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Ophelia

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Her ghost/kept coming back/to Hamlet

Paperclip

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The Americans don't want us. They want knowledge. They want to eat with us. They want technology and weapons. They want the results of research they themselves are too craven to perform, answers to questions they ask themselves in whispers, in the dark. T

Well, I LOVE Darkness . . . But I've Chosen YOU!!!

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The elevator door opened, and Tom ("The Baffler") Frank found himself confronted by Jesu bar Joseph, who opined: "You're WORTHLESS!" and recommended: "Why dontcha PULL your PANTS down, and CUT your COCK off!"

A Black Cat

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And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …

Some People

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But those burning red numbers persist in my mind and I can't rest 'till they're gone They always come back Like the cat in that childhood song.

Bring a Book

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It would be great if next door to every restaurant, there was a 24 hour dental surgery. Then you could sneak in and grab a few magazines to read if you’re unfortunate enough to be dining alone.

The Rhythm of the Cows

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A cow wanders onto a roof and falls through the skylight. It's a calamity, but such an innocent mistake. Mightn't you amble onto a rooftop once upon a full winter snow in Vermont?Another cow climbs a gravel mound in…

Writing Coach Helps Blocked Women Tap Inner Meanness

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“Susan,” he says menacingly, as if he’s a husband who’s caught a cheating wife in a discreet liaison with another man. “I thought I made myself clear about this sort of thing.”

Breathing

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After only a few months’ practice I am able to dive deep within myself. Inhale. A millisecond stop and I am under the surface. I know there is something here within myself – some treasure that I have come to find.

A Handsome Boy Spends a Wednesday

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It distresses me that you will never lust after me / the way you did for that girl / who had her hands around your belt

Creator

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What purpose other than misery/ can cancer serve? And Parkinson's,/ AIDS, and STDs?

The Room Below

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The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

Residual Flashbacks

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Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.

Building

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he told me to be careful,my feet may bleedI watched him walk up and down the path,occasionally bendingwhy?carpenter nails, pieces of broken shinglesall along the pathnow I know why

Sing Sorrow Sorrow

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Lean closer, she smiles, smell my perfume let yourself be taken to a wild forest where owls grow and trees fly.

Maritzer's Axiom

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We were just as bourgeois as Bloomingdale’s, one generation past canned ravioli dinners with cheap white bread.

3 Poems

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We have always been a trashy species./ We study ourselves by examining/ garbage-- a pile of mussel shells here,

Internet Hole (an excerpt from Psychopomp)

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Seventeen-year cicadas are the sometimes-singers that surprise spring with the ugliest mouths of all.

Criminals

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What about the goons? Those criminals thwarted and left for dead in every action movie for the past thirty years. I'm sure at least a dozen survived the slaughters. I'm sure at least one or two came out if it reformed. This one who quit working for Columbian drug smugglers…

At the Number Party

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and dreamed itself infinite.

entwined

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you and i exist outside of the chaos and noise entwined in eternal embrace

Twin Lakes of Whiskey

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not that we ever had before

To Know but not Really

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So strange this feelingTo meet someone I've haven't really metTo know someone I don't actually knowTo desire to learn more but sure I never willTo feel connected not knowing what I'm connected toTo read words, thoughts, feel moved by them, but never hear a voice

Writer's Cough

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Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

Drift

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Dreams & foghorns.

The Signal

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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

Tuscaloosa

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a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

Gregory Dates a Witch

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None of us took it too seriously when Gregory from underwriting said he was dating a real-life witch. Being an underwriter is not as interesting as say being a writer. That's why the greatest underwriter in America, Ajit Jain, gets paid per hour what Jame

A Clue Found Aboard a Zen Mind's Floating Iceberg

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I do so want to bring you into the sacred linguistically eternal loop of all ordinary things on earth, but it can so easily turn into a very sudden unsparing trapdoor, or a hissing angry knot tying up itself into even more tricky sorts …

Driving Old

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I drive old now