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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

cross-quarter days

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sentinels in a frost-blackened field

The Tribe of Women

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

In my day...

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In my day, you could buy a polythene bag of cigarette butts for 5p. And everyone had a proper haircut.In my day, plumbers gave free vasectomies whilst reciting patriotic poems. And all the buses were red.In my day, there was always more than enough sex to go round, with…

Naked Coffee

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My wife makes coffee naked. Didn't used to. Back then, before the accident, she hated her body. Says that's why she gave it to me. She's serious about it too. The coffee, I mean. Developed a whole ritual around buying, measuring, pouring. Every day it's the…

1 col 24 point heading here

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I had ink for blood then and “the news” was my oxygen.

Lovers on the Lawn

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One day, every girl I’ve ever slept with showed up on my lawn.

Duluth Harbor

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"And yet she always went on writing, even when nobody cared if she did or not: if she stopped, she told an imaginary prosecutor in her diary, 'I will not have earned death.' "

Desert Storm, an Infrared Dream/David Avidan

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Desert Storm, an Infrared Dream/Poem by the late David Avidan On January 17, 1991 I woke up at 02:45 from a neo-surreal dream with a slight not very serious feeling of suffocation a pre-asthma attack instantly stifled with the inhalation of Ventolin an

In A Lightning Storm, Sheep Run Through Barbed Wire

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I used to fear things. The lonesome wind come through the clapboards. Dry hillsides rustling. My own skin in the summer heat. Rattlers. Lurking. Abandoned coal pits. Pa said I was afraid of desolation. I didn't know what he meant by that. How can you be…

Man On The Run

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Don't slow down, he said, time grows shorter every minute. So you pretended to stay young or cheated on your marriage or forgot to watch your children growing up, and still never found someone who could understand you.

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…

Myra's Lighthouse

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I’ve been mentally cataloging all the various ways Myra has fucked me up. I know this is a dangerous game, strapped to our seats inches apart and hurling down the road at 70 mph, but I can’t help fiddling with the fuse.

Jeans

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Jeans. You passed yours along to me with some helpful tips.

Ish

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The feline apotheosis of Ish - Shroedinger’s cat.

The Inspector Pays a Visit

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I'm not generally a believer. But I do sense things. I see things.

The Noise

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I'm hearing a noise. I can't see it. It's hiding and seems to be coming from the other side of the creek. With boots on I slowly wade across. The water makes its light lapping sounds. Reaching the bank, I search for the noise. It must have a face, suntanned and warm, that I…

James

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And I mean part of me wanted to let him eat me, I thought maybe I owed him my body because I couldn’t enter his mind and I really wanted to on some level but we both knew that him eating me would just make us both feel awful—him because he’d wake up

VENICE IN THE AFTERNOON

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It's cloudy out. So I go to the Assisted Suicide Center on Venice Blvd. It doesn't mean I'm gonna off myself because it's cloudy. There just happens to be a kind of puzzle of clouds in the sky the moment I decide to head over there. I find it fitting, thi

77 Words - Barfly(s)

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Things that happened, were said, acted upon at twilight or later.

Un Americano

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His eyes are wide then narrow and brown. Hers are gray then they look away, toward the back door where a delivery driver has walked in, carrying a tray. Nothing is going to happen today.

Happy Birthday to Me

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Happy Birthday to me. It takes just a second on waking to remember, It's June but it feels like December.

Inversions of Pound: Canto I

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these tender girls tears recent / with stained souls, brides of dead, / cadaverous Erebus; unguarded ladder / long the down going…came Anticlea then

Grow

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Grow.A word.A verb.Germanic.Feel it.Slow.Old.Young.Now I'll tell you how put it on a page:we'll start with the o.Take your pen just so,thin first,from the centerand thick on the up, thin at the topand thick on the down, thin at the low,finish sharply.The r is a…

Thanks, Target!

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A tanka poem inspired by the 40 million debit card numbers stolen from Target stores since Black Friday last month.

ALONE

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In his tiny fist he held the world In his other his mothers hand

The Shopkeeper

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His eyes are closed yet restless, as if too many thoughts loop beneath the lids.

+45° 32' 15.91", -122° 40' 54.85"

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A bridge not satisfied with just crossing the river - It slashed through the sky, crashed through nature - Creating a new nature, a double-decker

In Real Time

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We are the same shits/ we were in the Bronze Age

Eating Jane

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Psycho? You dare call me psychopath? I am not some crazy person with but the thinnest belt of sanity wrapped around them! The world will know my story… they shall see! My purgatory... this dripping cell… pen and paper to capture the overflow of words…