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Spring Miscellany

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Because we are exceptional,/ our 3000 dead in New York/ exceeds in impact that of 75,000/ burned at Nagasaki,

We are the miserable

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We are the miserable, annoyed, dismayed sick. We slouch on black naugahyde chairs too pathetic to reach for magazines. The computer is down the young receptionist has explained to each of us in young, florid style, complete with “I…

Tendrils

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you stand ashore

There's Love, and there's Marriage

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He didn’t used to smell that way, like a rained-on boot, like the insides of a lived-on couch. ... He used to smell like he wore light, subcutaneous cologne.

The Shaker

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A man and a woman argued over the size of the quake. They were sitting on the floor like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

A Diminishing Verse on Diminishing Returns

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My banker said, "We've millions we can spare,

Old Beat-Up Trunk (containing a History of Forgotten Paintings)

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The world can still be viewed as a honey drop of sparkling rain, but not all washed up tears can be revealed as such. The stories swirling inside are constantly shifting their own gears, searching for the lost highway, and sometimes…

The Waves

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...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.

George, Love, Shakespeare and Company

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"Love, against the dying of the light." (An unusual story about George Whitman, former owner of the revered & beloved Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, France.)

Woody met Louise

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Times were tough. They met out on the right-of-way on Highway 61 heading south, each trying to hitch a ride to New Orleans where they might find work. Albert walked up to her lugging a saxophone in a scuffed up case. Mamie had old cloth suitcase. After handshake bona fides…

Back Down Below

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Gotta be jumpin' gotta be hummin' some tune even when I'm alone I'm flirtin' with the moon (back down below)

Cell Phone

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Hey, how are you? she squeaked.

Catholics

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Sundays after Mass, Sister Edburga gathered the team in the shower room, we stripped naked in a circle, held hands and said a prayer we’d win our game. A boy no one knew walked alongside her with a box full of jockstraps.

The Beautiful Mercedes

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The screen door slowly opened. I was expecting the second / coming of perfection.

Damn Headache

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Less than 5 seconds...

Impotent

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A spire that had stood one hundred and forty years fell in a single second of the blackest day.

Kill it

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my dog had a tumor

Though I'm NEVER Drunk, I'm ALWAYS Disorderly (memoir)

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1987. Recently, I told a teenager who was smoking a cigarette in an elevator that he should put it out. “You a cop?” he asked.

C.S.I. #14

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I had dreams of being permeated with the heat of Caramelized sisters. A declawed cat kept creeping along my apartment walls.

Stroller Mania

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Get something cheap and light at Target. Trash hell out of it. Encourage baby to urp up in it.

Tumbleweed Suite

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in late fall, Rome, sans wind, sans rancor, sans sand or rain, sans hate ...

Sisyphus takes the day off

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what-ta-hell, fuck this he snorts brushing the dust from his shoulders

Citizens: a fragment

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B: Write a short story about men for the gym teacher. Write a candle for the century. A: How do I end it? B: Write a synopsis.

The White Dogs Of West Emerald Street

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I wondered if Mr. Slane even knew/ how many dogs he owned

One Of These Dreams ...

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Imagine a morning without dawn, without daylight ... The night birds still hoot, the flowers wait for the light to change their make-up, black birds have locked their beaks. A morning unlike any other ... The moon above continues to reign over the milky way, the stars to…

When I Lived There.

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When I was fifteen and we were moving to Mississippi, my boyfriend in Canada told me I was going to live in the swamp with the alligators. I didn’t understand why my father would pick such a hick place. Rob gave me his cricket bat to hang over my bed, a

The Buddha on my Wooden Desk

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The Buddha on my wooden desk says all things are Chaplinesque, that all's a self-containing joke, a cube of ice in a glass of coke, a sunbeam dragged thru autumn leaves, the residue a lover leaves, a kind of vein,…

If Blake had only known

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Everything is bound to change like / a damsel to the tracks.

Atrocities

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My table offers up the gutted calf/ with carrots and potatoes yanked / alive and whole

Autumn in the Afterward

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A year after we'd last spoken I can still remember your commentary, our ill-fated reunion at the baggage claim forever immortalized as this solitary instance of unobstructed joy.