Tag: Poem
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DogLeg: Dilly Dali-ing Around
MOVIE INFO: Amateur director Alan loses his beloved’s dog the morning of an important shoot. A film critic offers some candid observations on a series of incomplete shorts that Alan has spent his own money making. Alan grows desperate for the day to be over as the pursuit of the lost dog and the chaos…
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Turtles All the Way Down: Germs and Infinite Regress Getting in the Way of Teen Love
MOVIE INFO: Turtles All the Way Down tackles anxiety through its 17-year-old protagonist, Aza Holmes. It’s not easy being Aza, but she’s trying… trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, and a good student, all while navigating an endless barrage of invasive, obsessive thoughts that she cannot control. When she reconnects with Davis,…
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Unfrosted: Pop Tarts Gets the Myth It Almost Desserts
MOVIE INFO: Michigan, 1964. Kellogg’s and Post, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast forever. A tale of ambition, betrayal, sugar, and menacing milkmen, Unfrosted stars writer/director Jerry Seinfeld. REVIEW: Jerry Seinfeld on the big screen has only played the disembodied voice of an animated bee. In…
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The Fall Guy: Ryan Gosling Goes Splat in Full Body Glory.
MOVIE INFO: He’s a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and…
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The Idea of You: Being Swifty
MOVIE INFO: SynopsisBased on the acclaimed, contemporary love story of the same name, The Idea of You centers on Solène (Anne Hathaway), a 40-year-old single mom who begins an unexpected romance with 24-year-old Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the lead singer of August Moon, the hottest boy band on the planet. When Solène must step in…
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I Have Electric Dreams: Coming of Age in Costa Rica
MOVIE INFO: Eva is a strong-willed, restless 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, but desperately wants to move in with her estranged father. Clinging onto him as he goes through a second adolescence, she balances between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life and the ruthlessness of the…
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Adjustments
We all look alike in the dark, until our eyes adjust, and we see all the old, familiar forms.
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The Five Devils: The Scent of the Past
MOVIE INFO: Eight-year-old Vicky has a mysterious gift: she can recreate any scent she comes across, even that of her beloved mother Joanne. When her estranged aunt suddenly returns to town, the invocation of her fragrance plunges the young girl back in time to unravel a past replete with family secrets and queer romance. REVIEW:…
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A Grieving Song for Unsung Lullabyes
Small steps, my child,in this wilding place.Sharp life everywhere,the spaces too. Steps, small steps, child, tiny prayers, hopes blowninto the trees, the faraway birds,taking safety in the chantof this golden butterfly’s rise,who drank from the splash of the summer rainin the chase of light atop the trees.Small steps, child, forward, sure and true.
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My mother use to say….
My mother use to say whenever I gave I her one of my poems to critique-my mother whose grace and beauty lingers like the reflection of sun on water-that my words remind her of the time in her youth when her life was honey.But I am not a bee and she was never a queen—…
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Memory: A Trauma Plot With a Side of Dementia
MOVIE INFO: Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life: her daughter, her job, her AA meetings. This is blown open when Saul (Peter Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impact both of them as they open the door to the…
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Challengers: Set, Match, Love Me or Love Me Not
MOVIE INFO: From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach and a force of nature who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court. Married to a champion on a losing streak (Mike Faist – West Side Story), Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s…
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Love, Divided: Breaking Down the Walls to Love
MOVIE INFO: Valentina is a pianist preparing for an audition. David is a games inventor who can only concentrate in complete silence. Separated by a paper-thin wall, they strive to live in harmony with each other. REVIEW: Love, Divided uses about a foot of separation to create rom-com charm. That’s the distance between the walls…
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Infested: Itsy Bitsy Spiders Grow and Grow
Movie Info: Kaleb is about to turn 30 and has never been lonelier. He’s fighting with his sister over an inheritance and has cut ties with his best friend. Fascinated by exotic animals, he finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the…
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Duty Free
The van to the Cayman airport hits every pothole,shook every bone. I felt the ride in my teeth.My Dad bought some duty free Johnny Walker,a logwood trinket, a gift for his second set of kids.. A siege of harbor cranes are bobbing in the sway,waiting for the moon to dig its way into the sand.The…
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The Beekeeper: Jason Statham Delivers an Action Flick With Honey and Sting
MOVIE INFO: In The Beekeeper, one man’s brutal campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after he is revealed to be a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as “Beekeepers”. REVIEW: At some point in The Beekeper, starring Jason Statham and directed by David Ayer, a villain delivers the inevitable to BEE…
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Late Night With the Devil: Chasing the Ratings Demon
MOVIE INFO: Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy hosts a syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack’s beloved wife. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween…
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Anyone But You: Another Much Ado About Nothing Rom-com
MOVIE INFO: In the edgy comedy Anyone But You, Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) look like the perfect couple, but after an amazing first date something happens that turns their fiery hot attraction ice cold — until they find themselves unexpectedly thrust together at a destination wedding in Australia. So they do what…
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Monster
It must exist in the closet or under the bed with musty fur that throws jagged shadows, knows the fears that you keep intimately inside, be all mouth, claw, tooth, full of all hungers, and oh, it must be large, LARGE!- and THICK- the fallen image of a once ancient space, the guardian at the…
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I Inherited My Mother’s Nightmares
My memory is just bones-a clutter of heirloomsin the kitchen junk drawerwhere my mother’s soul is hidden in veils of tarnished tchotchkes.This women who refused to vanish has almost vanished from me,leaving these relics of unclaimed bones,this flatware she so carefully inscribed now rubbing out her initials in the consuming rust. There’s no place settingleft…
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Freud’s Last Session: Developing an Oedipal Complex with God and War and Death
MOVIE INFO: On the eve of the Second World War, two of the greatest minds on the twentieth century, C.S. LEWIS and SIGMUND FREUD converge for their own personal battle over the existence of God. FREUD’S LAST SESSION interweaves the lives of Freud and Lewis, past, present, and through fantasy, bursting from the confines of…
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Abigail : This Vampire Flick Has Some Real Bite
MOVIE INFO After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re…
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Migration: Just Misses the Trip South
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: This holiday season, Illumination, creators of the blockbuster Minions, Despicable Me, Sing and The Secret Life of Pets comedies, invites you to take flight into the thrill of the unknown with a funny, feathered family vacation like no other in the action-packed new original comedy, Migration. REVIEW: Migration is a…
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The Ministry of Ungetlemanly Warfare: Black Ops with a Dash of Bond, but Not as Fun
MOVIE INFO: Based upon recently declassified files of the British War Department and inspired by true events, THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE is an action-comedy that tells the story of the first-ever special forces organization formed during WWII by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a small group of military officials including author Ian Fleming.…
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I Think My Dog Needs a Bath
The dust of my house pirouettes to its own song, a dog-nosed existence in gray arrangements— the particulate matter of belly rubs and hocks stirring in a delicate assemblé of dog hair waiting for the start of heartfelt applause.
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Drive-Away Dolls: Drive Far Away From this One Coen Mess.
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Written by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, this comedy caper follows Jamie, an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend, and her demure friend Marian who desperately needs to loosen up. In search of a fresh start, the two embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee,…
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Hundreds of Beavers: A Funny Homage to Classic Shorts
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: A slapstick epic about a frostbitten battle between JEAN KAYAK and DIABOLICAL BEAVERS–hundreds of them–who stand between him and survival. REVIEW: Hundreds of Beavers is a low budget comic delight that mixes silent-era splastick, animation, mascot worthy furry costumes, with the absurdity and chaos of a Loony Tunes short. Think…
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The Maiden and Her Beauty
Beauty sunned itself on the stone walla slice of the light come early, then gone.But the maiden knew Beauty would stay near, hidden in the summer grasses.In the morning she went to the stone and found Beauty uncoiled, slumbering.The maiden took Beauty into her own hands.and opened the silken feed sack, she’d brought.Beauty poured itself…
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Reimagining Eden
The snake: nothing more than an sunning iguana Eve: the dove settling in the flight of pigeons Adam: a beach bum washing himself in a fountain Expulsion: the agreeing fireworks of fallen angels Cain: the running child with the flowing hair Abel: the fool blinded when he prayed in the eclipseGod: A host of drunken…
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The Greatest Hits: If She Could Only Just Begun to Turn, Turn, Turn Back Time
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Harriet (Lucy Boynton) finds art imitating life when she discovers certain songs can transport her back in time — literally. While she relives the past through romantic memories of her former boyfriend (David Corenswet), her time traveling collides with a burgeoning new love interest in the present (Justin H. Min).…
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Argylle: Not Quite Bad as That Tacky Sweater
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World franchise) is Elly Conway, the reclusive author of a series of best-selling espionage novels, whose idea of bliss is a night at home with her computer and her cat, Alfie. But when the plots of Elly’s fictional books–which center on secret agent Argylle and his…
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Bob Marley : One Love- Rasta’s Jah
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE celebrates the life and music of an icon who inspired generations through his message of love and unity. On the big screen for the first time, discover Bob’s powerful story of overcoming adversity and the journey behind his revolutionary music. REVIEW: I tend to make a…
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Unfinished Poem
(after Mark Strand)In the drifting of the moon over the waters she saw a past fear jumping to the future : Rain was falling on her husband’s grave, while this poet was moving into her house, in the rain.In her old room the poet was writing a poem abouta woman who strolled under trees and…
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This stove I love so much.
My wife’s kitchen is her solar systemwhere she never burns out.The heat of her stove has been sizzling for more than fifty-five years.When she cooks, she’s at her most beautiful.I find nourishment orbiting her star.
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I Hear the Gapped Heart
My past is blind, locked in its own code.The sunlight is the only gold I own.Grief, birth, the scent of night rain,time’s count down is my inheritance.The wind that lifts the sea, leaves it’s salt drying on my fingers- a dream salvaging the tideline’s gleanings for things oncegenerous, intense, yet lush and lean. I hear…
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Unsent Letters and Messages
Our best messages are in the letters we never write.They’re the ones meant for the grave with no official seal.The ones in your voice but not your definition.All of them meant to be faceless,placeless, sleeplessa whispher of the night,the rain, the streets,all tomorrow’s dusk.The ones that become maps made up of what always been missing.
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a ladybug, cicadas, bumblebees,a butterfly and moths: portrait of a marriage in stasis.
(Poem should be read horizontally to show original formatting)The ladybug climbed the porcelain salt column,on my breakfast table, heading to a nowhere heaven with confidence, its beauty rounding and rounding the rim- delivering the message of herself in its tiny being. I admired this bug that did not crave the darkness,or need not crawl headfirst…
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Scoop: Catching Prince Andrew with his Pants Down
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Inspired by real events, SCOOP is the inside account of the tenacious journalism that landed an earthshattering interview — Prince Andrew’s infamous BBC Newsnight appearance. From the tension of producer Sam McAlister’s high stakes negotiations with Buckingham Palace, all the way to Emily Maitlis’ jaw-dropping, forensic showdown with the Prince,…
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How to Have Sex: Trouble in Girl’s Paradise
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday — drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives. REVIEW: How to Have Sex is more about how not to than how to. It takes the usual girls on school holiday cliches and gives…
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Yannick: Holding the Viewer Hostage
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: In the middle of a performance of the play “Le Cocu,” Yannick interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand. He demands to be entertained but is rejected and ridiculed.Content collapsed. REVIEW: The French filmmaker, Quentin Dupieux has his own officially recognized film genre in his native country. …
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Musica: His Brain Is the Sound of Music
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TMATOES: Based on writer, director and star Rudy Mancuso, Música is a coming-of-age love story that follows an aspiring creator with synesthesia, who must come to terms with an uncertain future, while navigating the pressures of love, family and his Brazilian culture in Newark, New Jersey. REVIEW: Rudy Mancuso has had…
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Monkey Man: John Wick With an Indian Twist
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, an icon embodying strength and courage, Monkey Man stars Dev Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters…
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Well of Souls
(after William Erickson)The well sings of all the fallen children.The song is sad and long for there are many,but it’s also beautiful, for the children sing to the din of stars above.It’s the song of the echo of love, a song that grows, low and soft and secretbuilding a staircase to the heavensthat rises above…
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Wish: Don’t Wish Upon this Star
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES; Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Wish” is an all-new musical-comedy welcoming audiences to the magical kingdom of Rosas, where Asha, a sharp-witted idealist, makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force–a little ball of boundless energy called Star. Together, Asha and Star confront a most formidable…
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Woman, Snake, Man
Because of Eve men assume there’s a snake inside women,a dark internal dream state where she lives beyond the mere form that exists.They believe that to know a women you must enter her fully, but thatdenies her an identity beyond flesh and sex and sighs.Some men see women as dreams(come true)— and when she presses…
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The Settlers: The Terror of Tierra del Fuego…
MOVIE INFO VIS ROTTEN TOMATOES: Chile, 1901. Three horsemen embark on an expedition, tasked with securing a wealthy landowner’s vast property. Accompanying a reckless British lieutenant and an American mercenary is mestizo marksman Segundo, who comes to realize their true mission is to violently “remove” the indigenous population. REVIEW: The Settlers is a grim violent…
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My Planet
Instead of a ticket to mars, I like one to my own planet.It would be Goldilock’s right,with love as far as the horizon.beautiful as my best imaginings.It would have conformable chairs,creatures of my rainbow bridge, theaters with the best movies and plays,schools fostering the best of imaginationcreating great philosopher and poets.There be no geography and…
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The Boys in the Boat: Manning the Oars
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: The Boys in the Boat is a sports drama based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction novel written by Daniel James Brown. The film, directed by George Clooney, is about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This…
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She Came to Me: In the Throws of that Silly Love Addiction
MOVE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: SHE CAME TO ME is a truly modern romantic comedy, a multi-generational love story set against the iconic backdrop of New York: A composer suffering from creative block finds inspiration after a chance encounter with an unusual woman, a couple of bright teenagers fight to prove to their parents that…
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The Beautiful Game: A Different Kind of World Cup Goal
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Mal (Bill Nighy, Living, About Time) is the manager of England’s homeless football team, taking his players to Rome with the hope of being crowned champions of the Homeless World Cup, a global street soccer tournament. At the last minute he decides to bring with them a talented striker Vinny…
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Talk to Me: Don’t Talk to that Hand.
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTEN TOMATOES: When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces. REVIEW: I usually like horror films that get their scares from deep wells of grief. That’s why…
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire— 1/3 To(h)ony, 1/3 Koko, 1/3 Planet of the Hollow Earth Apes
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: This latest entry in the Monsterverse franchise follows up the explosive showdown of Godzilla vs. Kong with an all-new cinematic adventure, pitting the almighty Kong and the fearsome Godzilla against a colossal undiscovered threat hidden within our world, challenging their very existence — and our own. The epic new film…
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Fitting In: All the Missing Female Pieces
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: A coming-of-age “traumedy” that follows 16-year-old Lindy (Maddie Ziegler) who is unexpectedly diagnosed with a reproductive condition, MRKH syndrome. The diagnosis upends her plans to have sex, her presumptions about womanhood and sexuality, her relationship with her mother (Emily Hampshire), and most importantly, herself. REVIEW: Fitting In is a coming…
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The Miracle Club: Brits Go to the Lourdes .
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Set in 1967, THE MIRACLE CLUB is a heartwarming film that follows the story of three generations of close friends, Lily (Maggie Smith), Eileen (Kathy Bates), and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) of Ballygar, a hard-knocks community in Dublin, who have one tantalizing dream: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French…
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Before Entering into the Morning
(after Brenda Hillman)Before entering into the morningI shrug off chemo memories,swallow the bitter taste of other ancient ashesin my mouth.1 minute 30 seconds on defrost,the flip, another 1:00 on high,the microwave sanctifies my biscuit wrapped in a paper towel shroud.My dog paws at my feet, beggingfor the meaty morsel that I will solemnly cut in…
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Shirley: Not Quite Capturing Her Multitudes
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: The story of the first Black congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm, and her trailblazing run for president of the United States. REVIEW: Shirley Chisholm was a mold breaking politician who challenged the standard narrative of her time and blazed a trail for every women after her. Shirley on Netflix, gives short shift…
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The Persian Version: The Road that Goes To and Away From Iran
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Leila is an Iranian American woman who strives to find balance and embrace her opposing cultures. When her large family reunites in New York City for her father’s heart transplant, she keeps everyone at arm’s length — until a secret is revealed. REVIEW: “I dreamed of being the Iranian Martin…
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Living With the Zoomies
I wish I was my dog, keeping the scent ofspring sunshine on everything forever inside.How I envy this creature that knows sky is the color of all the aromas of nature,that beauty is the crush of every nose that breathesin its reeling sunlight.It must be so delicious for him to sniff the scintillating buzz of…
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Little Things
I gift you all the little things of my heart both old and new.Hold them gently in your hands until they start to coo.Then, release them to the wind.
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Road House: Not So Swayze
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: In this adrenaline-fueled reimagining of the 80s cult classic, ex-UFC fighter Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems. REVIEW; The new Road House only outdoes the Patrick Swayze original in violence. The…
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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Ghosting Its Way Out
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the Spengler family returns to where it all started — the iconic New York City firehouse — to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who’ve developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact…
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Amongst the Monuments
One day I will commit the greatest heresy and spread my father’s ashes over my mother’s grave.I will sit, with them and all these other named and nameless cloud covered bodies stretching to the horizon—a final gesture, maybe, but surely a goodbyeto how they came to this place, and how I must leave when the…
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Little Wing: Floating By on Wings and Prayers
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: LITTLE WING follows Kaitlyn, a teen who is reeling from her parents’ divorce and the pending loss of her home. She and her best friend hope to solve her mother’s financial woes by stealing a valuable bird, but Kaitlyn, instead, forms a bond with the owner, that leads her to…
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All the Common Desolation Among the Cruelest April Blooms- A Wasteland Homage and Parody
[April is the cruelest month….The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot]It’s almost April and the trees will be shedding winter’s desolation in the canopies of the late afternoon sun.The golden few, the sheer blue above know the ritual dead will be shredded byhoof, foot, beak, talon and claw.Only the poet, the one who lives apart,will mourn and…
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Touch, Please
Every one in your spaces will dieand you will never know if you willbe the last to touch them.Most will get our ragged stubs,a few, palm to palm caress, fewer still, your fingertips brushing their lifelines.They’re all going to die. That last touch is all theycan take with them beforethe crack in heaven splitsand they…
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Dream Scenario: Getting Fully Inside Every One’s Head
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Hapless family man Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom, in this wickedly entertaining comedy from writer-director Kristoffer Borgli…
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Relax
Look, it’s inevitable,bad things are going to happen.Your dog will die before you,probably both your parents too.You’ll leave the refrigerator openand the chicken will go bad and your wife will chew you out for it.You’ll wash the colors in the wrong temperature and they will shrink to the size you wore when a boy.You’ll give…
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Fat
As I undress, I watch my flesh swell.I notice the sheaves of my hips,my marshy belly rivered with surgery scars—and I fall in love with the acreage of my life.The four years, that I unraveled into cancer,I do not miss. Nor the weight of my happinessshriveling into a stick man- vacating skin and bone turning…
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The Marsh King’s Daughter: Caught in the Boggy Mess
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: In the tense thriller The Marsh King’s Daughter, a woman with a secret past will venture into the wilderness she left behind to confront the most dangerous man she’s ever met: her father. In the film, Helena’s (Daisy Ridley) seemingly ordinary life hides a dark and dangerous truth: her estranged…
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Damsel: A Game of Thrones Style Princess Story
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: A dutiful damsel agrees to marry a handsome prince, only to find the royal family has recruited her as a sacrifice to repay an ancient debt. Thrown into a cave with a fire-breathing dragon, she must rely on her wits and will to survive. REVIEW: In Damsel, staring Millie Bobby…
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Kung Fu Panda 4: He Kicks His Butt Good
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: After three death-defying adventures defeating world-class villains with his unmatched courage and mad martial arts skills, Po, the Dragon Warrior (Golden Globe nominee Jack Black), is called upon by destiny to… give it a rest already. More specifically, he’s tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace.…
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Ricky Stanicky; BFF With that Nonexistent Bud of Childhood
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: When three childhood best friends pull a prank gone wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble! Twenty years after creating this ‘friend,’ Dean, JT, and Wes (Zac Efron, Andrew Santino, and Jermaine Fowler) still use the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their…
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Raging Grace: Horror with a Socio-Political Soul
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Joy (Max Eigenmann) is an undocumented Filipino immigrant struggling to do the best she can to support her daughter, Grace (Jaeden Boadilla). Soon she secures the perfect job: taking care of an extremely wealthy but terminal old man. The new position pays well and guarantees a roof over their heads,…
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Perfect Days: Hanging On to the Best of Him
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his…
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The Teacher’s Lounge: A Microcosm of Cultural Fear in the Classroom.
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Carla Nowak, a dedicated sports and math teacher, starts her first job at a high school. She stands out among the new staff because of her idealism. When a series of thefts occur at the school and one of her students is suspected, she decides to get to the bottom…
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Remembering First Snow
The snow in its gloaming has been heaping field and highway with deep, white silence.The pine, fir, hemlock are draped in ermine,the poorest twigs ridged in deepest pearl.From the shed’s roof a rooster crows and stiff rails now down, flutter to the ground.The silent father listens to the noiseless workof beating snow birds whirling by.…
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Return to Seoul: Lost and Found in Mistranslation
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: On an impulse to reconnect with her origins, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. The headstrong young woman starts looking for her biological parents in a country she knows so little about, taking her life…
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Spaceman: Adam Sandler Does Major Tom
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Six months into a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system, an astronaut, Jakub (Adam Sandler), realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), he is helped…
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Dune Part 2: A Brilliant Conclusion to the Sand War
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Dune: Part Two” will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors…
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Another Day
I am at that age where I am relieved that it’s day again every time I awake. Instead of crushing time between my hands, I am content to let it take shape, watch the day’s soft eyes blink the hours away, help take it by the hand when the night says it’s time to go.
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Bumper Crop
Some of my poems are seeds,some of them are weeds.All of them sprout everywhere,for good-bad, over your living things. I never know which will be seedy or weedy.I don’t preserve them between sheets of paper.They’re not museum specimensor even a nicely cultivated garden.They’re cast in the wind for anyone to have them. The ones you…
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Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: Abandonment Issues of the Warner Brothers Kind
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: After failing to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta wields the power of the mythic Black Trident to unleash an ancient and malevolent force. Hoping to end his reign of terror, Aquaman forges an unlikely alliance with his brother, Orm, the former king of Atlantis. Setting aside their differences,…
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White Egret
There it stood, the white egret—scripture as animala saint’s skeletonrising from the weeds.It burst into flight. For the boy watching from the riverbank it was glorious.He wanted to say something wonderful, but his profound thoughtsfrittered away in the simple wisdom of wings annunciation. Soon, the egret was high,almost into forgetting,a flicker in a heap of…
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Gills
When I was a kid I convinced myself I could breathe underwater.I even dreamed I would join a lap of cod and swim all the way to Antarctica. I would never get tired of navigatingtides, forging rivers, crossing gulfs. I was sure if I did surrender to the waters I could not be drownedor become…
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Poet’s First Bath
Falling into the soothing waters all around his infant body- the gurgle of words, meanings to reach with his hands until his mind is ready to explore them, the possibility of something so beautiful that he would spend his life defining her, the knowing of her every single word.
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Ordinary Angels: Creating Extraordinary Acts of Kindness and Tenacity
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Based on a remarkable true story, ORDINARY ANGELS centers on Sharon Steves (Hilary Swank), a fierce but struggling hairdresser in small-town Kentucky who discovers a renewed sense of purpose when she meets Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson), a widower working hard to make ends meet for his two daughters. With his…
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Freedom’s Path: The Defiant Ones of the Civil War
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: After a Union soldier flees from battle, rescue comes unexpectedly from a free black man operating a section of the Underground Railroad. But when a ruthless and desperate slave catcher discovers the secret network, he conspires to bring it burning to the ground. REVIEW: Sometimes, a movie will get shelved…
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Mea Culpa: Tyler Perry Does Housewives Stupid
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: When criminal defense attorney Mea Harper (Kelly Rowland) takes on the murder case of artist Zyair Malloy (Trevante Rhodes), the truth isn’t as obvious as it seems. While she tries to determine the innocence or guilt of her cagy-yet-seductive client, it is uncovered that everyone is guilty of something. Tyler…
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All of Us Strangers: Souls Longing for the Impossible
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn…
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The Zone of Interest: The Holocaust as Hidden Camera and Background Soundtrack
MOVIE INFO The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. REVIEW: The Zone of Interest a Holocaust film about Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of Auschwitz, opens in idyllic blackness— to the sounds of…
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Play Ball! (Haiku)
This big green diamond waits for these boys of summer to make it sparkle.
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Questions Left After the Big Bang
Suppose the stars burn with a just divine neither man nor beast can rightly define?A blessed passion we can not returnand that humbles all love in its big burn?Will we miss them more should they glow awayleaving all to define their life long way?Will we look at the then starless night skyand remember there were…
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Rotting in the Sun: Instagram Real like NC-17 Real and Just as Vapid
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Writer-director Sebastián Silva’s Sundance hit ROTTING IN THE SUN is a darkly funny and refreshingly audacious meta-comedy that skewers the business of filmmaking and our self-obsessed culture. While unwinding at a Mexican gay beach town, depressed director Sebastián Silva meets gregarious Instagram influencer Jordan Firstman (both playing versions of themselves),…
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Two Haikus On the Death of Youth
Dead leaves underneath:The grief of a now shorn thing That knew sky and stars.The dew has dried.The red blossom shadow’s grows—Exhales, fades away.
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Thanksgiving: Eli Roth Dishes Up a Turkey Day Anti-Consumerist Satire With All the Best Horror Trimmings
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts — the birthplace of the holiday. Picking off residents one by one, what begins as random revenge killings are soon revealed to be part of a larger, sinister holiday plan. Will the town uncover the…
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Other People’s Children: Feeling the True Romance
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Rachel is 40 years old, with no children. She loves her life: her high school students, her friends, her ex, her guitar lessons. When she falls in love with Ali, she becomes attached to Leila, his 4-year-old daughter. She tucks her into bed, cares for her, loves her like her…
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Next Goal Wins: A Winning Strategy
MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES: Directed by Academy Award Winner Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, Thor: Ragnarok), NEXT GOAL WINS follows the American Samoa soccer team, infamous for their brutal 31-0 FIFA loss in 2001. With the World Cup Qualifiers approaching, the team hires down-on-his-luck, maverick coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) hoping he will turn the…
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Why I Write
I didn’t start writing poems because I felt the indifference of nature,or soon after my mother diedon a hot September day.I never sat on a stone bench weeping with the blooming lilies and roses all aroundor wrote because something wasblack and broken inside meor to correct the world’s injusticesor any such serious poetic stuff.No, I…
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Ocean Apostrophe
The ocean still spits up toys and shoesyears after the hurricanes blew threw.The erosion of sand below the water andon the beach display other sadnesses.The unwanted apostrophe between sea and shore,the warning red sky and the calm cerise night breaks into crescents on the bay, each moonbeam an invisible memory.The union of jealous wind and…
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Lisa Frankenstein: Putting the Pieces Together in the Wrong Places
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: A coming of RAGE love story from acclaimed writer Diablo Cody (Jennifer’s Body) about a misunderstood teenager and her high school crush, who happens to be a handsome corpse. After a set of playfully horrific circumstances bring him back to life, the two embark on a murderous journey to find…