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Picking Strawberries

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Underneath the fence she picked strawberriesThey were nickle sizedand some were red, some were green and some with a littleof both/in between They came up from the ground in little patchesand sweetness could be smelled on the windAs the cloud cover came…

The writer as pugilist - one more time

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I'm cool. You're not. Attitude is everything in life.

Big Blue

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Standing on the edge of the great shelf

Cambridge Vignettes (from the 1960s)

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I wanted none of her. But also that day I had just finished The Story of 0., and my mind was full of sadistic whimsies and the mood of anythingness that the book instills: the pound of fleshness. Anyway, I sneered at her and told her she bored me, and sat

An Exhibit of Nature

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Me undressing at the side of the road, broken like an unstrung Sappho, blood lust going full force. Sexual organs like living rooms, exposed before God and everyone. Lights came on across the reservoir, and I was down on all fours in the cinders and dust,

Saturday's Heart

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day dreams, at last! Timetables colliding, time tables alarm clocks Sunday stew

Left On The Scrap Heap

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Daylight and cold sensed as an abstract, a number in my mind. Air thin, polluted, lacking oxygen. But the Recyclers are at it again.

with and without absent lines

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Across the vacant vanished . . .

With Egypt in Crisis, Biden Seeks Access to Intelligence Briefings

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"The President feels that Joe's talents are best used elsewhere," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "We had a lot of take-out orders to keep straight with everybody working late."

falling, endlessly

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Clouds quickly appeared, in a perfect peach sky. Big, puffy clouds, moving together, formed the shape of a heart.

Short Blonde, Long Red

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Natalie blushed the vodka with an almost pointless twist of the fruit juice as I fought in my inside jacket pocket for my wallet...

The Pope of Rock 'n Roll

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Pope Leo XIII endorsed a cocaine-based drink and at the age of 90 sat in on “The Last Castrato, Complete Vatican Recordings.”

The Strangest Touch is Skin on Skin

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Whitman touched his share of skin and didn’t think of it as sin, and yet could bring himself to say “What is more or less than a touch?”

When Words Were First Born

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When words were first born They were like pure prayer I could see them in the sky And hear them whispering through your hair But now they’re like dreams That only sorrow owns We still need the sun We need to find Solace on the ground

Among the Young Aesthetes

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I found him on the internet the other day, His air laconic, the beard now ashen grey.

Night fear illusions

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Sometimes/in the middle of the night/awake under a panoply/as caustic as Doré/illustrating Dante

FRAT JERK (1960s)

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I threw my cards on the table. The jerk was playing his classical records again. I could hear that lousy music a mile away and he was the kind of kid that makes your skin crawl. But he had a CD sound system and it was up loud this time so that the house

Fire Skates

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Fire skates ascended out of the Skyscraper State _________________.

Alive

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Imagine this: One day you are walking down the street (wearing your protective mask, of course, the cloth one you bought the other day because you liked the color and design) when, by chance, you happen upon a strange sight.

The Dingos Took Your Baby? So What--the Coyotes Ate My Cat

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Coyotes are like the French Resistance in Casablanca. If you kill them, hundreds--thousands!--rise to take their place.

Ice Cutter

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McMurdo Sound. Amundsen. Penguins huddled in a mass...

Wrong Number

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He tilted his head at his monitor and exhaled “No.” Minutes later, he tilted his head the other way and more sharply exclaimed “No!” Then he began over the next quarter hour simply to stare at the data stream before him, which left him speechless.

The Mid-Life Suburban Strip-Tease Crisis

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Once we’d mellowed from the wine, our little group of friends grew reflective. We started talking about our “bucket lists”–how we were going to spend the remainder of our years before we lapsed into senility.

We measure all this distance in Longing

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“I’ve decided to make some money by filming some of it, making a film and titling it The Nascar 500. It’s a great money maker and here's the gimmick: instead of the usual porn soundtrack it would be the sounds of stock cars racing around the track.

The Cats of Spring

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If you’re a mouse with suicidal tendencies My cats can help you to meet your endency.

Once the Excrement Encounters the Oscillating Rotary Air Circulator

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The film canister—with Camembert's thumb in it—was positively gouging her thighs now. When would they give up for the day and leave?

The Maximum Security Book Group

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"So what about this week's selection?" I ask cheerfully. "What did everybody think?" "I liked it!" says Liz. She always does--her tastes aren't very discriminating.

Ghostwriters!

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(Sung to the melody of "Ghostbusters")When your prose is weakMetaphors clichésWho you gonna callGhostwriters!Characters they speakNot much to sayWho you gonna callGhostwriters!I ain't ‘fraid of no rejectionI ain't ‘fraid of no rejectionLyin' in your bedImagination soarsWho…

The Guidance Counselor

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He’d see them for fifteen minutes at a time, juniors and seniors, all day long. On their way out of the little town he’d come back to.

Automatically Writ between Meals

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The misspent effort reposed spontaneously, a prank worth ending with the dog letter: “GrrrrrrrR!”