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20 Things I Learned about Norman Rockwell from "American Mirror, The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell"

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His middle name was Perceval. He judged the first Miss America contest in 1922. He saw himself primarily as a storyteller in the Dickensian mode.He claimed to be an illustrator rather than an artist. He disliked driving but loved to walk, and preferred…

Voltaire Drinks Thirty Cups of Coffee

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Voltaire drinks his coffee standing up in front of the microwave and he likes to hold one hand on his chest where his heart is while he drinks. He likes to feel his heartbeat quicken and then he imagines that he is a machine or something mechanical.

Sestina McRib

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And now the McRib is back. Two dollars.

The Wind

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The wind comes up relentless in the afternoon

You Write Books?

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“Somebody told me you write books.”

How to Stop Doing and Be

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Monday will come soon enough to get/ what needs to be done, done.

Estella

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Everyone loves a story of love unrequited. But what about the stories of the unrequited lovee?

Composition: 3 generations and a porch

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It is 1939...

The Summer Of My Beautiful Idiocy

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In the summer of '68 my father persuaded me to go visit my grandparents on their farm in North Dakota. I had long hair and dressed like a French symbolist outlaw. Took the train to Minot, spent the night in a hotel (watching Your Cheatin' Heart, movie about Hank…

Liberty of Cooking

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My dish was slut ("all done" in Swedish). It tasted good though aroused no draft, of mutton, for example. My grandparents' bed held flat. I filed alone, in realist kitchen, reading Froeding, standing, striding, continent as gym.

Dark Matter

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The darkness isn’t evil but invisible/ in the otherwise excellent light of day

Ghost

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It would wander the hallways after the 3:45 bell, after the last class, after the students had all disappeared with the homework they'd never finish, the papers they'd forget to write, after Nate the janitor pushed his broom through the endless doorways,

Sleepless #3

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My ex-girlfriends live in a pastel-drenched cabin on the edge of a hemlock forest in Canada somewhere,

Snatch 7 (come 11)

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...the scream and the face...

What I wanted 1976

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turn my Dorothy Hamill into a golden shadow

Move Along

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W here do you think you're going what'll you think you'll do running down this highway that you never even knew

Halfhearted Objections

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The old man behind the counter recognizes fear and anxiety in the boy's face, and sees the brown paper bag clenched in his other white-knuckled hand.

Vanishing Vapors with Mister Van Gogh

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These clouds are what I havewith me. Their language is minebut it is drying today aswe speak. I catch the darkeningsparks, but that's not to beyour concern. I am sure youshall go on. What I wantis to deliver your song. Idoubt it is for anybody else.Clouds are good at…

Because we cannot know

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Because we cannot know, we keep walking, keep getting up each morning, feeding the cat, drinking coffee. Because we cannot know I'm drinking coffee that morning in Thailand, not on the beach but just off, because there is only one spot where you can get real coffee,…

Did I Tell You I Have Stripes On My Socks?

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Kids are fascinated by me. Adults look the other way. Maybe it's my size. Or maybe it's the stories in the newspapers.

On an Iceberg of Words

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She cut me adrift On an iceberg of words And words melt As you know Looks like we may have Gone out on the limb A little too far without A toe-hold on Reality Doesn’t it? But I saw the headlines: Cows Bound for Slaughterhouse Make

True-Life Microaggressions or How I Learned To Live In America

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You speak English so well.

Beyond Steps that Falter

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I might wish I was anything including some dust on the shelf where maybe I might blow away unseen like the coming of rust

No Regrets

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The ability to "see the ball" is a gift.

Keepers

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His hands go up and down on me. You love me don't you he says. I don't know I say.

the wall

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Looking at an image of a graffiti on a wall on our computer screen we ask ourselves: what is the image's main graffiti-like property? We might answer: its location. But that is a contextual and political interpretation. There's nothing in that answer which addresses the…

The Pigeon Savior

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The window washer started saving pigeons whose feet were wrapped in fine black thread, the result, he informed me, of picking through trash bins. They are very intelligent, he went on to explain. (Right, trash bins, I thought to myself.) People tend to av

The Three O'Clock Sun

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Here the three o'clock sun is an old patched up fellow, with a stained yellow beard, walking in a small crispy rain of brown leaves, looking at something that requires a bit of squinting no one else can see, on the far side of the softening…

After the Poison

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I've measured out our time togethersealed it in airtight bottlesthe one labeled 1998 kept closelike smelling saltsOne whiff a camphor waking memaking me high on the idea of usputting blinders on your infidelitiesdouble vodkas and damaging wordsAnd when that isn't enoughI…

Assiduity Six

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"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"