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how to live on coffee and prayers

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The coffee filter rustles like the Pages of your notebook, which Only tires you even more. Make your drink strong to Make up for the lack of resolve In your shoulders, and Your weak promises. The familiar sound of percolation And you reach the…

Dead Bird Uncovered by Spring

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Left by a melting snowbank: Cup lids, pine needles, a cairn of dog shit, And the grey soggy shape Of an eyeless winter bird. His breast is an old accordion Gone to rot in an old…

BORDER JUSTICE

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CHAPTER ONE About nine-thirty P.M. on Friday night, Mary Fowler pushed her grocery cart through the double sliding glass doors. It was three weeks before Christmas. The sun had set and the temperature had begun to cool rapidly in…

Digging In The Darkness

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I dig with no light to guide the aim of my shovel but the stars peeking through the trees which are fuller now then when you went away.

Words

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often visit me in my room, so quietly, so suddenly, buzzing my head with wonderful, possible sentences. Sometimes I find they've been there radiating all along, children ready to burst out in a sneaky fit of laughter if I move just slightly…

Neatly Creased Newspapers

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A thin line separated her lips, like something sketched with a pencil.

Snakes

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“Gaudy talking, ordination, high finance and politicking won’t save you. Moshaka zumbrala!” screamed Pastor Cleon Wrunk.

Morning Night (2,3,4)

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Monday MorningI wake slowly. My breath still escapes me. He's asleep on the sofa, legs hanging, hand hanging, lips hanging, a river of saliva somewhere. He tries to be the one that's okay when I'm not, but really he's just as bloody as I am. I wait til he starts to…

You Can Look Up Everything on Reality TV

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Caution, the beer on the shore is lapping at the foam of sanity, and the wind in the trees is speaking thy previous names. Caution, a rise in the ocean will soak your dress above your knees, causing infinite tears, infinite hopes

Identity

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We’re forty-three.

I HEART INTERNET

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What can I say about the Internet It's one of the best inventions since the TV set It's a place you can do research and shop A place where you can sell everything from shoes to stock You can go to rooms and chat And meet some nice people or some that seem…

The Judge's Wife Part 7

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—A little blood puts some life into the work, said the old artisan smiling.

I Kissed a Shirelle

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What do you do when a Shirelle asks you if you’re in the mood to dance?

Payments

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What it was for, didn’t matter. When Susan walked into Fred’s house every few weeks and start talking, he’d just nod and say, “Sure, I know how tough it is out there, baby.” Then they’d drink some wine and put on some music, and he’d give her a little mon

Industrial Revelation

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I tell my students about a timewhen seniority was told by the number of fingers on a worker's hands No weekends or overtime, children — bare toes dangling — twelve hours on the line I look for…

For the Record

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As being ebbs it deepens. The mind grows truant. We inhabit a permanent Saturday.

Saturday Matinee, Circa 1961

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We are impressed and cheer them on/ in their struggle against the wild/ and unkempt ravages of nature

Politicouscous II

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In which era was it not a scary world?/ Last century, the perils were both red and yellow/ after Jerry was undone. Now, they’re brown/ and cross, without respect, the Rio Grande

I Must Want it. No, I Must Need It.

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She rubs her head into mine...

No Dogs! No Dogs Allowed!

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the impression I had gotten of him was that he was fifty percent yuppie and fifty percent drug dealer from Marin.

Now I'm not a virgin anymore

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On my second trip home from the University of Illinois down state in Urbana, it was during our break between semesters, I remember it was a particularly freezing cold and miserable January (1963.) I had a date with Lynda.

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…

THE PERFECT KIND OF HAPPY

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I think of particles exploding, coming back together like some physics experiment I don’t know the name for. “Large Hadron Collider,” you say. But that’s not what I mean.

All God's Children

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Momma wakes us up early while Daddy's still asleep, pulls out white poster boards, markers from the closet, and together, we draw babies...

Final Fantasy

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That’s where her reputation Wild Cat came from.

Excelsior - A poem in 9 parts (Post 5 of 5)

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VIII. Towards Affinities, Beyond My love, since I saw you last, since before we reached the chamber, I cannot count the quasars which have passed, but there still gleams Time, Like a memory of a lost event unwitnessed, and this illusion Carried…

Wild turkey chase

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“Don’t ever call me that name, formal or informal, okay? Forget you heard it.”

Optimum Condition

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I have hate and it is black not midnight, crisp fresh clear. Unadulterated. It is dirty, poor, gritty solid rough like unripe stone fruit. A peach, mealy and dry. The killing, effete, endures. Silent, my repugnance, sick, eats…

Weather

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I liked E first because she knew all the words to "Alice's Restaurant." Everybody knows "American Pie," but "Alice's," that's impressive. We used to cut class in high school and drive around listening to it, and I'd try to pretend I knew the words, but I never did, so…

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,…