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Years ago when the smart of it was as nippy as this one.

Upper East

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As the 5 train gained momentum away from Fulton Street, Helen took her seat with the alertness and suspicion of someone who had spent the day negotiating prices with dirty fishmongers.

falling

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I arrange my stones in circles

Freedom

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the darkness held frieghtened by the surveillance of a distant white shimmer.

A Broken Frame

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The photograph has no date,but these are my long-ago kin,ancestors just before the boat,six stone-faced on the English shore,sepia on cardstock under glassstill clear in severe, dark clothesexcept one who has been markedout, maybe with black wax,which runs to the bottom…

Passing by Pallanteum

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Passing by PallanteumOr ‘Dido's Song' Form: Double Sestina, iambic pentameter, rhymed Who knows of hell, knows less of paradise? I've known them both, when vanquished in your eyes, When draws the kelp where lost men had their graves Below…

Fire In The Heart

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The woman leapt from the top of the burning building. The flames reddened the faces of the watching crowd. The heat pushed them back. The woman hit the ground. The crowd oooooed. If only I'd been a firewoman, I thought, with a ladder as tall as a building and a…

At the Jr. Algonquin Roundtable

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“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

Poet Found Living Near Berkeley!

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Reports have been spreading fast that an actual living poet has been found right outside the borders of Berkeley Rumors grew into a wildfire of speculation Saturday night when one of them a tall graying older specimen more or less in the

The Beethoven Delusion

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"It is my argument that a pious fraud has been perpetrated so as to subject mankind to the most humiliating of intellectual enslavements."

Billing Notice

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Due to recent enhancements to our billing system, the rate per unit for your basic service can no longer be determined.

Night and Day

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The muezzin calls the faithful, his voice soaring over the rooftops, over the trees and the brooks,

Museum Story Listening

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A sort of invocation of the open sky, in contradistinction to the dark of the Earth whence came the specimens, a figurative marriage of the literal darkness of exploration and the figurative light of knowledge.

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…

Greetings From Karma City!

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A friend of mine died and went to heaven. At least I thought he went to heaven. I mean Freddie wasn’t such a bad guy and if he had any faults they were mild peculiarities. Like his girl watching. He was a champion girl watcher. Even in this a

The Gift Garden (Extract)

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Now I hear a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, like I know her, but in my daze it is slightly distorted, like I am underwater and she is calling to me beneath the waves. She tells me not to be afraid. Her words are calming; they soothe away the panic and confusion. I…

summer fields

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we ran that afternoon/across Bayshore lanes/into green blooming fields, beyond all those

Puffer Fish in the Infinite Laboratory

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They put me in charge of developing a drug that stifles fear.

Better Spent Time

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there is a tunnel / between your skin and the ground / for kisses to crawl

The Madwoman Who Called on My Wedding Day

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She’d reached me after running through the directory, alphabetically. Apparently no one in the a’s or b’s or c’s before me would talk to her.

Taking it Easy

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At the Winslow Funeral Home in Winslow, Arizona, just like in the Eagles’ 70s song “Take It Easy,” only I’m not taking it easy.

Ballad

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Hi de ho, and hey, hey, hey; The farmer's daughter is made of hay. I went to touch her but she blew away, And noo ma hert is nae langer gay. Hi de hoo, and how do you do? The farmer's wife has a cold up her flue, And takes me away…

Free Form Jazz of Spiritual Harlem

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we are one

Basement Concert

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You don't just hear the sound, you are the sound, you and everyone else in the room.

Ready to Surface in All Respects

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Our realtor is worried about selling our apartment. He believes it is a submarine. We cannot convince him otherwise. I agree that our apartment is a little small and more than a little cluttered. We have a lot of books. The sensation of standing or sitting in our…

Remember?

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We'd been talking about the baby, about what we would do, when the women began fighting after the wedding held in the church next to our apartment. Their fierce and piercing arguments crawled up the walls to the second story window we sat next to. We'd looked outside…

How to Tell if Your Loved One Belongs in the Booby Hatch

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It is well known around town that Ray's dad went crazy. Today, when asked, everyone will tell you that they knew all along he had a screw loose, told their wife, “That Mick Borkowski's gone bat-shit.” But when it was happening, no one paid it any…

In the Air Tonight

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But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru

I Go Cold Keyboard at End of Day

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Excuse me, can I now ask to change my favorite childhood color from green to yellow?

Climate Change

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Every year I have a birthday, and every year another of my friends succumbs to cancer or suicide. That's a shitty gift. That is devoutly not to be wished.