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Tabula Rasa

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When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

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 . . .

Things Get Fuzzy

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We can’t just bomb Berlin or Dresden,/ Nagasaki or Hanoi, to make things safe

Five Million Yen: Chapter 48

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Ben was not a happy musician.

Things of Beauty

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The cover features Lincoln as a woman. Lincoln as a woman is not a thing of beauty.

Tu me rends fou

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Feeding you a taste of croissant

Nocturnal Bypass

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As I fall to the ground I realize that in a few moments I will be experiencing a new kind of pain. The last pain. The last pain I will ever feel.

Glass Rooster

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ghosts of the previous owners who leave a trail of whispers

1740: My 7th Great-grandfather

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a half-moon hung straight up and down

Prelude to Pain

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Grayson Warren is living the American Dream: a 15-year career as a city cop, a great wife and two kids. And then one day his dream turns into a nightmare.

Is This Seat Taken?

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A single woman should regard every train ride as an opportunity, I once read in one of those “How to Find A Boyfriend” books. “When boarding the train, don't take the first available seat,“ the author advised. “Walk through all the cars…

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...

Death Along the Jersey Rails

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like old discarded snake skin, dry and coarse after the bite... immortally tortured by broken glass bottles.

A Poem for Chris Toll

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we all die from the bottom up

Bubble Rap Blues

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"The Chinese don't have no Mardy Grah, bitch."

Deus Ex Machina

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He rolls in unbidden across the stubble fields / Old acquaintance astride a newly booming cloud/ Under sky an alien shade of strawberries whipped/ Her watch stops ticking out the rest of her/ scheduled breathing poses

Five Million Yen: Chapter 74: Coda

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It was the first warm day of a late-arriving spring. Ben was sitting in his divorce lawyer’s office on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

Various War Stories

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War Stories #1The Germans didn't like that theJews had such beautiful women.War Stories#2There must have been a war between the good witches and the bad witches. It's the only thing that would account for such troubling times.Woman With Yellow HatWhy did…

Perilous Joy

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...bush tail beside him his closest comfort next to the genes...

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.

The Next Best Thing to Dying

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Later, my daughter told me that she hadn't been scared because as I lay on the ground unconscious I continued to laugh, gradually relaxing into a big smile as I came around a minute later.

Two Weeks in a Dristan Land

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I smelled the bleach of burst anemones the sweet arousal of the Dungeness crabs the seaweed of sour twigs and feces

Rope & Bone '86

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His shirts he hangs on the back of the chair, one on top the other so they won't wrinkle.

Maggie

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But she didn't. It would have been no historical anomaly if she had, by the way. She played with the world like it was a toy. Sometimes I wondered if I'd wake up in a box, a victim of live internment, and scream only to be humiliated later by her laughter

The Girl I Danced With Is Now A Man

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You can't always be everything you were expected to be

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

Ways and Means

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the bodies of the poor become/ a simple logistical problem,/ disposable as any gnawed bones

Two Takes on a Flickering Moth

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Take 1. The Love Letter to an Unspoken Name Well we're beyond our appointed Moment now. We must step On what's left, alone, but That begs some explanation to These days that pinball between Stars and to the sad dreamers…

Figures in Disquieting Landscapes

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Tentacles hold fast to the small/ thrashing thing they believe is true// which, devoured, once crushed/ completely still, turns into shit,

February 2012 Denver, COLORADO

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"You don't need the gun," Dean said. "Bring me a bottle of peroxide and some duct tape."