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Head in the Clouds

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Damn, the light turned green on me. Wasn't ready.

Luminous Nights, 2

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The house where my brother lived up in the hills above Hollywood, looked like any other suburban house on any normal street Anywhere USA, except that once you got inside the house — spread out at your feet was a panoramic view over a canyon that was act

A Raisin in The Sun

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I was about sixteen or seventeen when James Miller had a stroke and died. He was a friend of my father's and a preacher-guy. The last time our church had been that full was at the barbecue the weekend after the church was built. Somehow, the structure went…

Audience

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At 19 words, the whole piece is a snippet.

13 poets in Hell

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1Paradise Lost is cast into the lake of fire. Satan tells John Milton to rewrite it in 140 characters or fewer.2Filippo Marinetti languishes in a dismal rural idyll. His hand, possessed, scrawls euphonic odes to the moon with a quill.3Henri Michaux floats through the…

Matchbox Car

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Clatters and clatters ensued, and the splash destroyed all denial.

Your Guide to a WASP Bar Mitzvah

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“The first thing you must remember,” Polly tells the Levensons, “is that every penny you spend on your guests is that much less you can spend on your horses.”

Meticulous

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Have you measured the cups, the conveyors' yield? Do you know the span? I am the LORD your God, she murmured.

The Etymology of Fun

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Tell people of substance the truth.

We Must Save Ourselves

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We Must Save Ourselves I'm looking for my savior on subways, Is he this man pushing half himself On a skate board, from car to car, Singing I have no Legs, I have no Legs, I'm looking for my savior in coffee shops Of…

The Eyes

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I've never liked kind eyes;I prefer drive.Or fire.And when a woman's eyes are described as "doe,"I hear "dumb."Like an animal.

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.

Night Of The Ghouls

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The following is a true story. Though it happened 35 years ago, it happened last night too. Everyday a new convert is welcome, a new tapestry begun. A new hunger is born.

Not Writing

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I don't look like other poets. / People hardly believe it when I say / "I write poetry, sometimes. / During lonely evenings."

Ambassador of Nowhere

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Before you tripped on the third rail, you were like any other: coat a shard of midnight-blue, eyes filled with gratitude but for nothing. You were a lost coyote on a snowy hill. With sad magnificence you wandered, terrorizing passengers who secretly wished to pat your…

Woman at the Bar

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I saw a woman / at the bar tonight

Bringing a New Poet into Your Home

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You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w

Drowning By The Pool(2nd Revised Version)

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The entire room seems waiting for me like an octopus behind a closed, chained door. The monk of the lamp knows he will get his daily turn-on if he prays loudly and just enough for it. The favorite chair has my blue dent in its punched…

Story to Forget

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The white Boeing 747, all three hundred and sixty eight seats of it, prepared to depart from Johannesburg Airport. Mild conditions on a clear flight path coupled with the soothing voice of the first officer didn't allay my unease. I offered a friendly nod to the…

It's Like That

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Like the term rogue cop

things to know about the people parked along the road that runs through Humboldt Park: part 20

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I traced the vein that rose in her temple when she got angry all the way along her body until it ashed out varicosely on her smooth calf.

An Apricot the Size of a Heart

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I dreamt, said the Donkey, of an apricot. An apricot the size of a heart. …

Time. Stop.

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So young. So innocent. How do you tell a little one that her mother is dying? The father seemed to be bathing in a sea of hopelessness lately.

Checklist For My Next Lover

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You’re a glimpse at immortality, a pathway to transcend the body, to the sphere just outside, where time ceases to matter and the ball of the sun grows warm in our bellies. I’ll love you more than the next lover and never as much as the lovers before y

Dramarama and Acid Wash Jeans

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Looking down you wonder, when did I eat pineapple? and Am I really this awesome or am I a facsimile of something that really sucks, even if it's that 'it's so bad it's good' kind of thing? Nope, it's just bad.

Golden Dawn

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Rose would have preferred to survey the wreckage alone, between sips of her earl grey, but the morning light drew her attention to blonde and jet black curls weaving into folds of fabric.

Autumn

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Early morning cokeBottle. Did Katie callHeiddegger "Skippy"?Remember years backWhen we studied so hard andHa ha, just kidding.As you age, neverForget you are dying noFaster than before.

Buzzard

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what lies, in my eyes

Paradise

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The oval-shaped, pearl-white objects shimmered soundlessly in the warm sunlight. Suddenly one object veered off and headed towards them stopping to hover not twenty feet away. Suddenly their phones vibrated simultaneously. They both looked at their messa

the genes of Edouard Manet

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was entering into a new phase of its existence, a peculiar paradigm of the wider world where, presaged by science, economic and political ideologies were conspiring to displace the old verities of religion and aesthetics, but where…