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The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Contained

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You’re listening to Smooth FM, taking you from the darkest hours to the start of a brand new day.

Light

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"You gonna be old before you're old," my father had told her.

Four Poems

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Our disappearance would register/ as the movement of a sand grain/ on a windy beach full of sand.

Citadel

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Last night we slept with books in the bed.

Mr. Sunrise

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To a tech-savvy millennial, the definition of progress is a hands-free blowjob, and the real number is not how many men you’ve been with but how many minutes you’ve made them wait.

Snack

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Kerryn saved us from ourselves really. Would you be reading this had she eaten it?

reality concedes, for once

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beckoning with citrus streaks blue cobbled streets/and stuccos lit with gold lamps guide strollers here/to Place du Forum in Arles and this café . . .

In Search of Vince’s Quinces

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Beautiful, he thinks, as he taps the ash of his cigarette over the balcony, but this is not good enough.

August

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One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.

Tu me rends fou

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Feeding you a taste of croissant

Intrepid Explorer

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The Intrepid Explorer recounts his travels for the benefit of subscribers to the Magazine of the Museum of Everything

Paradise

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From the rumple of pre-dawn Queens, sure South on 95, to almost Savannah by dark; still cold, but we’re full of what’s coming:

Sleepwalker

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I may as well have been sleepwalking. Either way, I had no opportunity to admire the moonlight flooding into the long corridors, illuminating the stag heads and painted cheeks of long-dead ancestors.

A Poem for Chris Toll

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we all die from the bottom up

Frenchie at the Fair

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Frenchie hustled waffle irons.

Dream Boats

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The Inauguration Day Windstorm had blown out half the downtown lights to celebrate its twenty-first birthday. Two old friends flecked with gray snow and white hair sat on the boulders that kept the Sound from sweeping away Myrtle Edwards Park. Look at all the…

What I told the police the morning after

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Miracles don’t happen to the poor.

Scar

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I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

Wonderland

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The bartender kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. “Everyone in Hollywood is an actor,” Doc said.

The Body in the Other Room

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I couldn’t parse the grammar of her body nor decode the secret softness of her neck.

Snarket

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Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

Ranger

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“What. Is. That?” Sid asked, staring at the shaggy ball of fur sitting in the living room. Its tongue hung out of its mouth and its tail beat against the carpet.“This is Ranger,” his mom said. “I don't know what breed he is, but he's a sweetie…

Packing

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I left Iowa in august when the air was thick and sticky. I had been there three years minus a few days when the boy I'd been sleeping with packed almost everything I owned into my car and waved goodbye. In Baltimore I had few friends and a job teaching English at a…

To Whom It May Concern:

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Now, we can argue about how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but there is no doubt that it takes eight spritzes of Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner, three spritzes of Lime-Away, and then a 30 second spray of Oust to incapacitat

The Tribe of Women

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One can’t predict the final cadence of one’s life.

Tatters

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inside i know my heart rattles cause outside i'm only seeing that the truth is in tatters

children

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today on the bus/ a man in his fifties/ smiled at a baby/

sabotage

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people keep trying to get me/ "out of the house"./ they see fun in me, and cool in me,/ and want to spend time with me,/ and i am flattered most sincerely./

Modern Teleology

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little curly moustaches