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Polite Grafitti

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He was entirely guilty of what he had done and wanted that to be acknowledged and understood by the arresting officer.

Dear Joe,

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Walk alone at night, quietly. Pause for eye contact with raccoons and night cats, your drunk self, and lights in the graveyard. Don't apologize for it in the morning. Instead of the shame you feel for one time acting selfishly and chasing a future, say…

For Carol: Life Bursts Out

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Life was small. It was tiny even, so tiny it was hard to see it sometimes. Life curled up to make itself even smaller, to fit into the kinds of holes that insects crawl into to get away from bigger insects. Life was sad. Life didn't want to be an insect.

Breath

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And here you are. Before your time. Behind the glass.

Retreat

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We are in search of free hor d’oeuvres, me and Jane – Jane from H.R., Jane who is exactly as plain as her name implies, Jane, who, for now anyway, for this company retreat, is my kindred spirit in broke-ass hangover land.

Hotel Khadijah

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"A prostitute of the Hotel Khadijah in Rahab fell in love with my father...."

Colin Powell's UN Clown Show

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Not that Dick Cheney gave one rusty rat's ass about what the UN might want. Fuck those poop countries!

Wild Strawberries of Mars

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might leave NYC or Earth

Degree Zero, My Love

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So we waited for it to get dark. I smelled her there beside me against the tree, and fell asleep and dreamed of an unbombed stone church whose steeple was so high it pierced the clouds. It's time, came a voice from one of the back pews. “It's…

The Wreck of Me

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“You’re a hard habit to break,” I said. My tongue was flaring. Flirting with nurses was my father’s thing.

We Must Be Carefully Taut

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In the dread / of night, navigate by the sliver moon

Contentment

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On the bed he tickled her until she was crying with laughter. And then the tickles became caresses, the fingers, lips.

HUNGRY

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Quiet. You sit quiet as a mouse in the corner. Push a little doll around and hum la-la-la so they forget you’re there while they have the cocktail hour. That’s how you find out they’re killing Grandma.

Scrabbled Sensitivities

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It was fun, until he started winning every time.

Old Church Slavonic

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Because it seems never to be beginning, always picking up in the middle with it’s long resonant tones, which themselves begin as if they’ve always been. Maybe that’s why we love old, sacred music. And by we I, of course, mean my two-year-old Charlie and m

Licking around the rim

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Sure, it was a hot day, but the driver was in the middle of a driving lesson!

Grace for Mao

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I greatly enjoyed imagining each wonton was one of my personal enemies and then biting it in half and pretending I could hear it screaming piteously as I chuckled and dragged out the chewing.

Three Poems, One for Each Eye

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1. a bone to pick"It seems to be accepted nowadays more than ever that killing,individual and mass killing,is the order of the day;it is accepted."--Henry MillerWhy can't you leave well enough alone just long enough for it to make its own miraculous escape…

The several stages of grief

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Robert was not in any sort of metaphysical or spiritual sense seeing himself, as in the scales falling from his eyes and seeing himself as he was. He was a long way from that kind of insight. He was literally seeing another himself.

17 Days

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Sometimes, under the gauze and yellow salves, I glimpse you...

Men Are Beasts

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Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"

Brief Studies of Doomed Females

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She is unsure if it will work, despite all her reading of physics and flying carpets and propeller planes. The practicalities of aerodynamics in application remain to be tested.

London Fog

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I stumbled out of the Ten Bells pub, still a bit tipsy from the absinthe, but had a clear vision of what I wanted to have happen this night. The air was cold on my rosy cheeks, so I shielded my face…

One Poem, Eight Rejections

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Do you suppose you could make your female protagonist a salamander rather than a human?

Moses Reborn

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Influenza Jones knew she was Moses. Reborn, of course, because the real Moses had been dead for longer than Influenza could remember. It didn’t matter that she was a woman and Moses was a man, she knew what her body say and her body say she be Moses. Sh

The Ballad Of Sideshow Sam & The Heckler

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"You know what a hobo is, my young friend? Or a tramp? Or a bum? Well, I'll tell ya, 'cuz you'll meet all of 'em in yer life and it's a good thing to know since they are each one of 'em different and the difference is this. Bums sit around and loaf. T

Journey to Malta, from the novel "Grok"

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The journey to Malta would take almost four days. Both men, with knapsacks and sleeping bags on their backs, stepped eagerly onto the train in Zürich. A whistle blew and they were off. In his knapsack, Grok had brought pictures of his family

A sense that something has happened

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hunting after dark,/ in the quiet they seemed to appear/ with every new poem I read, each new workshop, some hunting carried on/ by both animals.

Steady Keel

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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…

Four Noble Lies

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When Carlotta left me, I cried / into my soup. I shriveled into / harsh mathematics.