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being a victim
catapults me back to the handful of women I’ve loved so deeply I stopped seeing that they had fallen for the intelligent and talented artist in me, and not for the man at the dark bottom of that pool who looks and smells like me, who walks the way I do or holds his head […]
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sick
It looks like a giant ceramic pot of Manhattan clam chowder just stirred by an award-winning chef who needs to make it in large batches. From out of the kitchen of the stomach comes giant dollops of the most heartwarming welcome your mother might ladle up for you upon your coming home from college during […]
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in my crystal ball
I can see a blond-haired, nonjudgmental goddess stopping by to tease and offer me friendship and the occasional intimate invitation. I’ll spend most of my time in my head, alone and inside the house like I always have. Though I can see myself tending to an herb garden just outside my screen door, a Buddha […]
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up and running
I started a new tumblr blog today, and plan on forwarding these poems there. The tumblr site is at https://chrisrussellpoems.tumblr.com/
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gaslight
When I think of gaslighting I am reminded of the talks my father used to give to me when he was drunk in his chair in front of NASCAR, smoking menthols until he turned white while telling me with slurred words and with a drooling mouth falling slowly off his face how nobody cared about […]
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the downtown debacle
A young man had run away from school and was smashing windows and punching people downtown. The authorities were on the scene, standing by and thinking carefully about the situation. “What if we offer him a gift card to Starbucks?” one said. “What if we offer to buy him a car?” another said. “A trip […]
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poetry supply chain
The poetry gods were with me again this year. They ship tons of poems across the sea of my unconscious and I autologue them back and forth between the waters of motivation and my conscious mind until they start to resemble common need. During my summer off I’ll spend a couple more hours in the […]
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the burn
The sun had been falling out of the sky all Sunday afternoon, before I realized I had a burn on my forearms that looked like I’d been reaching down into a bathtub filled with acid for a bar of soap. I couldn’t hide it at work without wearing long sleeves so I just let it […]
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the fish
I was eating my oatmeal. My fish walked up to me and said, “And then there were two.” “And then number two,” I said. I got up from the table and used the bathroom. Four hours later I came out sat down on the couch for a television series binge. My fish sat on the […]
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hair
I’m not sure I should have done it, the hair I cut last night. It was mine I’m pretty sure, so, I probably should like it. Now it’s in the trash buried under coffee grounds and is good as forgotten, my bald scalp a reminder that beauty fades, as they say, though if I were […]
the real subject is always you 