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Brief Requiem for the Twentieth Century

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The crumbling meccas/ gnaw/ Each fiscal year’s quota of blood and bone,

Rain

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I am under the rain. Under. The. Rain.The rain comes after me. Beats me. I wait for the boom of thunder, fork of lightning. In the rain, I am afraid. In the rain, I don't know where I am going. In the rain, I am fucking ridiculous.I try to outrun the rain. My shoes sink…

The Abandoned Shoe Project

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It’s the unfinished sentences Of the children on our refrigerators That worry me the most It’s the Fake News It’s all the people Living in their shopping carts Without shoes It’s the abandoned shoe On the street And the Abandoned S

Cow Juice

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Theresa stopped speaking to me because I ate cows. This made things simple. There was no conversation.

(3) Country House

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At one point he’d said: Don’t you have work to do? And she’d said: I’m doing it now.

Car

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My father brought home a turquoise Porsche with red leather upholstery. My sister and I were small, eight and six, and fit tightly in the jumpseats behind my parents.We went for a ride, tooled around Rome, circled the Colosseum, showing off for the people looking. My father…

I'm Feeling the Monkey Around your Neck Isn't Quite Listening

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The sky's hand's so big andso vast that it takes ourhuge sun at the end of day and squeezes it downto a perfect diamond--just like Supermanwith a lump of coal-- poof!--obliterates it. And it's gone.Next day it's seen floatingaround everywhere again,like an…

The Wolf Who Cried Boy

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The story begins ... There were no pigs' huts of straw or stick or stone.

A River So Long

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At 5:12, the river turned silver, as if it were frozen. She traced the river's curves on the window with her finger, wishing it were her.

Desilu, Three Cameras

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Ricky imagines bending her over his conga, yanking that bushy dark ponytail like reins and ripping into her. He sits, watches, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He needs a dancer for the Jezebel number now that Connie is showing. This girl would make a f

Playboy Bunny

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"Hannah," I say, "stay off the road, let me do the hitchhiking. Ok? Guys see your tits and it's over. I don't want to be here when the sun goes down."

Minnows

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I combed the ocean for my minnows while Hattie's giraffes multiplied like spider plants, all yellow and brown on the dry yellow savanna, propelled by their gauche necks, awkward in their bodies, bodies rooted to the feet of the humming planet.

Two Summer Poems When I Wanted Three

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That summer...

Let x

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Let x equal the moment just after he tells her he's starting a club for people who know something about computers.It is summer, 1984, and this is their grade school playground. She is idling on a swing over a patch of scuffed earth. He stands just off to the side, one…

Minnesota Menage

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I talk to her, whispering endearments and flattery. I tell her how incredible it feels to be between her legs.

Animals in the Sky

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When the great comet passed over, everyone was at my door with pitch forks and rifles with extra long bayonets. Don’t kill it yet; I want to study its habits.

Stop.

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Accept that your husband's heart always belonged to his first love. You should've noticed sooner because she works in your building and won't look you in the eye. She takes the stairs because you ride the elevator.

The Day The Music Died

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I heard an old Stevie Ray Vaughn tune this morning. It triggered a flash back. It’s funny how just a few notes of a song can slam me right into a memory. A total and complete immersion. Sights. Sounds. Smells. The people. The place. The weather. Wha

The Freelance Assignment

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You wanted to be a writer. Now you’re a writer.

Foreign Film

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They are watching a movie about a man who cheats on his wife, whom he loves, and is so disconsolate that his wife eventually loses all patience and leaves him. They are at the point in the film where the man considers his many blunders as he walks…

A Death by the Sea: excerpt

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I began to imagine the shadows, so rectilinear, were arcing and flowing. I saw shoulders moving, the sinewy upper shoulders of wolves running in a pack. . .

YOU ARE A FRIEND, SEWING TRAIN

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over taking the sky before near blindness, a clipping occurs

Me and Sid and Tom and John Yount

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True story

7 or 8 Things I Know About Him - A Stolen Biography

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Wonderful When his mother was a little girl, her father would braid her hair until it was exactly right. When she asked him how it looked, he always said,…

November Is The Month Of Dying

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Two weeks after All Souls’ Day, he trudges through the overgrown pasture behind the farmhouse, his head bent, intent on his footing, a shovel his walking stick.

Sisters

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The gun is heavy. The tiny women hold it in both hands.

Big Slide

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The screams and howls of other people's children set him on edge. But he struggled to stay cheerful. They had season passes, so the visits there cost nothing and it had consequently become a weekly tradition to go. The children had not, as far as he could

A Man

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A man’s been in jail for six weeks awaiting trial. Lillian doesn’t say his name. A man kidnapped her from the grocery store parking lot. He raped her at his house, and again in the desert, chopped her hand off with an axe and left her for dead in the

The Explosions Sound Like Gunshots

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The explosions sound like gunshots. Antonio Gattorno, absorbed in his work, flinches. He curses as he smears the brush across the canvas. He’s been painting since mid-morning. It‘s a hot summer day. Tomorrow is the fourth of July.

Wilmington

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The neighbor kids start, we join in–