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Rat Hunter

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We came to the dump at dusk to shoot rats.

Bike Gangs Show Sensitive Side With "Baiku"

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Some guys ride hills up and down, Then stop to terrorize small towns.

Waking Up After a Nap During Election Day

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He is an exercise in humility:What I cannot have or be. The chances of our meetingand his perfection are darkly astronomical. There are plenty of otherswhose riches I cannot have,why envy him?We are similar in spritbut have different fortunes.It is unfair and…

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.3

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They followed the crow up a hill, where lights were at its brightest below. The teens stood frozen in time.

Our Previous Lives - song

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When I arrived in heaven Calling out your name Running just on vapor Leaving my old flames I thought I saw you singing Dripping from all sides Crying like a rainbow Reliving our old lives

Corkscrewing.

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[SOME PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS.]

All These Poets

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All these poets with their wrinkled hands full of freshly poured over poems are driving me into the dried wheat fields like a black block of crows. Offering a collectable cigarette, they light the damned thing with another hand-rolled poem,…

Acclimation

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Before I grew used to it I would wake to the sound of the Amtrak whistle echoing down along the tracks behind our trailer park and wonder who was hurtling where through the dark night and across this wide Illinois prairie

A Band of Feline Brothers

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I am not covetous for catnip, Nor care where I sleep at night. It irks me not who takes my Favorite chair, or swats me off a table.

Hellgate

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Either it was rescue--if the customer was alive to be found--or recovery, the term for bringing out the dead.

Asking an Accomplished Poet Friend to Read My Poetry in a Starbucks at 2PM on a Thursday

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Your usage of the English language / is awkward and passé—

There is no heartbeat, Mrs Stirling.

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I lost a baby two years ago. At 8.5 weeks after seeing her heart beat. I haven't been able to talk about it, but I can write about it. My throat cracks and splinters when I begin to form a thought or word or phrase. I took such great care when…

Scratching into January, 2017

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Follow the money. It seeks/ the lowest of the low and finds them here/ in an embarrassing abundance.

ASH WEDNESDAY

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Everybody knew the McDonald’s at the Waterfront was selling theraflu stamp bags, and I guess I’d heard how bad it was for you—they’d had reports of dumbasses ODing on channel 2, 4, and 11—but it was a lot stronger than regular heroin and a lot cheaper...

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 Breakup

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Don’t break things, I add. And he looks at me like I’ve broken everything else.

As If Not Breathing Could Save him

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She turned him down again. Said it was her insomnia. She was so tired, she said, she had to work in the morning, and why couldn't he understand that? She rolled over facing away from him. He sat up in bed, thinking. When was the last time? Three months ago? Four? He…

Weather Channel Music Writer

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He can become anyone. If he wants. He'd rather not but it's not his choice.

Ripping Good Poetry Lures Boys Who Curse With Verse

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Pringy practices an aesthetic variant of the “muscular Christianity” that is a tradition at Groton; a program of Sunday poetry classes for boys who violate the school’s ban on swearing.

Context and Confessional Poetry

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I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …

Sugar

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At first we thought we could get by using honey so we all stormed the SuperMart and cleaned the shelves out of Suzie Bee Honey. First the jars and then the squeeze bottles, but it wasn't the same. Then Mary Sue yelled out “How about brown sugar?”…

cross-quarter days

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sentinels in a frost-blackened field

At Twelve (Abridged Edition)

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She has dwindled for the better part of a year, staved off her period, breasts and hips like a warrior. Chestnut strands that danced along candy apple cheeks now surrender to metal pins, her bun severe as an old maid's. Her prominent ears…

Cifesboren

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He nodded six times, and waged his stubby fingers repeatedly, forgetting she was simply two wags of the forefinger and a thin waif of girl came running over.

Before the Fall (Pt. 1)

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The skinny one was kinda cute. He had this little mole over the left corner of his mouth that she just wanted to suck. She kept watching it go up and down as he talked, the way his full lips kept spreading and coming together. She really wanted to kiss…

Scooping the Fat of Time

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I lift up my sweatshirt and reach with a full fist into my belly button. This is where the fat comes out.

Imparting Shots

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He knows why I’m here, so he stalls, talking about the coffee, about how it’s a new dark blend from a little shop in The Village, about how he loves the flavor, so rich, but just because a coffee is dark doesn’t mean it’s stronger, that, in fact, it’s the

The Weight of a Gun

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The first time I ever held a gun, I was three years old...

What You Choose to Take

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You first hear about the wildfire on the old kitchen radio.

Interior: Classroom

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No girl hits hard enough.