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I Used to Be a Literature Major

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I remember reading poetry in the library / when I was in college, after skipping / Sociology, Psychology, or Theology. / I remember thinking: What is this nonsense? / I don’t want to waste my time on any of this.

Liked and Similar

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I haven't been here in a while!

It's Like That

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Like the term rogue cop

Quatrains Written on Stolen Time

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It is the fragrance of decay/ as paint, polymers and dyes/ outgas molecules of themselves

Distance

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We must sometimes see the world/ as the pale blue dot// surrounded by brighter dots/ and that endless field of darkest dark.

Rue Saint Maur, 3:14am

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The city had a way of going silent. Not a nervous silence, but a quiet silence. The sky was dark, yet everything was colored in a yellow hue cast by the arched streetlights. Buildings, parked vehicles, walls, pavement. Cars and scooters and ambulances and police cars…

Gee, If Only We'd Known!

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As soon as those planes hit the buildings on September 11, it was pretty much all systems go for Cheney's long-planned Iraqi invasion. But first he had to shitcan an aide who showed him in detail how Iraq would eventually…

BLOOM HEIGHT CANOPY

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you said, 'watch it. i am the mountain,' so i aimed 'pause' at the VCR and believed. shook my legs, tangled your red silk to hold back the tremor. in the dream i did not kiss you, but in this story i do and it breaks

"they call me the midnight gambler"

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That night I came as close to getting laid as I had ever come in my life, without actually getting laid, after two and a half hours of intense petting, begging her to go down in the front seat of my car, with her asking: Why? Why, Jerry? Why? That was a

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbeard

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Across the placid sea/The only moving ship/ Was eyed by Blackbeard

Arion, the poet

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Nearly everyone knows of that celebrated poet’s story coming down to us from classical Greek mythology: the tragic tale of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. Well, there’s a much lesser known story of a legendary 7

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

Diorama

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In the center of the big diorama, the real world hangs in the air by a hook.

There Is No Glass

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I'm a heathen in the church of the absolute.

crave

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The look that warms.

Easy Lessons

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A hinge in my heart is broken.

We Never Left

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Above our bellies we are beautiful women with luscious breasts. Where there is skin, believe me, it is flawless, irresistible. Most of us have long hair, but there are some among us who keep their heads close cropped for aerodynamic…

Kiss Me Quick

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You, who reaches in, touches me in that moment of decision, and knows I’ll be everything you’ve looked forward to tonight.

Rocket

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It's hard not to sound dramatic when you begin a letter "On Earth..."

Josef, Boy from Brazil

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I noticed his pistol before his pissbag and I knew then that failure not only had a face but a balding head, too

2 Good Hubcaps

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I got 2 good hubcaps I'm feeling kinda low Instead of tooling down the highway I been going really slow Don't wanna lose another I can't afford that now Just passed my country store And hit my cousin’s cow How come I still keep drivi

Contentions

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...a session/ of hide and seek/ among the syllables.

Invoking Fire

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We talk of his time in the jungle.

The Boot

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my crotch-heavy press of 'Yes.'

In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas

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In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas where over much crowd noise the three of us are discussing Yeats, Joyce and Lady Gregory. We’re in an Irish pub after all, plus the fact we’re literature profs attending a Vegas academic conference.

Bearded Lady

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Nights this husband returned home still hungry sometimes, even for her forearms against his own

Next Time, Academics

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I suggested when we passed the flesh shack that we turn around and that I go in and say to the sex workers that the Russians are fetching $3.5K per hour in Manhattan and it's private, unlike there at that road-side shack.

trixie

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she had a chipped tooth...

Every Mirror with Two Sides

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She was gazing down at her two hands holding the peach seersucker top, but without blinking she saw four hands—ahh, idiot, the mirror! But in the next moment no, it was four hands . . .

Paradelle

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A dying man I'll wake, before the dawn; A dying man I'll wake, before the dawn May come and send me far away to sleep. May, come and send me far away to sleep; Before the dawn I'll wake, a dying man: Come, send me far to sleep, May, and away. …