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Dragonfly

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You surprised me then, / climbing onto my finger: / climbing into my heart. / Your long, cobalt body felt weightless on my hand.

No One Is Listening

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Bum on a Parisian stoop begging with his big Jackson Pollack bare head in the rain The water running in streaks all over his brain reminding him of a painting he once thought of Man standing outside a bar talking to his own reflection

Perquampi

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If anyone should wonder whether a purveyor of weekly ghost tales on television ("A World Beyond", which I host, was rated number six in fall of '55), might come to feel undone by a case of extradimensional foulness, they shall herein find their answer.

Why do I put up with this woman?

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She doesn't even know who wears the Adam's apple in this house.

Breaking Eyes

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-No, just drugged, I remind myself. The hallucinations are more real, more accurate than before. While the dreams get more nightmarish, the hallucinations get more nostalgic. I prefer the nightmares. No one knows if this treatment will work, but what bett

Glass

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Her bulldozer of a husband died five years ago.

Legend

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My half-brother Salvy laughs each time we meet here at the hospital to visit our father Phil, who has lung cancer. He laughs because Phil married my mother, not his. He laughs at my job in Valhalla, the final resting place for those who lose at the…

Peace-keeping (Valentine's Day Massacre Theme)

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So they told him he better get ready to join the army because that’s where it was at, for him. After all, not everybody could split coconuts with their hands.

The Goodbye Meets the Hello at the Station

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"You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them out flat."--Renoir "Dreaming is free."--Blondie "I can't vouch for my ability to avoid dullness..the odd position in which poets find themselves explains their often-sentimental identification with the…

Whites in Hot Water

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To his astonishment, he discovered Maggie curled up inside the Maytag dryer, head down, shoulders hunched over.

The Party

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My wife tells me I should marry Pam. “She would be good for you,” she says.

One Cent Baby

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Yesterday, I ripped off Dollar General. Today my baby died. Tomorrow I will file a lawsuit. After all, someone has to pay.

Ants

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I don't know what happened to all the men. Used to wonder if they killed them all.

Drinking an Orange Julius While Listening to Pink Floyd

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I was strapped for cache

Smiles are for Suckers

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I walked her home. She lived eight blocks in the opposite direction of me, but it made her smile —I made her smile.

Frozen Chicken

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One of the pieces, I noticed, had the real shape of a miniature chicken, its mohawk, pin legs, and small definition of wing. “Look at that,” I said to my friend. And just then, the wing twitched.

From the Kitchen of my Childhood

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An ice block heart rushed home to the beat of its melt.

The most tender thing

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Somehow, I have your body, but you’ve gone missing.

The Thing on the Stair

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Autumn brings It

FENG THE CHEF REALIZES CHINA’S NOT BUYING SALMON FROM NORWAY

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China refuses them politely, politely in that Communist way of saying without saying.

Strobe Genre, Utah!

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Co-polar order spectrum; strobe genre (the disco light of the 70s illumining and eclipsing fiction-non-fiction-non in one "article"); UTAH! a jump from forehead-down to standing fast, a cheer, for genre studies.

Margaret’s Mermaid

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When she was eleven, Margaret still believed in mermaids. She would fasten the neon diving rings that her mother gave her to her ankles and swim around in the pool for hours. By the end of the afternoon, with chlorine-swollen skin she would wince as she…

Evil Humors

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I blame it all on evil humors. Something's leaking.

The Other Side

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One Dead in Violent Crash

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Death came to my street, but I did not invite him.

How Poets Die

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Mark Strandover decadesa steady diet of dictionenlarged his heartone day it just burstRobert Frosta crazy ideathat he couldbuild a wallwithout mortar tookpossession of his mindhe piled stoneon stone higherand higher untilthey toppled overcrushing him beneath Wilfred…

The '08 Campaign And the Crash

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Here's the '08 presidential campaign in a nutshell: The Dems couldn't dredge up a white guy that even the dead in Chicago would vote for, so they went with Obama. Meanwhile, the GOP couldn't dig Reagan up try as they might,…

Water for Old Bet

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Why, I tell you, one run through that song, I’m always about to find my way out. But if this happens just two more times now, I tell you, I am going to go out and start something. You can’t treat a man like this. Even if he is smaller, like me. Why, I

Break Time in the Army Corps of Engineers Mascot Lounge

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The Army Corps of Engineers spent $92,000 in federal stimulus money on costumes for mascots such as Bobber the Water Safety Dog.

Hearts in Exurbia

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Silent Murf was largely toothless, and the gaze from his eyes diverged in opposing directions; his skinny arms were a fancywork of jailhouse tattoos and what appeared to be scabbed-over claw marks.