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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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127382
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This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.
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127331
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This is a very impromptu piece written at two in the morning based on a prompt from Meg Pokrass, who insisted the following words be used: fussyhairybloomingslipperyflutterdamppaleweedsyanking “Maxfuss” was his password, which was appropriate,…
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127311
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On his way to his first fishing expedition in the Bay Area, the man remembered the rustle and shimmer of the willows by the muddied Jemez River in New Mexico, cold beer, the clean camaraderie of childhood friends. He walked along a path choked with greenery to the San Pablo…
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In moving crowds I plan to break you.
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Granddad listened to Elvis and then he would talk more or less the entire night. “Mystery Train” was Sam Phillips' song. Then Presley recorded it, but did it up different, sounded much faster so you could feel your hair blow back a bit. …
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127311
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I like violence /
because they refused to pay at attention to me /
as a child.
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127311
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I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th
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127300
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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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Yesterday I saw Marco Polo getting a tattoo on East Olive. He was practicing Mandarin Chinese with the tattoo artist who was also Chinese. He got a yin yang symbol on his bicep. He looked to the east and saw the hills lift themselves into sky. He grimaced
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127333
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"Let somebody else deal with for a while, man, I'm tired."
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127332
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And so began my love affair with a thick, semisold substance. Sort of like Mary Van de Velde, the chubby girl who was my partner in my 6th grade polka troupe.
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127352
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The Bunny Hop represented that riot-like atmosphere–in cuddly guise–described by Claude Levi-Strauss in his seminal essay that I have forgotten the name of it’s so important.
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127243
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YOU cross the park as the evening gathers, the playground is deserted, streetlights spark up orange beyond the trees that veil the main road. You feel your journey pushing at your back, the last scraps of the energy of a train hammering north. At the far edge of…
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It was R who embodied love for me. We’d eaten gummi worms in the park, held them up to the sun, yellow and green and translucent. When we returned to her flat, they were everywhere. I’d never seen such a thing. They hung in the air, these gummi worms.
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127233
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Tokarsky and I got chased off an El train by a couple of mean-looking black dudes who looked like they were going to crush us. I let go a spritz of tear gas that I had on me in the train and we ran as it came to a stop at the Morris Street stop. They chas
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this bleeding sun, clove studded & seedless
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He saw places that he hadn't thought existed. He found his analog from 17,000 years ago praying inside of a white pyramid in Kathmandu, and saw how the fireballs being catapulted through the air outside were stopped in midair by a beam coming from the top
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127211
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Leaning toward Joshua, Stuart says softly, “Take it easy, okay? We’ll bury him. He shouldn’t be left here, in your kitchen.”
Joshua glares. “Don’t you fucking move him.”
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It’s the middle-aged jazz musician who tends to get lost in the shuffle; no longer news, and not ready for the marble statue-treatment.
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127240
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Living in the dark ages without language,
I think I’ve been dead long enough.
You can come out of the vast fields of night.
Come out of the vast galactic storm without light.
The darkened dreams
that speed past with their false and brightly lit
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1272138
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last night a girl came
to me in the shape
of my suicide.
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127231
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My mother’s serene and patient voice flew up the staircase once again “Megan, are you done feeling sorry for yourself?”
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127222
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Inspired by the photographic work of Susan Lipper. Grapevine series, 1988-92.
http://susanlipper.com/gv_23.html
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Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …
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". . . Stinkin' vampires, death to all of ’em, them and their plague-festerin' rats. But the new ones, I don’t mind takin’ ’em down before gettin’ rid of ’em. —But you’ll never get that smell off o’ you if you use only one condom, I’m here to tell you . .
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Mother hated a crucifix. Graven, she said. Evidence that Catholics weren't saved, just stuck in ceremony. Jesus had risen and anyone who had to pray in Latin, count beads or confess to robed men who took orders from a monarch didn't know…
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127211
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It's called the Knee Defender. But I prefer to think of it as the Schmuck Identifier.
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She’d picked him up at a party freshman year, calling him Danny. Until then he had always been Daniel. He’d said nothing and his name was changed.
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