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17 Things More Important to Americans than Poems, Poets and Poetics:

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Today’s new YouTube kitten;

Still

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Later

My Dad was a ditch digger

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men sitting on stoops women earning the rent by working as servants in the rich folks yard

Shining Against Each Other

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They keep shining against each other

Rocket

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The Chicago to Denver fast train clocked 90 MPH plus, but braked hard on the long curve through town, sparks ringing flanged wheels.

Six Quarters (from Grand Street literary journal)

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Yes, my old uncle liked roses. Grew them. He had a way of smelling a rose—after he smelled a rose, you are surprised the rose is still there.

Off the Grid

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The slicing is easy. Blade barely touching skin, flesh separating into two clean parts. A breath, and blood fills in the space, an old friend materializing in the shadows. I am redolent with hope and desire. I can't stop thinking of how he excised himself from my…

Looking at the Light of the Moon on the Sea

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It was hard, in the crowded vacation house, to make love as they would have alone.

take off your shoes

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feet soft as eyelids on the tarmac

Breakfast for Ten

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Chuck woke when he smelled cooking.

Sisyphus

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He’s more than a little pissed at all this eternal boulder rolling.

Pink Lipstick & Cigarette Machines

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It was that pink lipstick found on the end of that brown filter yeah, think it was an Old Gold

Working Girls

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In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…

I'll be Home for Christmas

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She hasn't called me in days. Before calling her, I search my memory for something romantic to say. Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 says exactly what I'm thinking. But she doesn't need to hear it. She already knows, as all human efforts come to an end, my core energies are tapering…

Cost

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I rifled through the bedside table until I found dirty magazines

Sacrifice on Maple Drive

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Sacrificial vic bleeds out . . .

Olive Green

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Five years ago—or maybe ten—I clipped an article containing a quote that has haunted and inspired me ever since, and tacked it to my wall. Describing the success of diplomats from nearly ninety nations to convene in Oslo, Norway, and agree on the wording

Standing in Line for Pac Man

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Sitting on the couch when we got cable television, on that first day. Pressing buttons that sounded like the slap that your attention span would take as you made your way through the twenty, thirty, forty channels. As you grew older, the amount of channel

Virgin

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Steven was a hollow tree of a man — outwardly normal for a tired fortysomething, but empty inside. He lived alone in an old farmhouse that reeked of decomposition and Lysol, the previous tenant having left a dozen skinned raccoon carcasses in the attic.

She Called My Poem Nice

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“There is no future in art, you will not change lives with flowery words. Please don’t rock the boat”

Cougar

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What follows is one of those moments, though to some people, it would seem a fantasy, perhaps a "Wizard of Oz" era tale.

Master of Puppets

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“There’s enough food to last here a week.” Ferdinand assured, as a dingy wooden cabin came into view. They were on foot now. He’d insisted on forcing the car into a ravine, using a heavy rock and the last of the gasoline to drive it into a heap of rusted

The Human Resource

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I am a human resource, batteries not included

The Assassination of Sadat

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Just beyond the corkscrew slide / the President of Egypt was bleeding to death

Diarrhetic Discharge (w/Edgar Allan Poe)

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That Orndoff! I'd like to shove that pipe of his up his arse.

Bandit

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I didn’t see the little boy run up to Bandit until it was too late. The kid was about four and was excited to see such a big dog. He reached out his hand to pat Bandit’s head and Bandit lunged at him. The leash was wrenched from my hand, leaving a bloody

When the buck stops (3-Minute Fiction entry)

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This was looking down from what we know as The Grassy Knoll.

The Cenataur (Part 1)

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Love needs loathing like cold weather needs warm clothing. And all truths, untruths and part truths need a place to live when a mind gets too sardine-packed with information and cynicism... Some say there was a time when the light was brighter, the ear

Xs and Os

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Momma pointed out our paintings on the walls, the signs we had learned, but when Daddy saw our friends, their wheelchairs, braces on their legs, he left...

Delphi and Parlor Games

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Ghosts// and the voice of God/ never actually visited you