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Woody met Louise

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Times were tough. They met out on the right-of-way on Highway 61 heading south, each trying to hitch a ride to New Orleans where they might find work. Albert walked up to her lugging a saxophone in a scuffed up case. Mamie had old cloth suitcase. After handshake bona fides…

Contortionist

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a poem that unwrapped itself so casually I tucked it under my tongue, just to make sure

lepidoptera

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The little butterfly struggled against the wind. As little butterflies sometimes do. Tossed and turned around by relentless, uncaring gusts. The little butterfly would make progress, but then be pushed back. Tantalizing close to where she was heading. A…

Paper Thin

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She slipspaper thinshe ripspaper thin

The People

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living in the cross current lawn-care worlds don't give a whit about the so called deeper things. They don't have to scrape and you can't make them go to the river to see a sunset. They've got all their bonafide luxuries in a smart little…

For You, For Me

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...mark every buoy...

Woods

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We went to the woods to escape the failures that suck out your breath.

Sherando

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the Blue Ridge Mountains were entangled in their usual mist, but the early morning sky looked good

The lady makes a phone call.

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Of course it’s because she’s been drinking. Will she regret this? I don’t understand it but maybe it is something she has thought about for some time.

Tics

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The damp suspended/ in the air/ in a faint fog/ discourages coagulation.

Basic Principles of Physical Space

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a body lost in thought stays hopelessly lost in thought for as long as the latte lasts and the coffee shop stays open and the moms don’t gather with their baby carriages and the bums don’t bum overly much and the trust funders don’t lose too

Farm

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untilled, weedy, left to rest

The Virus

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It all felt so tentative, he thought. The whole set up. Running water. Electricity. A vast network of instant communication. Food in all the stores. It was the latter that gave him the most concern. He'd never really been hungry. Even in his poorest days, in his early…

The Talking Pillow

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Once, To a crash slumber on my bed, so late, I learned my pillow could communicate. As I lay my head of lead at the head of the bed, My talking pillow said, "Let me be the foundations for the constructions of your dreams...

(melody) floating inside an f

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Like the miserable sledgehammer I am, with no adjective in place to praise your moon, you are a hole well-worn into my favorite rock. I have only been able to reinvent this wronged language, in which being moved by…

Moon

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Watch the moon hang with methough miles and miles apart.Over sea and rock and railwaysforever in my heart.

Karmic Rip Cord

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For the kid in me who fell head over heels all the way down the stars, I wonder where you are now. Slack is harder to cut than you might think, I have learned. And assigning the middle finger its true purpose keeps me pretty bus

Summer Party Advice, From Father to Son

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“Madras shorts with those candy-ass Brooks Brothers shirts? If you wear stripes with plaids, you’ll look like a TV test pattern.”

The Joint is Out of Time: A Journal of the Plague Year, Day 108

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History in the unmaking.

Poem for January 1st, Feast of Christ's Circumcision

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Who has the child’s foreskin The mohel has removed? Who took the bleeding piece of flesh His human nature proved?

gravelortian part 19

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Uproot everything, a muddy hole when done

Vertigo

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Manicured to a T

Attraction In the Night

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Everybody was out on the deck and you could feel the deck swaying a little with the weight of all the people. There was loud music inside but it was too hot and nobody was dancing and they were all out on the deck. Lisa was out there and either she would not…

LYCEUM IN RUINS

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Weeds, schist, an Artesian well: élan in a heavenly forge. Sniffling goats, a mossy cairn. A portal divides the void. There is a human hand here below the crumbling parapet. The crotch of time A bridge between…

The Lament of Last Century's Escape Artists

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Here's to the new, trying ever so hard but not too hardto have an audience with their own personal God ontheir own super duper terms, wonder kids. Aren't theybeautiful, one of a kind cells, Ladies and Gentlemen? Thepaint job alone is worth the…

The Pit and Philip Guston

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Above the chasm of life burn two fires at either side of the framed painting that stands on the pink and red plain. And inside the painting itself an orange rain falls, accumulating in a sea of red. Rocks can’t stand their small shadows anymore

truth be known

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It could be there is a little me, somewhere, truth be known. One time in Laguna Beach I slept with a girl I met at this café, the Jolly Roger, I think, when we went back to my apartment and had unprotected sex. She said she was on the pill, but you neve

I've Seen Worse

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We met at a bar We didn’t get far We went to her car Then back to the bar I played guitar She was a rock star We met at a bar We didn’t get far

Cadillacs, Candy Bars and Boogers

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I won't ever forget the image of my father, behind the wheel of the Cadillac he so loved. Even as a ten year old, and more as an adult, I could never figure out why he loved that car as much as he did. I must explain that he was really my step father,…

The Museum of Inner Light

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On the way to The Museum of Inner Light Expect delays Expect bumps in the road Expect potholes and such Expect a murder of crows Rolling acorns over the rooftops But what I want to know is who Who eats a butterfly On the way to