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Off the Wall

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[...] in the living room above the fire, someone had gouged a letter A on the wall.

Points of Light on A Pearl Line 1

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Directions: Match the stanza to the Beat icon: A. William S. Burroughs B. Peter Orlovsky C. Jack Kerouac D. Carl Solomon E. Allen Ginsberg F. Neal Cassidy

Knot Eye

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The diagnosis was peculiar, the doctors agreed, / but so was the condition

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?”

Sweet Tooth

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There was a hole in my tooth. It wouldn't let anything go.

Dear A. Lien

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Time is a form of sandwich. Each component of the sandwich is nestled between night and day, which enclose it like slices of bread. There are minutes, hours, and seconds. Seconds are tiny, like sesame seeds. Minutes are a little larger. Think of them as p

You Were a Hard Act To Follow

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This wasn’t my first time, ever, but it was ours. This wasn’t the life of a pigeon after sex, you know, sucking some soda pop off the pavement. This was real. This was me up there on your ceiling! And I’m not so fond of lightning either. If you thou

Darkroom Tech

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Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.

God

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I realize that to say, "I do not believe in God" is footsteps away from "I do not rely on God" and "God left me."

A Lapse in Concentration

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[...] A crimson post-it note/ illustrates the squiggle of a resting pulse wavering/ near the broken pencil leads and whorls of/soft wood which may be classed as evidence.

Heavy Weather

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The blue of the sky pierced her heart. She patted her lips with her tongue and turned to him. “We have to talk.”

Why Don't You Just Take Off Your Top

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You were there at the beginning almost, when I wanted to write about the dead spider I smashed on my bedroom wall, comparing it to the blue/grey smoke of the blown-off fireworks drifting overhead.

Rubble

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My mind fabricated the smell of gunpowder as I pushed down.

Bag

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No chance for Hallo, we sank into an unlit station doorway and he fumbled through my shorts.

Girlfriends

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—That was harsh, said Jen as the bathroom door slammed behind Melanie. —Mel's my best friend, not yours. She needed to know that shade of blue doesn't go with olive skin. —Viv, you said she looked like a whore. —That's how our friendship…

The Lobbyist

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I looked down at Earth and imagined this porn star who’d asked for my help.

Maybe I Was Better At Shaving My Legs Than I Was At Spreading My Wings

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That new rain smell in your backyard, specifically I remember that, with you. And lying in the grass in a park with you on the 4th of July, maybe in Lombard, watching the blue/grey smoke of the fireworks drifting overhead after they went off, and the sm

The Strange Ones

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In the morning, I lay on my side and ran a finger down the girl’s back, lightly tracing her spine. I remarked on the whiteness of her skin.

Love apathy

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I smell it, it smells/Of giggles and leg shaking

Particle (7)

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By the time he says “I am tired of the smell of pig shit and death” you’ve already lost interest

After He Stays

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When the sex that is new and promising in its awkward moments is over, you turn to him. You expect that he’s figuring out a way to leave; the parts of you that know wait for him to stand up and put his clothes back on, quicker and with more eagerness than

The Truth

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His people eat soggy casseroles and smile with tight lips.

Hogging the Lady

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She was not the usual member of the band, not the girl nextdoor, not next to any door, not a regular housekeeper or woman. She was a ditch digger, a pied, circular piper, a mouse hugger.

Don Quixote Flash Cards (Being a small chapbook of poems)

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tiny bits each one found meant something had blown apart. that someone was no longer with us. but somewhere that things were crawling towards unity again. another gun had been fired. would peace always start over? it's funny how it will. a hand…

Bibliophagy

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he knows that his wife knows. she can smell the adverbs on his tongue in the mornings. but he cannot get through another evening in that house without consonants.

The Swan On Earth

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I saw God sobbing in a wheelchair. I saw God on the ceiling of your bedroom on Illinois Street while you were inside me the first time. (I remember so many things… Do you remember who I am yet?) I saw myself, far away in a window – the swan on earth

Let the Fat Man Sing

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For every Ruben Studdard, there are ten Mick Jaggers and, considered merely in terms of avoirdupois, the two sides of that scale would probably balance.

RINSE AND OXIDATION

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...listening to the ache of errs our mouths had become.

The River, Once

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once she went to quenchthen she went to scrubnow she collects dead toadsgrinds them with cornmeal to feed her sowsonce she ploughed the land toiled with her face deep in dark soil her back burning in hot sunnow she works in the paper millmaking laminated labels for the…

Comfort of Friends

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She drove me to radiation, to acupuncture and support group. She brewed me concoctions that smelled of twigs and dirt...