1554 6 4
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In a field of barley, I see you, ...
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155421
|
Naomi hadn't expected them to come in such a big box. When the UPS man tried to hand it to her, she told him there must be some mistake, but then he pointed to her name¾NAOMI BROWN¾right there on the top. When she finally got off all that tape, she had another…
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155464
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... he could feel the pointed picket spears.
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155466
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And here’s a picture of you
at the end of the line
to the great toilet of
fiction, waiting to
relieve yourself, quick
before the poetry gets to you.
Or worse, the actual
poets.
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155444
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A rope is cleaner,
he explains with a straight face.
He's calmed by the visual.
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155453
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And your daughter, Mrs. P, and your daughter Mrs. Q, underwater, underwater in the old swimming hole, in the backyard swimming pool. “They’ve all got children there.” La la.
Yet when I’m naked, when I enter with my own body the mirror, the small sha
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155355
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Style Shifts “Oh, yes, my cousin. We were rude boys until the armed gangs started to gather. Used to be we could pass a night driving, playing our songs, acting tough. Yeah. We'd mouth off, flash some teeth, spark some anger when we felt like it. We…
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155310
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Even before I tap on the door I know I am being watched with one eye. My footsteps have surely given me away. A swift tug on it reveals her to me—half of her, that is, and I slink past the threshold, to her. From her eyes I see that she has…
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15531312
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My wife, Sheila, inadvertently clicked my e-mail address, too, when she sent her reply back to him and I read her poet friend's message that her love opened the window of his heart and she replied that his words were knocks that opened the door to her being, then I stood…
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155361
|
I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…
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155355
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It's been a bad year, People dying. Some too close to home, Some too far away. I cry down to you, In your casket, and think you might sit up. You were not sick You went in just a moment, Looking stunning and alive. Not…
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155362
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155344
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So for now, let the snow fall, but
let it fall gently,
each flake as a soft piano note
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155352
|
—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?
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1553115
|
Among the raindrops/
occasional plopping snowflakes.
|
155378
|
Reprisal The bomb blew away hubris, shocked the arrogant bastards into humiliated silence. None of them had experienced hunger and they'd misjudged its effect. In the lobby of the palace, dirt, plaster, glass shifted, rumbled,…
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155322
|
I want to be adored for something and chose poetry to be that something adored for. But Annie doesn’t see why anyone would ever choose anything over love.
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155331
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I want to read a story that ends unhappily ever after: one where the bad guy wins and no one gets the girl.
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155343
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155311
|
Where the skin had grazed, shredded by the coarse gravel to form scabs, fascinated Jack. It reminded him of his youth and his own grazes, scratches and stitches. As a boy he imagined scabs were rough foundations of igneous rock, blood like lava pouring th
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155311
|
I still picture her waving her bare arms and hands into the purple bellied clouds above the trees, her crooked smile, the spiraling silver maple seeds cascading soft circles around her determined reach, as though the very tree limbs shaping the sky above
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1553126
|
|
155300
|
Osama couldn’t see any reason he shouldn’t retire. No way he could top BP Oil in the Gulf or Pacific Gas & Electric in San Bruno.
|
155285
|
"the dark velvet slide of the tongue."
|
155200
|
What do I understand?
What have I mastered or come to terms with?
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155254
|
After President Trump was elected, my first impulse was to spend the next four years cowering under the bed, whimpering.While I knew that I needed to keep track of what our new commander in chief was up to, watching the news made me too angry and too sad and just too…
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15521911
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155271
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She talks about window treatments, how the place is maybe too much for one. Wants me to know she’s not much of a cook, and wants me to smell what’s in her oven and compliment her cooking anyway.
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1552116
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I said hey man, how you doin’? He looked up and nodded but his shades flashed and I couldn’t see his eyes.
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155262
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And she was thinking of him, right now, at this very moment, scurrying like mad, desperate and frantic like in those dreams where you’re late and trying to get somewhere but can’t, not wanting to blow this opportunity...
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