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Tree Yaupon

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They clog the skimmer basket/ and fill the small Polaris bag.

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #5

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The big wigs call it aiding and abetting. I became an left-handed accountant with a tendency to fudge numbers for the damned.

elms

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it's about dead trees

Exquisite Now

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In the exquisite now, I feel everything around me, in me, before and after, I think, I should call you, say goodnight, but I do not, choose instead to write this poem, as though I can capture the magic of what is happening between us in words, A…

20th Century Boy

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The night I screamed you out of my life for good, I fed your confettied photo to swirling toilet, a ticker tape parade and dead fish burial rolled into one. Later I found the box, a jiffy…

There is a Certain Long Armed Bird I See

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from here with its brightly polished fingers spread easily amongst the cresting winds off the choppysky, circling the sun and sea splattered cliffs like a lone marble rolling down a smoothed out incline only to be turned invisibly over again as if…

Hogging the Lady

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She was not the usual member of the band, not the girl nextdoor, not next to any door, not a regular housekeeper or woman. She was a ditch digger, a pied, circular piper, a mouse hugger.

Aluminum Canoe

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"Don't stab me with that," says John.

Dear Caddy

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I would advise the younger you to change your underpants, and not to let those boys do the talking for you.

Ways of Making Love

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the honesty of bodies & the lies hidden under skin.

Selling A Wedding Ring

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I somehow ended up with my father's second wife's wedding ring. Although it could actually be his third wife's wedding ring.

Warning! Please Read this Before Adopting a Pet

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One evening I came home late from work to find my wife drinking white Zinfandel by the fireplace in the living room and reading Wallace Stevens poems out loud to the dog, curled at her feet.

Helen Says (from FATHER MUST)

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Masking. Helen says not to think of it as covering or disguising or concealing. Helen says to understand it is not to take it as something put up front and over like a mask. Helen says it’s not like that...

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 43

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—Have you ever fired a gun?

Eighth Wonder of Mississippi?

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Lula’s fried chicken should be served on the hem of Jesus’s robe rather than out of a styrofoam box. It’s so good that I kept glancing at the little tray on the steam table, hoping to be hungry again, ready to yank pieces out of the grasp of strangers, to

Artist's Statement: Stepbrother

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Mark Reep is that stepbrother you had a thing for, the one who turned you onto Steve Vai, Stoli.

ancients

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rheumy eyes wink, gnarled hands pantomime

Heaven On the Floor

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In the blur she met Joseph. Joseph was the priest who lived in the attic of the church. She met him after she grew boobs and thighs that moved like dragonflies soaring above ponds.

Diet Plans

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She positioned the mouse cursor over the word Bikini and double clicked. The hard drive of the ageing work PC chugged into life as an Excel document dragged itself onto the screen.

Hoss Men (divided)

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Agents I have little idea. Woiwode partly supported his family in the 60s by publishing in The NYer (his friends were De Niro and Barthelme) so perhaps there was little trouble in his finding one. E.W. met his at a bar. He publishes in Paris and Texas.

the first time I met Terry

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I remember the first time I met the virgin, Terry (not Mary.) She was in the back seat of an old Plymouth convertible with its top down, jam-packed with raucous high school girls vying to see which one of them could be the most loud and obnoxious, and w

The Rat, His Treadwheel

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The rat had been informed, assured, cajoled in order to gain his assent—duly lied to, in other words, by the researchers with not one tear of remorse, with no smudge or smear of conscience . . .

Hollywood Forever

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Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone crack open an Old Bushmill’s and offer John Huston a pull.

Broken Night

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Could I really seduce and rob a total stranger -- just on a dare?

Haiku For Birthdays

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two little water molecules

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away into a gale then sleet he gurgled with eddie the pike till he yearned and twirled the oracle of spider gloss till he slipped alone into the sky to find her in a violet rain they splat together back to back on the rail in the rumbling tumbl

It's autumn

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Mum and Dad are dead, though I'm the only person who has noticed. They're sipping their tea in the kitchen. Dad keeps coughing up maggots. Mum's face looks like a cracked mirror: I see myself in it, broken, dark. My brothers carry on as normal. They huddle by the TV,…

Every Time It Happens

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Every time it happens, I think of Amber Heard and how hard you can be slapped without a bruise forming.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 32

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—You know, Angelique, said Elaine Aster, dabbing her lips with a napkin, I’ve opened a new gallery in Paris.

Strangers on a Train

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I'm putting makeup on my face. The woman next to me is reviewing legal briefs.