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Miss Zoldac's Fifth Grade Class Balloon Launch

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INSTRUCTIONS: To all students, please address your index card: "To the Finder of this Balloon." Beneath that, write something that will encourage the finder to email you back. Then tape the index card to your balloon's string.Happy Ballooning! To the Finder…

No Good Hubcaps - song

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I got no good hubcaps My van is up on bricks It's held together with duct tape And a couple of crummy sticks I caught the guy who did this And tied him to a tree I kicked him in the windpipe And kicked him in the knee I'm a man witho

Augustine

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You stretch my heart / in sacred ways

16 Rules to help you become a Writer

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Get comfortable with criticism

The Application of Birds

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I know someone in need of healing.

Bad Ideas I've Had

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Not all ideas are bad, just mine.

A Strategy to Overcome Rejection

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“If your work is good you will get published. Just keep at it."

Folk Music Returns to Roots, But Some Try to Keep Them Buried

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“Sandy likes the way Bob spanks, when he’s done she gives him thanks."

Deception

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Distance.

In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas

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In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas where over much crowd noise the three of us are discussing Yeats, Joyce and Lady Gregory. We’re in an Irish pub after all, plus the fact we’re literature profs attending a Vegas academic conference.

Firefly

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Smiling at stones and chunks of earth pounding in...

A New York Moment

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Harvey C. Hamby was drunk. Usually he held his liquor well, but tonight he was off his form. Stumbling over an ottoman, he landed on the floor in a sodden sprawl. As he fell, his left foot shot out behind him and socked Glenda Steinberg in…

Friends

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I reach out and grab a can of soup with each hand and spin them around to dive into this much-heralded sodium situation. It's a landslide. I almost smile as I put low sodium back and continue to hold tightly onto regular.

These Gothy Days

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(haiku)

The Winter's Too Warm for Bears to Sleep

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The winter’s too warm for the bears to sleep, and they get up in the middle of the night with insomnia and wander about the streets in their pajamas, knocking over garbage cans, looking for a midnight snack of some kind. They’re getting kind o

Blue Moon

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I suppose it was inevitable, This crashing of souls, This recognition of possibility to create. If we were younger, We would make a baby, The ultimate act of faith. Now it has to be something else, Nothing to force a track with night feedings, …

Carrying you

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I woke up to the humming of an empty space in the shape of a sweatshirt,

Things As They Really Are

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I slide my CD toward Eric Burdon who sits, smiling and gracious and fatigued from Seattle traffic, at the table at Silver Platters, where I have just purchased ‘Til Your River Runs Dry, and stood in a line of old gray heads to have him sign it. I remove my hat and…

Carnival Beach

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Galloping people, tangled in ballets of hot love, weaving in and out, making a canvas of it.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 9

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Michiko stood in front of Steinway Hall on West 57th Street.

Elevator to the Angels

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I opened the closet door and there stood Eugène Ionesco lost among our clothes.

A New Chapter to Song of Solomon: A Poem

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My beloved lets me crawl into bed and put my feet on him since his skin is warm and hot like a fire roaring from within his soft flesh.

Tongues

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I feel his hand on my face, feel it brush past my lips, and I taste my sister's blood.

This Can't Be True, But I Remember It

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She calls me by my name. She says I am her daughter.

To Zephyrus

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In a field of barley, I see you, ...

Bookstore Reading, Telegraph Ave, Berkeley

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There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

Deer People

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There was no provision for keeping the post on the door, but I did not have the fingernails to pry it off.

Sorry, Charlie

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Vietnam, Tet, and beaucoup Charlie

The letter.

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I am useless. A freak. Different. They all hate me now. All except you, of course. You will never leave me. Never. I'd kill them all if I could. Every single one. But twenty-four, that's a lot even for me. I'm so sick of the cliques; the special groups and hastily strung…

Soft Coral Siren

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I didn't feel when you cut out my spine I'd been throwing up all night couldn't even smell the rust …