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Frothing At the Fountain

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When I came back from California the second time, in the summer of 1965, I was the first around our town to wear my hair long, influenced by the Beatles. And I bought a bunch of blue caps that everyone in our gang wore, with the number “69” sown on

Imminent Weather, Five AM

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The spectacle of weather/ on the prairies approaches.

Inmate Words

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in White Heat there’s a character who reads lips using a mirror to see the mouths of prisoners in other cells that’s how I feel when I talk with you

Looking for Comments

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So do you read my writing?I text youI need to know whatyou like betterThe bloodor the gutsThat's what it is.You see Iput it out therefor you.That's not what it saysbut I know the truth.Am I smart enoughgood enoughdo you think it's crapbecause anyone can like it…

Secrets of Philadelphia

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Bruce Springsteen begins singing from the loud speaker he was bruised and battered and couldn’t tell what he felt.

Slide Steel

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Fat Patty sniffs the delicate waft of peat and sidles over, proffering a grope in exchange for a few wet-lipped swigs. Hell yes.

The Autobiography of the Falsehoods Which Are Not Love

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he wound up hating the woman he betrayed in his heart for betraying him in her body

Elephant with a little Poet on its Head

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“Every word was once an animal.”--Emerson This circle has been Broken. The mother has Disappeared inside the wounds Of gunfire like an Eye drop. Who knows if Any of them left, crunched Down, whole into the…

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.

Inheritance

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My father died. I took his clothes.

Meteorology

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Among the raindrops/ occasional plopping snowflakes.

The Court of the Vassal

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“I believe this is a case that is very much worth our time. Its probably the most important case thus far in your reign,” Henry said, “my lord.”

Fifteen

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“We could dooble date,” he said.

An Open Letter To Lance Armstrong

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When I get my legs pumping, I’ll pop a spoke if I'm not careful. Massive fucking energy! And all that fat I was talking about? I don’t even really have that much of it, any of it really. My body fat is like one percent, which the doctors tell me isn’t

Any Given Recent Day

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Ten-year-old Bobby Akins learned that a shotgun shell struck on its brass end with a hammer can indeed take out the left eye of an eight-year-old brother observing the proceedings close by.

Everything that's Gone Wrong, has Gone Wrong Because of Football

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I’m not ready for football. I’m not ready for it, but I live in a southern town that worships at its altar more devoutly than those suicidal beauties in James Wright’s great poem.

Exhale

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It's as if the house knew I was relinquishing my hold on it.

All Men With Well Trimmed Beards

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Or, do my own red flags counter balance his. My back and forth, my restlessness, my one foot out the door, my ‘once a leaver… always a leaver’, my pitter patter for a former flame... peppered with my transgressions, my mistakes. Or, worse, the way I have

Not Good Enough

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So where does that leave me, Roscoe Loomis wondered, dismounting his silver, aluminum steed in his sweat-soaked, spandex outfit, and, clearing the saliva from his beard he walked over, checked and smiled, learning that the bike track's timing unit showed it was Roscoe's…

Divers

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and, once in a rare while,/ actual pearls.

Troy

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It’s layer VII we adore/ and mourn

Sad without Tears

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Sometimes, to be sad, you don't need tears.

Decision Mountain

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For decades the land the village sat on had switched its allegiance between two countries.

Trial Separation

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"You're no good at sex, no good at drugs and, god knows, no good at rock and roll."

loose threads

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Blankets were always her undoing.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 7

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Frank kept looking over at Michiko’s loft.

Imaginary Photo Album

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Let me swim into your eyes. Let me show you my world. My album. My Albania. My albumen.

Revisionist History

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A break from bleak world history and events...

Gentleman Freddy

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Roanne, just out of jail, went to cop. That is, she went to beg fat little Freddy the dopeman to front her once more. She'd have to fuck Freddy, of course, but, well, maybe he'd wait until after this time. Likely not…

Transport

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Ruth carries always a small bottle of nitroglycerin; and tissues, wads of tissues; two Tums (for calcium, she tells me)...