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Alex Tretbar

@alextretbar.bsky.social
1.2K followers 699 following 69 posts

Dogsmind (Dead Mall Press) toofarwandered (Tilted House) According to the Plat Thereof (Ethel) Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep) linktr.ee/alex_tretbar

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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
...and, a little late for the email edition, but this fantastic interview with Tretbar just dropped from @deadmallpress.bsky.social: "In addition to Ulysses, you have mentioned that the video game Dark Souls was an important influence here."
deadmallpress.com
WHERE AM I AND HOW DO I GET THERE? — DEAD MALL PRESS
An interview with Alex Tretbar about his new book, Dogsmind , available now from Dead Mall Press
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
AC email edition featuring new work by Harrison F. Dietzman, an excerpt from @alextretbar.bsky.social's new DOGSMIND, updates on @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social and @seanbirnie.bsky.social, & an honestly wild number of coincidences
alwayscrashingmagazine.substack.com
“A Necessary Illusion of Predictability”
featuring ouroboroses, ouroboroi, riverrun, the media household income in the state of Oregon, future iterations of Oregon, and a frankly unplanned-upon number of coincidences throughout
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Ben Niespodziany 📚🎪 @neonpajamas.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social / @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social
xv.

I give my coat to
the officer who escorts me
to a plexiglass wall on the other side
of which a different officer tells me
my charges are mandatory
minimum sentence charges
adding up to 160 months
and 13 months later I'm offered
the coat which no longer fits
because I gained 30 pounds
waiting to go to prison
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
DOGSMIND is out today w/ @deadmallpress.bsky.social. The second installment in a trilogy-in-progress, this novella-poem documents the misadventures of the Spokesperson and Ripjohn over the course of a single hellish and joyridden night—on repeat. PURCHASE HERE: deadmallpress.com/bookstore/do...
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
"The sonnets are merely markers serving to indicate that you are still in a graveyard." AC contrib @alextretbar.bsky.social at @poetrydaily.bsky.social!
poems.com
[And perhaps there is a bedroom in my bed,]
Watch your head, this is a graveyard.
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Poetry Daily @poetrydaily.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Today's Feature: [And perhaps there is a bedroom in my bed,] by @alextretbar.bsky.social from According to the Plat Thereof published by @the-ethelzine.bsky.social Read here: poems.com/poem/and-per...
poems.com
[And perhaps there is a bedroom in my bed,]
Watch your head, this is a graveyard.
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
**DEwandered** -- a celebration of the release of toofarwandered (Tilted House) and Brooke Spalding's DEBAUCH (Bottlecap), at PLUG Gallery in Kansas City on Friday, July 17th. Also reading will be special guests Paige Webb and Brandan Griffin. Doors at 7, poems at 7:30.
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
My new chapbook "toofarwandered" comes out later this month with Tilted House 🪐 Here's the link to pre-order: www.tiltedhouse.org/shop/toofarw... Huge thanks to Ellen Boyette and @onlysiencyn.bsky.social for their incisive blurbs, which I've pasted into the comments below ✨
tiltedhouse.org
toofarwandered - PREORDER — TILTED HOUSE
toofarwandered by Alex Tretbar. A malfunctioning consciousness proceeds through its fabular bootup protocol as it prepares to enter (or exit) (or continue to exist forever in) hell. A mutatedlan...
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
New email edition featuring work from Elijah Sparkman and Daniel Carter, updates on @alextretbar.bsky.social, @addisonzeller.bsky.social, Tony Mancus + a report from the AC Reading & Performance Series from Zona Motel
open.substack.com
"I'm Not Going to Say I'm Proud of You"
featuring hairline cracks, wolf vibes, corpse fluid, dimensional shifts, melodic breakdowns, unmasked informants, and a face that is another face
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Burgi Zenhaeusern @burgi.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
I love the playfulness of @alextretbar.bsky.social's According to the Plat Thereof where sonnets get bi-tri-or nil-furcated & poetry seems to wink at itself. Go over to @the-ethelzine.bsky.social, get yourselves a copy, & start playing. ☺️🌟💫🌟☺️ Also: I ❤️ @the-ethelzine.bsky.social! #poetry #bookSky
According to the Plat Thereof on my crossed legs (gray pants, gray cardigan, out of pic). The book is handstitched with an all gray cover showing urban plats and a river crossing through them in black outlines. Author name and title are hidden within the plats as if part of them.Sonnet on Pharmaceutical Bifurcation

Sometimes I sleep in my living room because
Comments are turned off. You will find that
The furnace is loudest there, and the east
Our inability to speak will engender speech
Facing window is on fire with hundreds
In the forums and plazas and fountains
Of days, but I sleep with my back against
The walls are taking up the onerous task
It all photovoltaically as of electric leaves
Assigned to and then withdrawn from mouths
With little-green-army-men-studded teeth
Like lovely lozenge, like pretty pacifier
And who in here will suppress my cough
Like how enough Tylenol turns everything off.
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Ethel, a Micro Press @the-ethelzine.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Binding Alex Tretbar’s ACCORDING TO THE PLAT THEREOF @alextretbar.bsky.social www.ethelzine.com/shop/accordi...
I'm admittedly a little divorced from the fact that I process data about divorces all day. There are at least 955 streets named after Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States. I am learning that people are changing their names every day. I am learning a lot of arcane things about the law, according to the plat thereof, by a depth eastwardly of 121 feet, 10 ½ inches, more or less to an alley... The city has seemed less magical, lately. I'm admittedly a little divorced from my childhood, young personhood, popular culture. A man who thought I was working followed me home one night, not knowing I didn't have a home, and it was awkward when I paused at a railroad crossing on MIK, the yellow Pacific Union roaring by. He caught up with me. People are changing their names every day.
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Ethel, a Micro Press @the-ethelzine.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
In lieu of purchasing Alex Tretbar’s ACCORDING TO THE PLAT THEREOF you can also donate $12 or more dollars to Ahmad Kassab’s gofundme and send the receipt to ethelzinesubmit@gmail.com. @alextretbar.bsky.social www.gofundme.com/f/support-si...
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Ethel, a Micro Press @the-ethelzine.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Alex Tretbar’s ACCORDING TO THE PLAT THEREOF is now available to pre-order www.ethelzine.com/shop/accordi... @alextretbar.bsky.social
And perhaps there is a bedroom in my bed, a pillowcase in my pillow: No pictures exist of me from that time. Watch your head, this is a graveyard. The way the chocolatier regards their dripping medium in the television advertisement. Are you sure that isn't you singing in the background. Are you sure you're still reading. Watch your headnotes, they're beginning to summarize your major contributions to hermeneutics, the sound of the frozen pond complaining beneath the geese who have the advantage of being able to fly when the structure sleepwalks. I walk into my bed and close the door. What door. Are you sure that isn't you signing the document. The sonnets are merely markers serving to indicate that you are still in a graveyard. This is NPR.from According to the Plat Thereof
unbodied palinode in which the speaker is unable to articulate how they have changed their mind
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Ethel, a Micro Press @the-ethelzine.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Pre-order one of these lovelies ❤️ www.ethelzine.com/shop @nlriversss.bsky.social @ghoststructural.bsky.social @tommywyattblake.bsky.social @alextretbar.bsky.social
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Reviewed @serxaphym.bsky.social's debut BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (Discount Guillotine) for @fullstopmag.bsky.social. These lambent, crystalline poems think and vision and language their way through Wittgenstein, state-sponsored violence, transness, and being. www.full-stop.net/2025/09/19/r...
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Reviewed @serxaphym.bsky.social's debut BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (Discount Guillotine) for @fullstopmag.bsky.social. These lambent, crystalline poems think and vision and language their way through Wittgenstein, state-sponsored violence, transness, and being. www.full-stop.net/2025/09/19/r...
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
one of two sonnets in bethh (www.readbethh.org)
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
I recently published an article in Callaloo comparing artificial intelligence (by way of Lillian-Yvonne Bertram) with the racist and reductive editorial practices of the white people who published the narrative of Mary Prince, a formerly enslaved woman. Link in bio. DM for PDF.
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
"The address of my house has changed..." Mahmoud Darwish, "Prison"
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
"&" by @elise-tran.bsky.social, in @miznaarabart.bsky.social "Collage of found text taken from individual, sponsored, and suggested posts, stories, news headlines, and advertisements while scrolling through Instagram and X"
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
One of three new poems in @memezine.bsky.social's KAKISTOCRACY issue (kakistocracy = "a government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people in a state or country"). Down with American empire and its cruel and heartless idiots.
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Empowerment Avenue @empowermentave.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Help incarcerated writer Sara Kielly with her legal fees! We are trying to raise $400 to help her fight back against the department of corrections. Please read details below. If sending funds, please note "For Sara."
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Friendly reminder that PEN America is little more than a soft power appendage of American imperialism (from Juliana Spahr's DU BOIS'S TELEGRAM)
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Alice Notley, from THE DESCENT OF ALETTE
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
The writer Derek Trumbo was recently released from prison after nearly two decades inside, but the home where he is staying was flooded last month and he is now in need of support. Please donate what you can to help him get back on his feet. chuffed.org/project/1317...
chuffed.org
Writer Derek Trumbo is now free and he needs our help
It’s been two years since Derek Trumbo was first introduced to Prism readers as the author of “Never Eat the Candy on your Pillow.” The now bi-weekly column has a simple premise: to serve as a commons...
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
The writer Derek Trumbo was recently released from prison after nearly two decades inside, but the home where he is staying was flooded last month and he is now in need of support. Please donate what you can to help him get back on his feet. chuffed.org/project/1317...
chuffed.org
Writer Derek Trumbo is now free and he needs our help
It’s been two years since Derek Trumbo was first introduced to Prism readers as the author of “Never Eat the Candy on your Pillow.” The now bi-weekly column has a simple premise: to serve as a commons...
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Tina Vasquez @tinavasquez.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Today a fundraiser was launched for Derek, to help him purchase a used car to get to and from work and parole meetings, and to help him recover after a horrendous storm flooded the home where he lives. If you can donate, every little bit helps! If you can't, please consider sharing his fundraiser:
chuffed.org
Writer Derek Trumbo is now free and he needs our help
It’s been two years since Derek Trumbo was first introduced to Prism readers as the author of “Never Eat the Candy on your Pillow.” The now bi-weekly column has a simple premise: to serve as a commons...
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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 13/05/2025
@prismreports.org is really a leader here: prismreports.org/category/cri...
prismreports.org
Crime, Reform & Abolition Archives - Prism
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
a sonnet from PUBLIC HAUNTS in the new @senecareview.bsky.social
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Make Common @makecommon.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
NEW POEMS || Blue Bag Press Issue 01: STATE(D) VIOLENCE. It's a furious, not f-ing around issue refusing po' biz as usual. w/works by several ppl I've been growing to respect more & more, alert to this hideous moment, including @isaacpickell.bsky.social @alextretbar.bsky.social issue01.org/joe-hall
issue01.org
Joe Hall — ISSUE01
cargo.site
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Piece from a digital chaplet that recently appeared in ISSUE. Head to issue01.org to read the urgent and vital work of other contributors such as @joehalljoehall.bsky.social, Echo, @isaacpickell.bsky.social, Jenkin Benson, Rachel Lauren Myers, Tyler Barton, and others.
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
"Sonnet With Congealed Labor In It." Thanks to @multiwhirl.bsky.social for publishing it in @proteanmag.com, a magazine that everyone should read.
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Exacting Clam @exactingclam.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
"He became most rabid when speaking about the Grays." Fiction by @alextretbar.bsky.social . Spring '25, exclusive to print. Subscribe today for full access and your discounted rate. www.exactingclam.com/subscribe
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Ethel, a Micro Press @the-ethelzine.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
“Now you, gorging on mud near the crest/ of the plume by my feet. And my gorgeous/wings spread like the mouth of a carnivora.” More copies of Joshua Burton’s FRACTURE ANTHOLOGY in Ethel’s shop,with art by Zumbambico. www.ethelzine.com/shop/pre-ord...
To my older brother:
I forgive you
Not to unshackle you. But to relocate the power.
The hour where my little girl gashes are barred shut and clamped. My wings have grown too fierce, unyielding.
Now I am a Siren, eclipsing three children.
Fluttering, with the gleam of a diadem.
Luna-like, loving each queer shadow I cast. I forgive you, only so that what you've sown doesn't scatter.
Now you, gorging on mud near the crest of the plume by my feet. And my gorgeous wings spread like the mouth of a carnivora.
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
a small fiction for my friend "Slim" wherever he may be in @exactingclam.bsky.social
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$ (Poetry Is Currency) @poetrycurrency.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
It is more than our minds can handle: finding at the end of all meadows a mandible, sunwashed and wordless. Today's poem from the $ vault is "Hex Season" by @alextretbar.bsky.social! poetrycurrency.com/poem/alex-tr...
poetrycurrency.com
Hex Season | Alex Tretbar | $ – Poetry Is Currency
Hexagenia limbata   It is more than our minds can handle: finding at the end of all meadows a mandible, sunwashed and wordless. Or, say, the centipede—little ladder plumbing the…
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Tonight!
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Recent poem in Words Beyond Bars. They pay each of their incarcerated and formerly incarcerated contributors $50. They don't accept snail mail submissions, but if you know someone in prison who'd like to submit and needs help doing so, feel free to DM me. wordsbeyondbars.com
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Empowerment Avenue @empowermentave.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
@kwanetaharris.bsky.social wraps the year with a powerful essay for @solitarywatch.bsky.social about her transition out of eight years in solitary confinement. Solitary Watch has also announced Kwaneta as its newest contributing writer! solitarywatch.org/2024/12/19/i...
solitarywatch.org
Invisible Chains
Kwaneta Harris describes her transition back to general population after eight years in Texas solitary confinement
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
I've got four poems from [hail] in Coma (Community Mausoleum). Here's one, and here's a link to the rest: www.communitymausoleum.org/coma-journal...
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
New work at the site tomorrow / which means today is an excellent day to reacquaint yourself with @alextretbar.bsky.social's phenomenal unbodied poems, up now
alwayscrashing.com
ALEX TRETBAR / 6 UNBODIED POEMS — always crashing
Unbodied Poem in Which the Speaker Is Blessed With a Sudden Cash Infusion and Quits Their Job, Changes Their Name to Blank and Moves Far Away, Did You Think It Could Have Gone Another Way, Did You Thi...
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Empowerment Avenue @empowermentave.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
@prisonpolicy.bsky.social highlights some of the year's best reporting on incarceration, and offer tips for journalists interested in pursuing similar stories in their states. Featuring reporting by EA writers Sara Kielly and Christopher Blackwell! www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/12...
prisonpolicy.org
The 2024 reporting on incarceration that newsrooms should emulate in 2025
We highlight some of the year's best reporting on incarceration, and offer tips for journalists interested in pursuing similar stories in their states.
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Alex Tretbar @alextretbar.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
The form and ferocity (and tenderness) of @joehalljoehall.bsky.social's PEOPLE FINDER, BUFFALO (CLOAK) provide another way forward for oppositional poetries.
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Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
For old time’s sake, here is one of my favorite Dean Young poems of all time. (And not just because he mentions King Crimson.) From title to tail, a piece of perfection, esp. in how he uses question to turn, pause, put a comet in his slingshot. Sending to all who know the black dog too well. 🖤
The Best Way I Can Describe It
is if you ever strapped yourself to a giant eyeball or tried to hold a beach ball underwater or thrown up on a whale watch or listened to every King Crimson box set at least twice you know what I mean when I say a crash helmet's useless when the crash is in your own skull. I doubt many of us would do what Jim did when bears came to his bird feeders and the end-of-the-world witnesses came to his door. See what I mean about the eyeball? The idea is the mind has wings. The idea being when the dog runs off in the dark, darkness is your dog.
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Today's AC email edition hot off the laptop, featuring new work by @alextretbar.bsky.social, updates on a variety of preeminent American and nonAmerican authors, sad news about a lit mag we like a lot, plus our OFFICIAL 2024 PUSHCART NOMINATIONS
alwayscrashingmagazine.substack.com
"Did You Think It Could Have Gone Another Way?"
featuring six poems without bodies, one of which has no title, and thus might be anywhere, at any time, right when you least expect it; updates on several preeminent authors; PUSHCART MANIA
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
6 Unbodied Poems, new today at AC www.alwayscrashing.com/current
"unbodied poem in which it’s obvious there’s no body, no one questions a negative space, its ripeness and crackling potential, the vacuum it represents and calls you to fill, but when we are told that the empty room is nameless, untitled, unendowed, we begin to gather at the threshold, or rather a threshold begins to form as we gather around what we take to be the limits of the nonbody, for what is actually controversial is the status of the name, the title, the appellation, the function of designation, because we are unsettled by a body without a name,"
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Always Crashing @alwayscrashing.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
"2. This footnote is not a body and serves only to indicate that the bracketed text is not a title." // 6 unbodied poems by Alex Tretbar / @alextretbar.bsky.social, new today at AC //
alwayscrashing.com
ALEX TRETBAR / 6 UNBODIED POEMS — always crashing
Unbodied Poem in Which the Speaker Is Blessed With a Sudden Cash Infusion and Quits Their Job, Changes Their Name to Blank and Moves Far Away, Did You Think It Could Have Gone Another Way, Did You Thi...
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Empowerment Avenue @empowermentave.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
This Giving Tuesday, support the empowerment and liberation of artists, writers and filmmakers who are incarcerated. Donate to Empowerment Avenue here, and thank you so much for your support: www.flipcause.com/secure/cause...
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