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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.

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…

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

Sacrifice on Maple Drive

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Sacrificial vic bleeds out . . .

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.

The Human Resource

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I am a human resource, batteries not included

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

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

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”

Delphi and Parlor Games

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

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.

Love

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My grandmother is magnificently breasted in her floor-length nightgown.

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

Manliness!! *urp*

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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway

A Man Dies

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The spirit smiled and held out his hand, the light in the room magnified and he brushed past the books and the thoughts still hanging in the small alcove, " You are ready now.

The Assassination of Sadat

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

Five Million Yen: Chapter 18

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Detective-Sergeant Claude Mulvihill was seasick. He was in a New York City Harbor Police boat in the East River headed towards the George Washington Bridge. There was a good chop in the harbor, which became worse when the Police Boat reached the Battery.

Shorty

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“They’re not gonna shoot him?” Rick cried.