why save it? he agrees,

Hangs yellow, bangs louder

On...

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Broc Rossell, "MODERN LIVING"

2011-07-11T00:19:46Z
Everyone knows me

Say my name and stop my motion

I welcome your critique

Take my clothes and make me the world

You are more real than my this is

You are the black sun...

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John Bowman, "Hour Duet"

2011-07-25T00:12:08Z
Letters could like larvae grow

in lath beneath a plaster page.

White bodies curled in wood.

(

The writing on a wall destroys a wall,
or through a slot, a book opening
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Robert Moura, "1937"

2010-11-30T20:17:14Z
The old days.
Grandma has the skirt on.
She wants some, so she gets it.
Silk thighs, bright green eyes, there we are.
In the night she drives to the dance,
October and her way of life.
Scotch. They fly like paper animals.
...

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