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Two Different Worlds

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The boy was sure of something,She was just the one. The girl was sure of nothing, Her life had just begun. For him, he'd found his partner, There was never any doubt. For her, he was fine for now, But there was more to learn about. He thought it was a perfect…

CBGB

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Lou Reed was sitting in CBGB, I was sitting on Greenwich Ave. and West 10th street. I didn't know him then and I didn't know him later either, but we were both there.

Wattle and Daub - 3

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Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.

Natural Histories I

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I feel about the universe/ as Abrahamics are supposed/ to feel about their Yahweh, /their God, and their Allah:/ I am in fear, I am in awe, /I am in love.

Robert B. Parker we’ll miss you.

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Summer nights in Boston, old cast iron streetlights.

Burning Trash

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Boys start fires all the time— it's a rite of passage— so when your father gives you the task of setting fire to the family's trash, you don't mind, and when the flames ignite inside the old dishwasher he heaved into the woods behind the house, you…

She's Butoh (ELECTRIC DELIRIUM 1.4)

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She overcomes herself on the day of the spectacle, clown paint, unmoving amid a rumble of trains and screens, video logs and snapshots, live blogs from phones wet with lotion. This is Tokyo. Facial masks. Bare flaking paint in streams. Stardust.

more horrid haiku

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a mere forty years/and maybe you become twelve,/maybe sixty-three.

West Side of the Tracks

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The bus heads west on Route 36, toward the next stop – Howell, New Jersey. After driving ten minutes, and after crossing the tracks, the bus gets a flat.

Running

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On the way home, “Friendly honk,” he said.

March

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The lungs forsake their love of breath. The arms/ resist throwing off the small weight of sheets.

Advice For Aspiring Writers

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Published writers will tell you that the most important thing you can do as a beginning writer is to know your markets! So this month, we'll talk about two of the markets open to you and your riveting but as yet unpublished prose -- Fling Magazine and Clubhouse…

taking work home with you

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the sound of ashes/ being poured in the kitchen

1968: What I Wanted

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Her smile dazzled me from across the room.

Rubber-Band Requiem

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“Now we lay you in your grave There was no way you could be saved You hate our lord Jesus and he can tell Which is why you will burn in hell.”

A Catalogue of Ways to Die at Sea

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Quimby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, lads, there must be a thousan’ ways to die at sea! I’ve made th’ Atlantic passage a good many time; lemme recount some manners of death I’ve witnessed with mine own eyes.”

Facing Mecca

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I was raised in a big city in the slow South. I know a little about cross cultural dining and where Delta Blues collides with Sly Stone, Al Green, and Zeppelin. Dirty rice in the Dirty South. Fried chicken, collards, and pintos. Fried velveeta…

Detienen a 271 conductores en un Stop.

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Un consejo esconde un futuro desastre. Es como si Mar le dijese a Desierto "amigo...impresionante. Dejate elevar por la atracción de Luna y verás". Y Desierto le replicase "está bien, y tú Mar, deja que Viento lleve tus olas hasta el nacimiento de los ríos, es brutal". …

Hoop Dreams, Harvard Style

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“You have no idea what your lives will be like if you can get out of the ‘hood. You could be driving Volvos, eating Tuscan cuisine, getting MacArthur ‘genius’ grants!”

The Diaphragm

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They had a deal, she reminded him. If he didn’t want to wear a condom all the time, he’d have to help with her birth control.

The Assistant

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The Assistant is lost again in a grid city. Again she feels disconnected from the world. Where she is the sound has been switched off.

Neapolitan

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I wonder how many crumbs he can drop to make a cookie, whole, so I can relax a little and throw out the self help books about how I'm not right in the motherfucking head,

The Monolingual’s Regret

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Polylinguists lash me with tongues I cannot conjugate

They're All Bleepin' Poets, Jack

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Occasionally I will pick up a quarterly— As a budding poet, to do what I oughterly, And peruse the pages for helpful examples That I can crib or use as samples.

Tour Guide

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“It is not your shoes the Americans complained about!” Roberto yelled, sitting behind his desk, cigar smoke curling around his purple face. “It is your UNDERWEAR!”

Everything You've Got

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I reach into my pocket for my keys and discover the cough drops Iput there a week ago have melted. Now my fingers are sticky. And I don’t have my keys.

Why I Cannot be your Facebook Friend

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The TV projects from an insect arm. It has the face of my ex-husband, smiling and void. I like to set small fires and inhale them.

Castor and Pollux

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Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.

Don’t Ask Me to Collaborate

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Except with the language I was born to./ Occasionally, with painters and collagists-// dead now, typically- who can’t voice/ opposition to my misappropriations.

The Stars in Illinois

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Only early June, but the heat feels like August. Eleanor and Shelby sit on the front steps of the old Victorian-style house in downtown Los Angeles, drinking homemade margaritas and watching the daylight drain away to dusk. Shelby slaps a mosquito away fr