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The Secondhand Life of Uncle Ray

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Between chapters, he trained my dog, Buster. He taught him to fetch bottle caps, roll over for no reason, and to play dead whenever someone raised their voice

Breath and Shadow

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I do not like it when the dead look back at me.

Dylan to Return to Roots for Golden Years

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When informed that the returning celebrity is not Gary Puckett but Bob Dylan, the world-renowned singer-songwriter, Sklarski draws a blank. “Never heard of him,” he says as he takes off in his pick-up truck.

Boston Artists Fight Gentrification, One SUV at a Time

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"I'm dreading it," says Kati Rivers, a visual artist who has lived in the Fort Point Channel district. "A bunch of fat suburbanites driving up rents and crowding creative people out of the little cafes and bistros."

Long Walks On the Beach: Song

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I don’t like long walks on the beach Or sand between my toes Jellyfish stinging my butt Saltwater up my nose I don’t like long lingering glances But I sure like fancy pantses And yes, a bum without a bottle Is like a car without a throttl

Filling up

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As I filled up today casually watching what I took to be the start of a fight on pump three, I never thought that this nearly full tank would be taking me to catch you before you leave.So don't worry, because I know you do, I've got more than enough, a nearly full tank, to…

Chicken Sexers Set to Go For Gold in London

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Green Ridge, Missouri features a horseshoe pit on the town square and not one but two full-time village idiots.

Still Pretty

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I saw this woman on a date at Denny’s Friday night With her 8-year-old son No ring, vacant stare Still pretty But wolfing down A stack of pancakes, Looking around the restaurant Occasionally At a party of kids From some church Wh

Among the Missing: Family and War

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As Sebald says, I grew up in the shadow of war....

a prayer for lambs

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unsteady, they try to rise

Mr. Softee is Driving Me Crazy

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It is ten days before the 2024 election.So I am right now alternating between biting my cuticles and sipping a gin martini.I'm reading Virginia Woolf out in the backyard.The neighbor is having roof shingles replaced.Banging. Banging...BANGING!It is 3:34…

Dear Credit Card Thief

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Dear Credit Card Thief, I think of you—hunched, green cast, a zombie of the ephemeral, greedily parsing code, stealth hands like a lover's over my plastic doppelgänger, wafer of identity, your key to the internet of things, to me. Did you have a pleasant…

Hauntings

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What shall stain the page with metaphorical wisdom? Words fell short of intention, displaying only a faux interpretation of ultimate meaning. They drifted in and out, and he struggled to coerce their conformity to…

your notorious youth

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By what fictitious rib were you ever pulled out of your notorious youth, ever? Out of the early flower of your flesh, once on fire like a little vibrant reed with pure air, like a flute with wind getting up inside it? But already there’s a lon

A Poem Written About You Because I Missed You

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what i will always remember of you is of that singular sunday / when a black lock of hair brushed against your cheek

Space Pop #1

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The Starship Emphasis was not having a good day, as two of their crew members had already died of dysentery because someone shat in the water again.

But the Sun Also Sets

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I’ve lost interest in the limelight since I’ve come to understand that I’m not meant to be in it. We walk past the Porker Palace and see crowds of the rich with piles of pig in their hands, stacks of pork piled up on their plates as they swirl amo

no more than a scent

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Art evades me persistently.Tonight is no exception.Outside, the bitter wind blows:suddenly, an oddity comes to minda memory, a glance. A mid summer nightheavy and taintedunder the neon lights.A foolish smile invites me income through the threshold of sinshe appears to…

I'm Despondent, Yes...

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Do you remember who Laura S was? She was the one who tore out Shel’s heart. (It so happened that she was one of Lynda’s closest friends, and knew all her secrets.) Shel started seeing a shrink after Laura dumped him, and he would go around s

Pharmaceutical Funnies

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Dracula enters the pharmacy looking sad but hopeful. The pharmacist pulls a sonnet out of his thumb and hands it to him. This is a novel by Bugs Bunny. Each page is a…

Apocalypse Haiku

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Burying the dead

Conference of the Birds

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If in the course of a discussion of improvements someone says: “I have no idea” in a particular way at a particular moment, “I have no idea” will migrate and soon lots of people will find themselves saying “I have no idea” again and again without knowing

Hotel Venice and the Bohemian Blue

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“Time to check out,” I tell myself, looking at sailboats and surfers from the open window of my hotel room. I inhale minty incense and gaze down on a dark-skinned woman in a sombrero beneath towering palm trees. Laid out before her on a folding table ar

From 'Upwards, into the White Eye Rising (Section 3)'

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A fractured world we haunt: the streets, the schoolyards- Across the floodlit roads, where we shared drunk adonics: No marbled halls but towers that stole the stars' eyes- Flat-roofed serrations against…

our measured treads

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—and the god presiding over all / a four-faced, double-Janused clock / its equal seconds clickt away / ticking us our steps and breaths . . .

with and without absent lines

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Across the vacant vanished . . .

Map of the World to Come

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The middle finger talks of many things How I killed the moon But still drank the moonshine And how getting over her took Some bleeding from the soul Maybe it’s the Inner Face of Outer Space That worries me the most But what about the Fro

Mental Energy

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‎" You know, the cure is not worse than the disease" Leon said to his therapist for the fifth time.

A Paris

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Gravity

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It's only been about three minutes. We're moving a bit faster now and many of those around me have already been taken out by the debris. One guy had his head smashed in by a rogue swing set that came out of nowhere. I envy his demise, at least a little…