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Island Numbers

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an island hidden in the sound holds treasure

High Fives

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They pull up to the curbside and he jumps out to shake the hands in that familiar men’s grasp/shake they do when saluting each other. If that isn’t his daughter it should be, the one sitting in his car, with her door wide open.

The Scrawny Dog Gospel

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Opportunity, says Webster, is a, "favorable juncture of circumstances." In my Oxford book of quotations, there are seven famous lines about opportunity. Seven – that’s it! There are twenty-seven regarding failure. Seems it's been easier for the great

#53 Cut Up

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I loved her when she first came calling in the sodden dawn of spring. She was a strange and dangerous flower. Together we drank up all the money. The days staggered away like drunks lurching down a flophouse hall.

we used to drop her off along the way

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We do it all the time...

Things that blow up

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For as long as John could remember, he loved to blow up things. It started back in grade school with firecrackers and cherry bombs—he would put them in toys, tin cans, shit like that to see what would happen. Then he advanced to stronger stuff, M-80s. Skip and…

Five Acts

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The television was playing reruns of Mr. Ed, but it was hard to hear because of the flock of birds in the palm tree. I’d sometimes imagined the birds coming through the window, a swarming of pink cotton mouths, mawing everything in sight.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 11

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Michiko never telephoned Frank from Washington or Chicago.

SNIPS & SNAILS & PUPPY-DOG TAILS IS THE *LEAST* OF IT! by Ranting Bitch in a Cold, Cold World

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Portrait of the Author as a Poet

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I am an awful poet.

ROMANCE

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In the neon light and barroom shadows,

Coming Home

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How many years has he dreamed he would be home again?

Nothing Ever Stays Looking

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The same, some things you Can't explain, most trees Have felt it go bone dry at the roots before. I've learned to let love Go bye bye. You think they don't Want to answer your pathetic knocks, But they're…

How to Lose Control of Your Pencil

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Real hands

The Train Rolls On

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From my office window, I watch the trains roll in and out of the city. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of passengers staring out windows as the train slows, the ones who have another destination. I've been on those trains before, ones that took me far away from all that…

Filtering Grace

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...She was my first, my only, she broke me in then brought me down. Alone now, I cycle through hundreds of variations of her image like a flip book narrating some abstract story. That’s all she is now to me, an incoherent melange of tints, saturations, an

Scanner

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The Bearcat 101 was a police scanner popular with a certain type during in the 1970s. Daddy was that exact type. I found the Bearcat in his apartment after he passed. His illness was a common one, the process gradual, implacable. No red and blue…

The Poet's Mark

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Often I want to kiss their lips Drink in every word they have written

Gilbert B Fumbleberry

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“You know, Miss Viv, I love looking at the sun when it’s almost gone. It kinda looks like an orange and apple squished together. Those are the colors. And the puffy clouds under it look like a bed. It’s going to sleep."

Blame It on The Good Stuff

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That was nearly two years and a thousand smiles ago.

Before the Divorce

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Me leaving is not the confirmation of all your fears. It is not. It's because of them.

Panic Pure

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He said, “It was only after I broke my neck and even like maybe a year later that I really started realizing that I had something to say.”

Misanthropy in an Age of Propaganda

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We have become// the sum of our appetites,/ the growth curve of our dominion.

Bully of the Town

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The woman was dancing, holding her bottle in the air as she slowly turned around, blocking the way to the exit. “I asked Miss Pansy Blossom if she would wing a reel,” she sang.

War Story : Alternate Duty

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They say that air traffic control is stressful work and I guess it is for some people. It did require a lot of concentration but that never bothered me much. I could keep the position, bearing and altitude of a couple of dozen aircraft in my head without

Galileo Worries About His Weight

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I, Seer of the Stars, Cartographer of the Cosmos, / measure my mass, and to whom do I owe this woe...

The Walk of Shame

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There it was One abandoned high heel shoe on the sidewalk Could have been Some kind of robbery Though Maybe it was just The beginning of the Walk of shame

Improvisation on a few lines by Mark Strand

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I am tripping on poetry. Purple ink drips from my eyes like ergot of rye.

what audible skill

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We all heard the audible skill you had, speaking smoothly of our lives, saying audibly what has driven us, who are huge with night, rising with its origin inside, and clear water running past, beyond, behind, and after us. To honor, to fear utteranc

fields of gold

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The son stood on the porch with his grip packed. "I'm off to mine me a fortune a gold, Daddy." "Boy, there's a fortune in gold right here," said the father, indicating the ripe wheat, glowing in early morning sun. The kid slumped. "Pop, you turn over a rock there,…