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Where Do You Get Your Poetic Inspiration?

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The only magazine Auden subscribed to was Scientific American, a publication I had previously scorned as the trade journal of pre-med students and Nobel Prize winners.

Like the Goats

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Featherweight

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As the torrent hit her, she felt her body slipping, sinking, and suddenly she didn’t know where the floor was in relation to her feet.

I heard you were a drinker

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Once we got to my house, Lynda had everything drinkable in the house open and in everybody's hands before I knew it. She tossed down a bottle of my father's beer, then started on a bottle of whiskey that was open. She took a straight mouthful and offe

Illumination,with grace

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Jerry peered out into the dark landscape with no fear left.

Ice Cream

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"Great jog today," he said, "But the entire length of the run I'm thinking about ice cream and how good that is going to feel."

The Transportation of Hens

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Sixteen hundred hens / suffocated / during the collection

The Depth of the Dust

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Can anyone remember what the Great American dream was?

Ten For The Devil

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Horses pulled carts loaded with valuables at backbreaking speed. King Street was one of the steepest in the city making the steeds’ task most difficult in deed. Their chest covered in foam and their eyes wild with fear. Their clattering hoofs gripped

my own image breaking and falling

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What went racing through my mind as Lynda was telling me about the farmer she was seeing out in Western Illinois with his 12 inch dick? She was only 5’2”. “It’s so big I can barely get it all in me,” she said, with her mouth part way open. That old look

Still

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I wanted only to be still, to become a rustle for a moment of papery fall leaves sighing past one another on their way to the funeral pyre in the front lawn, sweetly fragrant with the scent of death and inevitable decline, fearless in their annihilation, incandescent…

Islands

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Off of the northeastern coastline there was a series of islands that won bread and butter through fishing. We walked off the ferry and through various docks while noticing vessels come in slowly boasting sides protected by worn plastic fenders on ropes affixed to…

Heartbreaker

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He thought life was easy until he met you.With your vicious ways, your swirling hair and your radiant smile.All a man could want, all he could desire.And just that touch of strangeTo sway his mind like a siren sways a ship.But you refused, his offer didn't lureHis heart was…

Cocktail Hour

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The bullet went past his right ear and a little star appeared, twinkling in the mirror, a small hole in its middle, before the boom of the shot filled up the bar. He put his straight up Grey Goose martini down on the bar hard enough so th

Intervention

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I got a call from Fiona last night. She asked that I come down this evening, to meet at Penny's place. "It's an Intervention, Al," she said, which told me everything I needed to know about what the meeting would be about.

Bat (n.)

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Flying mammal with thin membrane forelimb adaptive wings. Amazing number of species from fruit-eating to insectivores. All capable of landing in your hair at night.

The Train

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On the train, with a bag full of books, All by the same person. That's what writing is. With each shudder bump my Head lags behind, and my eyes follow While the wandering shaky straight line Moves…

Sparrow

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I don't care what my reincarnated self thinks about today. I'm already aware that everything stinks in the end. Well. It's supposed to. But all things must seek travel while they can. Dance while they can. Dream while they can. Laugh while they can.…

gravelortian part 20

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Baby who battles with devils

how to find the gold-capped ocean

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I didn’t know how to find the gold-capped ocean. How was I supposed to know where it was? I only knew you did not want or expect me to follow you there, where the orifice to everything withers, including my heart. Openings from the rivers drying in the

Reciting Verse on the Toilet

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He is the kind of boy that is so handsome / you already expect there is something wrong with him

Deus Ex Mama

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Charlie is hollering about Rex again. Every dinosaur right now is Rex. Also Rex: every animal with thick-looking skin--elephants, crocodiles. (Yesterday, he pointed to an ant and told me, "Buggy Rex.")

Deliverance

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Bleeding quietly

Texturality

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A.The poem of rational progression is dulling.Make the leap. Go beyond juxtaposition to collision.We like poetry that does double duty, triple duty, quadruple duty. We like poetry that mixes the grit, poetry that has the texture of complexity.Reason asserts an…

Peace and Love from the Middle of Nowhere

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Miles from anywhere that mattered, he stood by the side of the road staring at the two-lane highway that outlined the edge of suburbia like a cement fence. Steam rose from the hood of his car as he sat on the ground and waited for the other shoe to drop.

Executing the Trade

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Prospero's in his cell and I'm in mine. He drowns his books, I'm drowning in mine. He exercises his power–I'm powerless to exercise.

Quantum Mechanics

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It seems a little solipsistic/ but may indeed be evidence of God// given its mystery and caprice.

give me a real moment with a living god and I'll go all the way

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I remember, when I was selling real estate, how you could always tell when there'd been a divorce. One room was conspicuously left emptied of its contents, and these rooms were never swept or tidied. Instead they were left just as they were when the par

Everyone... out

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The room is cold, like an icy bath. Enough to make Earl's testicles shrivel up in fear. He could hear the angry children outside act out a primeval play, where it sounded like bones were being slammed into rocks with clumsy small hands. The edge of the table…

Now We're Getting Somewhere

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Woman bites into pearl, finds baby oyster. Woman bites baby oyster, finds baby pearl. Woman blows on baby pearl, it begins to grow. Woman gets excited. Now we’re getting somewhere, she says.