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What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

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My first love was a woman of principle. Never deny your man was her motto.

The Rats

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I climb up on the sofa and stand next to him. I smell something.

Summer's End

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sunshine

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #1

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A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night

Double or Nothing

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Wednesdays were humiliating. Third graders had to bring in twenty-five cents for class dues. If you forgot, the teacher would write your name on the board and it would stay there until you settled your debt. My family could afford the weekly quarter; the problem was…

Until Again

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Methuselah. That’s what they call him, the regulars that ride my train. Other things too, but Methuselah is the one that sticks in my mind. It seems to fit. It’s not as cruel.

bric a brac road

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bric a brac road

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.

Secret Lives of Cell Phones

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...collapse of the human world. Go, cell phones!

Lost Splendors

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“I have a theory,” she said on their first date, which was at an Indian restaurant where the music was a lovely singsong but the chef seemed enraged as he clapped a ball of dough between his hands, then threw it into the flames. And her date, whom she…

Modern Car Problems

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Sitting in the car, John had the urge to kill himself.

Lavender, a Liberal

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Lavender, a Liberal Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at…

Becoming

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Ego bereft of consistency Betrays a heart hungering to toll. Unable to trust its will Or harbor imaginary gods, It gains a hold melding into a role whose proven viability Can give convincing cover To buy time to fabricate An identity that feels unique, Yet…

Eskimos Happened to Come Wandering By

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Meet Carl. He's six-three, two hundred and thirty pounds. He has light-brown hair,…

Happy Is a Poem

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no need to write it if you/ live it, conscious of the light, the/ shape, the sound, the taste, and shadow.

The Year Of Kahoutek

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My father had a terrific argument with his wife, my stepmother, a flaming harridan with a voice like hydrochloric acid, and insisted on driving me back home to California.

Haying

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It is not unusual for farmers to see the future before it’s begun—but I am not speaking here only of the need to hope but more. . . .

Late Night / Early Morning

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It's 2am. The wind is moving at speed, whipping gently the tree branches, and their leaves rustle simultaneously to create a audible sound, like hands flipping through sheets of paper, or that feeling you get on your fingertips when going across a textured surface. I'm…

Letter to John Berryman

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My dad was an Army Reservist stationed in the U.S.—New York and Texas—the bugler in his corps. He golfed on summer weekends at Hazeltine in the course of his career. I had seen houses water colored prettily within the lines on L.S.D., after noticing not

Napomo 17: April 19 – 24

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There are no inspirations./ There are only the things I like/ and the much more numerous// things I do not like.

She Rose From the Weeds

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you drove by the woman standing on the verge the woman with the shoulders of a long distance swimmer and you told yourself her story: she'd slept in the wiregrass she carries…

Trees

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years later, she won’t go near the trees

Dinner, As Told On Twitter

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She sometimes ate her dinner standing up, in front of her living room window.

The Hero in Heart of Darkness

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Remember the equatorial heat, the flies,/ the lurking hum and scream of jungle,/ the squalor? Remember the functionary.

Emotion is a Weather in a Basket of Clouds

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If you can imagine a ghost taking a shower then you can imagine the kind of emotion I have in mind.

About Face

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I'll strip off the skin down to the begin again.

The Sunlight of the Mind

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The nerves are birds that guide us to feeling the loop and lift of reverie.

Showtime

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Showtime on Broadway.

Capt. Love's Last Command (poem)

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The old man is dead, body propped in its cart like the dead El Cid strapped on his horse by Jimena to save Valencia, and yet...

Filter

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The brain taints everything it brings to us/ with its limited apparatus, its precepts,// all the things it thinks it knows.