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The poet could not speak of himself
but only of the gradations leading toward
him and away. ~ Mark Strand
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Summer nights or frozen
winter, the crackles of his black.
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1269 1 1
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"I'm just saying," the older man continues, "We oughta be ready in case she hits."
"We'll be fine," the woman says. "We've weathered every storm that's ever come through here just fine."
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1269 0 0
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She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention.
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1269 15 9
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I will wrap up in quilts that still smell of summer sun
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One night while in rehab I had a dream that I worked as a violin maker in Salzburg.
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1269 2 0
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What I remember about my grandfather were his fart jokes. When he wasn't telling us kids about how young David defeated the mighty Goliath or how Saul the pharisee humbled himself to become Paul the Apostle, he was telling us about the baby burp that begg
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Wind was a sorry excuse for force
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1269 2 1
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They put me in charge of developing a drug that stifles fear.
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Robbie’s wrists itched hard, the cord was sunk in so tight his hands were bordering now on blue, now purple. Too late to matter.
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“I can't go to sleep,” Jonathan said, laying on the doctor's couch. He counted on his fingers to keep his mind active. “I'll certainly die if I do.”
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1269 2 1
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What the five-year-old I baby sit for wanted to do yesterday was torture his Barbies. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked.“Because we're bad guys!” said Hanina. “Can't we be good guys?”“Not today. Today we're bad…
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1269 5 5
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They come to wipe themselves from my memory, but that, of course, is impossible. In this place, we are bound together, the long line of men who have killed me, and I.
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I am experience and information//
at a small but irredeemable remove.
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Lights of human occupation burn/
in patterns like the growth/
of a bacillus, lethal and prodigious,
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Betty had been looking for a distraction; the lawsuits were out of control. Her last nonprofit, Faith and Life Children's Organization, had run into some difficulties due to the recession and the obvious result of trying to do more with less. Why couldn't people…
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1269 6 1
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Deny yourself that pleasure
For my sake; that feeling beyond measure
That you get when you finally, and with much angst,
Decide not to be a bitch, to a round of general thanks.
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1269 3 0
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After our first kiss,
a team of scientists
scrubbed away the cancer
of your lipstick.
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1269 1 1
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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…
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1269 4 0
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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
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An electromagnetic pulse/
scrubbed the servers./
The clouds wisped and blew away, empty./
Markets lost what little mind they had.
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1268 4 1
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Camilla and I watched a movie, then we were the movie. A man wandered in a decrepit house, or in a dream of a house, which had wallpaper hanging like shredded flesh and little mounds of filth and a madwoman with a butcher knife creeping from room to room with fear or…
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It must be nice not to have to worry About certain things because those things are not yet In your circle, or in your circus, of life. I don't begrudge you for being almost grown in A much different, sweeter place and time. I'm thrilled By…
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1268 3 2
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Falling asleep remembering lies that had been built around lies
Lies to impress people
Lies to make life more convenient
Lies, I didn’t even know why I told them.
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Publisehd in Linguistic Erosionhttp://www.linguisticerosion.com/2014/08/the-frog.html When Jesus and Magdalene began to cross the sunflower field they met a group of boys, squatting before a rocky outcrop. Covered with…
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My friend, drunk, spoke to me / outside a bar where we hung out; / and his eyes were red from tiredness,
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the sour waft of a secret
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Although it was unlikely that she would witness mobsters racing up or down Wabash Avenue with guns ablast, she paced behind the hotel's ground-floor glass eyeing traffic for fifteen or twenty minutes . . .
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we ran that afternoon/across Bayshore lanes/into green blooming fields, beyond all those
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Us kids in left field steal out bedroom windows after dark to pinch hit Lucky Strikes between first and second fingers, arc the glow of shop-lifted hot-boxed cigarettes over the chain link homerun fence sprawl on perfectly ridiculous grass passing a bottle…
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