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Letter to a Lost Friend

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I keep attempting to start a correspondence with people / but they end up not being interested in me, / either that or I scare them away / because I usually begin with: / “Well, my favorite philosopher is Hegel..."

As Poetry Month Ends, Prosaic Types Get Their Turn

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“I’m going,” O’Bannon-Krim says with exasperation as she throws trinkets such as Dylan Thomas beer coozies and Edna St. Vincent Millay hair scrunchies into a cardboard box.

The French Horn Behind Me

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And right there beside me That single wobbling Snail-like trail of my heavy French Horn case

gravelortian part 1

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our house gives him a cold again

A Fib

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We want our lives even-cut, …

They Don't Get to Say Everything

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The world hasn't ended. Your part in it is still ongoing. The going on world hasn't winked out. Every possibility is still out there. In there, out there, it doesn't matter where you are. The here and now claims you for its only tribe. They only want someone to tell them…

Real As Your Underwear

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when unicorns took to flight / the poles shifted / the world flooded / and Pangaea busted open like calloused palm

Five Million Yen: Chapter 68

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Ben’s tactic for diverting Monique’s thoughts from the encounter with Zoë and the horrific episode in his dressing room was to dance, dance, dance.

1. The Knife (or, Ignorance is Bliss)

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He showed me the knife, said it was his best friend. This knife is older than you, he said. Here, run your finger along its blade. Like this. He showed me how to do it.

Rocket

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The Chicago to Denver fast train clocked 90 MPH plus, but braked hard on the long curve through town, sparks ringing flanged wheels.

Saturdays with Satan: Desperately Seeking Evil

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“Grow some fucking balls, Satan!”Did I just say that? To the prince of darkness?Yes. Yes, I did. Let me back up.*It was around 10:30 Saturday morning when the phone rang. I recognized the caller id.“Hi, Satan,” I said as I picked it…

Inversions of Pound: Canto I

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these tender girls tears recent / with stained souls, brides of dead, / cadaverous Erebus; unguarded ladder / long the down going…came Anticlea then

Down on the Street

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dirty-pretty

Heads or Tails

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The man next door came over with a pitchfork.

Bad Boys

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I don’t remember much about kindergarten.... The teacher’s name was Mrs. Halverson. She was nice.

The Baby Pool

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I want to fly like a snail. Yes, snails fly in their minds, so does the brain of the ocean. Does a man want to drown in the ersatz of desire? You must understand me. You and I swam together. They call it escape velocity.

Brown Plastic Bag.

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[ADVERTISEMENT: If you look for it, Google search, for 'html special characters,' the UT Austin page will come up, and you can just Cut & Paste 'em. Fuck the code!]

George Burnett's Secret

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He roared back at her, shaking his empty gun in his right hand, waving his left hand in the air. “I am George Burnett, esquire, late of Balliol College, Oxford! I am a hunter, a killer of pigs! I do not fear you, bear; take the pig and be content!”

A Manual for Readers

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The story will starve. It will crawl up your throat to get the cracker.

Blood By Pines

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But all that they found at the top was bloody red spatters on pure white snowflakes. And beyond that footprints that got smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely into the spicy green pines.

Pick Me

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Strike me down hard, bolt of pure blue, laser focus square, blast of hydrogen nuclear, knock me on the keister, blind me down, oh Lordy Lord Lord.

Being Old is No Place for Sissies

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My natural blonde hair is no longer sultry. Instead of a Dietrich look, I now assume a dead on impression of Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" some mornings.

#53 Cut Up

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I loved her when she first came calling in the sodden dawn of spring. She was a strange and dangerous flower. Together we drank up all the money. The days staggered away like drunks lurching down a flophouse hall.

Calypso

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For here in the vortex are no other laws, Than separate towards you I and skirting stone- To wards where wavelets purr against their pause A moment more, to yawn to omicron… Inside the seashell orchard's whirl-quick floor- Come all at once to me or…

Happy National Hairball Awareness Day

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Something’s not right. Okie, the elder cat, seems–distrait. Taciturn. Phlegmatic. And those are just leftover vocab words from my son’s senior English class.

I Want You

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to have something, but I don't think you need anything from me. There are poems that belong in your hair and no one else's. They should be like stars that only appear every one thousand years or so, then can only be seen when you are…

Lessons in Insomnia

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It’ll all make sense when you're sitting on an éclair chaise longue by the morning pool of coffee.

500 Words or Less

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A brief commentary on the uselessness of endings.

The balloon of you

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and the mass exceeds the buoyancy/ and gravity pulls you back,

The 27 Club

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Jimi, Jim, and Janis Kurt and Amy too They died and gone to heaven And fit inside a shoe Room 114’s where they lie Their eyes wide open