Alphabetical stories

You can't always get what you want.

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Sally was bathing Homeless Hope in her bathtub when the phone rang in the kitchen.

You Can't Even Clink

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your matching glasses up to mine in the fake air anymore, or click your widening fingernails against the hard bed railings in protest of anything you might be feeling in the floating silt depths of your jagged nerves, but I…

You Couldn't Pay For a Review This Good, But I Did

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I’ve previously tried the old-fashioned route to get my books reviewed, calling up editors, asking friends who work at newspapers and magazines to put in a good word for me, stalking . . . I mean, contacting freelancers.

You deserve to be choked around your lying throat and this how it happens, slowly.

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Writing as a form of imaginative hatred

You Do Not Exult Over the Held-Out Heart

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You can’t know everything you want to know, about anyone. (Especially about me!) You can’t even know everything you want to know about Sharon, and I probably know more than you do. In fact, I’m sure I do. For instance, did you know about that guy

You Don't Have To Put On Your Red Light

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"She began singing The Police song, 'Roxanne' in a falsetto voice, just like Sting."

You Don't Have to Read This

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I get it. Poetry is an effort. Language is an effort. Words are an effort. Reading words is an effort. A big effort. It takes energy. Attention. Focus. Who has that? Nobody. So truly. I mean it. You don't have to read this. If you're already reading this you can…

You Don't Listen

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What time is it? 3:47. Adam says before 5 is too early. Maybe he should stay home with our daughters once in a while. Let’s see him make it to 5 o’clock. It is Friday. I’ll mix it with orange juice. He never notices. I better check on Debra.

You Don't Need To

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You need only one who notices.

You Don't Take Names

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You want to know what happened to him and your curiosity is a cat pawing at the edges of your impatience as you roam aggressively around your old haunts.

You Don’t Know Jack.

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Susan said since her divorce three years ago there have been too many Jacks in her life. Seven, if she counted that older guy. She knew that now. Too many. It was the name and little else that drew her to men. She told me the name alone was like Pavlov's bell. It…

You Friend Me On Facebook

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You look just like your mom she says I LOL her and say, funny cuz you look just like yours

You Have No Idea

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“I want you to face the toys!”

You Have Something I Don't Have

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So, as the lines on my face grow more pronounced, the lines on my finger prints are fading away? All I can say is that it's a damn shame it's not the other way around.

You Knew It

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was only a small enough matter of time before you started to show up as new words like soft pink clues dropped inside tiny fingernail teacups to find their innermost meaning, then wishes, floating up near the top like…

You Know It!

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"Every single thing ... " Hunk Hokum pronounced from the stage, flexing his muscles and prancing around in his red pseudo-loincloth, "has been totally scripted ... and ... every action ... has been ... preplanned-out ... in advance!"

You Know Who in The Hell You Are Not Playing That For (We Are All Performing At Being)

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I've been avoidingyour beautiful fact for years in just the past few hours it seemslike it was the scariest plague on earth.Andit worries me becauseit's something so new that Idon't know what to dowith myself.Yes I wouldn't knowwhat to say…

You leave me

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laying with you, thinking with you, breathing with you

You Left Forever Sitting on my Doorstep

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and so I'm staying here where I am a little while (longer). Who knows where the time sleeps? I don't think I'll ever catch up with your heart again. That's the same lame novel approach I'm always stepping into to…

You May Be

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beautiful, but you don't own beauty. You may be sexy, but you don't own desire. You may be smart, but you don't own wisdom. You may be good and kind, but you don't own love. You may like trees, but you don't own the forest. You may like to…

You May Telephone From Here

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There's something in the space youare tonight that's for me asweet presence in my own life,and so like any othercoward I write a poemin vain. It will never beseen as itself by you, butpossibly be mistakenfor an open window. Somewill definitely call itfurniture, some will…

You Might Be Miss Piggy

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You might be Miss Piggy. But I'm not Kermit the frog.I miscalculate the sums of our predicamenttrying to catch the dragonflies, rolling aroundthe dampness of our resenting this old modern world.You might be Missy Piggy. But I'm not Kermit the frog.I'm just here…

You Never Forget Your First

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There is nothing like your first time, and by that I am referring of course to the first time you purchased a 45.Going to a record store and buying a 45 is a uniquely Boomer experience. Because, alas, there are no more 45s. Or, for that matter, record stores. The…

You Never Knew

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You never knew How to express What you didn't know You felt With your words You picked on You taunted You destroyed Did it help To feel yourself Did it work To disparage Those who were Innocent and young Blameless For living …

You Pour Vodka In Your Coffee

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I wonder if she is my real mother, if I could get one of those paternity tests and find out if she’s my real mother and if the guy she told me was my father was really my father. I can’t remember him very well, just a lot of him screaming and hollering an

You Require Sharpness of Image and Therefore of Words

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I wrote a poem and asked a professor to read it. / He said: IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE / like a mad man on meth, foam running down / his mouth crowded with sharp, shimmering teeth.

You Say Sorry Just For Show

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The last of your tenuous septum dissolves when you press the nozzle of the neti pot against it.

you see?

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The river is there inside, the liquid living inside like light, moving rapidly over unknown rocks, approaching, and intimate. As if the source of all is inside me. Someone, anyone, says the word “available” from 3 tables away, as if it’s the only word o

You Shine Brightest Under the Starlit Sky

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You shine brightest under a starlit skyThe moon reflects your beautyAs the wind sings your name sweetlyIt was under the heavens that we promised togetherThat I'll hold your hand and you'll be mine forever... You glow brightest when the sun is at its highestYour radiant…

You Should Change at Jamaica

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"...across from me staring at my bare knees."