Write.as Cues

By James Goner

if addiction a pain, then depression another, said either decease or live and suffer. yet frightened of death like none other. now fix it the person who created the mess. was it ego or was it ignorance?

saw a way out, still hardships surround, yet it's the only path that the mind has found. tried and failed not once not twice, it was indeed, hundreds of times.

whenever gave up and asked, 'what is the point?', the mind said 'future is dark, but it could be bright.'

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By Case Duckworth

I want to hear your voices, to gaze at your elbows. There are only so many ways to do anything. I want, I want, I want, I don't know how not to. It comes in waves, rolling like a car over a speed bump. There is no body there except the body, except your bodies, folded over each other like paper. Like dollar bills wadded in my pocket. Like brows furrowed. Like trees' roots always searching for nitrogen, or each other.

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By goofy

Flickering and lonely light drifting away from the night who could frame and sooth your pain when you try to reach in vain the ever fleeing distant suns

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By Hudson Gardner

The red woven towel hangs limply from the oven. I have already used it twice to dry my hands today. The wind outside moves new leaves of bushes. The ants have begun to build tunnels. A metal shack by the beat up street has a padlock I have never tried to open. The lock hangs from a handle that is rusting off. The apricot tree nearby has never been pruned. Yet every year it produces new fruit. Cars still pass on Agua Fria street. The sun still rises and wakes me up. I feel confused about how I feel when each day is the same. This endless cycle of waking and sleep.

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By Christine

head in the clouds i thought we had something had was the word

why did you ghost me? did that 2 weeks of texting mean nothing? we shared a part of our lives nothing private but it was more than just being strangers i thought hm maybe we could be acquaintances or something more

its been a month since we last spoke i thought im over it

but, you blocked me something i've never experienced left me dazed and confused did i do something wrong? should i have never added you into 'close friends' list? was that a mistake? probably

funny thing is who wanted to text off tinder & get my IG? you. who stopped replying? you. who blocked me off IG? you.

made me realise that boys would do anything to just fuck around and when they're done, they're done chivalry is really dead

but hey thank you and i would come back stronger and be better, while you? idk, au revior M. if its meant to be, it will be. 有缘再见。

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By Bob Haugen

In my dream, the user interface was liquid, encased in a rectangular wooden box about 4 by 6, composed of bubbles, shimmering, undulating, jostling each other. When I touched one, it expanded and smaller bubbles emerged from its depths which were connected by tendrils to other bubbles, all composed of energy of different kinds. Beings appeared in the bubbles at the ends of the tendrils and wanted to talk.

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By Kevin Hodgson

Look skyward at this hour to clock this moment - for our burdens are not equally distributed; the statistics break down

We need other people’s voices, for we are not born wired – We are Wire - calling through these faint networks toward the heart

When fear and loneliness seem to last an eternity, and in reversal, fragility; greater - this is when the outside looks most like empty streets, flat, with new calm

Maybe we still will bear witness to these mad dashes of love, imagining each stranger’s head crowned by a saint’s halo

All of us are somewhere, searching for Shalom; the window signs beckon us: We, the failed poets of the Pandemic -

the unstressed syllable the embodied rhythm the heartbeat a pulse

A Found Poem gathered from within: “Dispatches from the Pandemic” Via The New Yorker magazine, April 13, 2020, pages 34-49 Original writers: Ben Lerner, Rick Moody, Weike Wang, Vinson Cunningham, Lorrie Moore, Edwidge Danticat, Maggie Nelson, Donald Atrim, Karen Russell, and Bryan Washington

Audio: https://some.audio/5e942cb128d3ee0fa995101f

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By Pablo Cortez

Note: I originally wrote this poem in Spanish. Below are both the Spanish and English translations of the poem.

Pasajero

No quiero vivir en el país de los rostros pasajeros. Aquel repleto de las almas que perdieron las llaves del tiempo y no recuerdan ni el delirio ni ocurrencia. Si el cristal de la mañana no revienta en mil colores, me habrán anulado el pasaporte al país de la intuición. Para entonces no podré quejarme ni enojarme. Para entonces ya seré el olvido.

---

Fleeting

I don’t want to live in the country of fleeting faces. The one teeming with minds that have lost the keys of time and can remember neither delirium nor wit. If mornings no longer burst into a thousand colors, my passport to the land of intuition will have been revoked. By then I will not complain or be enraged. By then I will be time long lost.

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By Johan Visschers

Rows of people piles of people all cued up trapped in circles

Speechless people staring people mindless people caught between the lines

Taking off and free fall holes in the sky for those who do not fear those who do not fear

Cities and dust roads landscapes change per heartbeat on my way up and on my way down flatlines scrape the sky

Flatlines scrape the sky Flatlines scrape the sky

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By Mara Cavanaugh

The Teletubbies website appears. “Hey! I know them!” I feel my ears against the bouncy, cute, curly pigtails.

Comfortable in my father's lap, I munch on chocolate ice cream.

I start to climb onto the desk. Something was watching us.

He tries to draw my attention back to them. “Look it's... Tinky-Winky!” It is Tinky-Winky and Laa Laa and...

The big circle glass in a square black box blinks.

I can't see.

A head pokes out, a stranger looks at us, upset.

Much later I was told it was a failed Sears photo shoot.

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