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Suspenders

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As soon as I got the suspenders adjusted I felt different. I felt like Wilfred Brimley.

Left to Leaves

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Golden yellows and oranges and reds that could have been scratching their toes now just tear the skin around her Achilles' heel.

Tonight's Special

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I didn't arrive at the Wicked Spoon every night in the same mood. Some nights I would arrive under the spell of a generous emptiness, what I like to call the euphoria of futility. Not exactly a state of bliss, but a dazed detachment in which everything is so pointlessly…

High Court Hears Arguments in Right-to-Watch-World Series Case

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The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments on a legal issue that tears the nation apart every October: Does the Constitution protect the right of male fans to watch the fall classic even if they have no rooting interest in either team involved?

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...

two love tankas

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December scent rains coming down sodden leaves underfoot

We're Pieces of God & We've Found Each Other

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The gates going up and down like gigantic windshield wipers to let the existent boxcars pass. We went across these real bumpy railroad tracks into a town so small there wasn’t enough room for the car, so we got out and went ahe

Him

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Ever since he left, I have been alone with the tree. We had planted it together. A green twig in the middle of the garden and a knotty stick, running around. Fingers and branches have grown. Very fast. Too fast. When he left, I sat in the shade. There I started writing, and…

On Discerning That a Woman Had a Nose Job Before He Met Her

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The new nose-- I won’t ask how much it cost, but something’s been lost.

Pink Tights, Tu-Tus and Schmaltzy Music

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And then I get a call from a different kind of bar They say you’re drunk on Cosmos and actin’ quite bizarre.

I Found Myself in Waters

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Unready for the world, we pawned ourselves for a longer lease on youth.

Your Honky-Tonk Heart

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I found you at Darrell’s, the bar down the street. A place where loose women and tight men might meet.

there was a shameful attempt to steal fire and now the vultures always come for my livers and my God I Am sorry

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The Divine and merciful Understanding Calls out to me But let me not speak its name. You are an unworthy hearer And I am a secret-keeper, cunning With keen thoughts and prayers of swift Justice Single is our thought and act And when we pray we know not what it…

Prairie Schooner

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The town is a wheel-less prairie schooner aground in a vast field of static

The Endless Dream of Humanity

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Pigeons are really the souls of what were once beggars in the endless squares of Paris, Venice, or Jerusalem. They are born with the soul of a beggar attached to them. It is stuck beneath their wings. They cannot fly without it, and they ar

I Can Sacrifice My Self

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The sacrificial tendency is a real ugly one A pound of flesh, because it grows back But gnarled and scarred For you, So you may smile or cry Whatever you need How about an ounce of truth? How about I make a maze And you walk through…

The Frogman

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http://www.punchnels.com/fiction/the-frogman/

I'm Going Either Way

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Will you join me kneeling in a Homegoods parking lot

Slightly Down And Off To The Left

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It was just her way. Slightly down and off to the left. Mom never looked anyone in the eye.

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.”

Fugue State on the Waterway

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I am so lost in thought as I ride out of the woods that I forget which way I ought to turn, left or right; this can’t be good.

The Here Here Here Lately

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electron metastasis

Gaze

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to think of him looking at me / for he to be I and I to be he / it is almost unbearable / to occupy two bodies at once—

Cosmicatholiconfession

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My sister walked in the room while I read Ginsberg / reciting the lines to Jaweh & Allah Battle to myself /sweating in the heat contour of my ugly body on the bed / the room the stench of rottenhumanasscracksemen

consolations from Cold Mountain

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not otherwise employed, writing verse,/ line by tenuous line the substance of pulse./ ―but no one collects unemployed verse:/ self-lacerations must yield blood, not ink.

Just Another Plebian — Err, Philistine!

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I hate your guts.

The Sound Of Zippers In Context

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There is, between us, a flickering lantern. We're not tired yet but the bugs are converging and hitting the side of the tent. The little ones, the mosquitoes, the gnats, the noseeums, they're finding their way in in spite of the zipped up mosquito nettin

Go Ahead, Be the Opposite of Love

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"Living is easy with eyes closed/misunderstanding all you see.'--John Lennon That's an ache that's always inside me. How you'd rathertreat people as if they don't matteras much as some nice sounding words in a song. Their voicesas less than an annoying wind? Because…

The Guru

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He was journeying toward understanding of a higher truth so long lost.

Intermezzo

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Outside, Santa Claus has put on cat eye sunglasses and lights a cigarette.