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Crown-of-thorns

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It's supposed to resemble the sea bed. These fish have never seen the outside of an aquarium and even if they had, they are reef fish, they'd probably get the bends and die if they went to the bottom of the ocean where the chances of them finding a cerami

Barnyard 1961

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The boy heard loud barks and squeals, climbed on a chair, and looked out the window at the barnyard and the faded blood red barn.

Kung Pao Turkey

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It was my grandmother's idea of a joke, but I never realized she was joking when she repeated it every Thanksgiving. She would sit at the head table just before Uncle Leon would carve the bird and ask, "It's an American holiday. Shouldn't we be roasting an eagle…

K Model

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Plans were all set. We were leaving this town. We'd been creeping around long enough and Marla wanted nothing more than to get out and away from the shallow, old bastard she married. “Fuck his mansion and fuck his country club”, she said. We both agreed that he…

Grief Has No Welcome Garment

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Twice burned, it buries its graves.

Tales from an Indiscriminate Record Collection

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45s I’ve kept wrapped in newspaper in the attic. These are all mine. Some doubling up in sleeves. Some pushing tears in the seams.

Never Been Down to Lonely Street

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“This is not turning out to be a wholesome project,” my brother hissed into the phone one night. “Yo, Alan, it’s ELVIS. It’s American gothic, and the child needs to know the underbelly of the myth,” I hissed back.“Did you, or did you not, wear makeup to

How to Pass among Mortals

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Take no form or face beautiful enough to cause warfare, or that which would provoke inanimate objects to song. If a tree wishes to flower in your presence, request that this happen very slowly.

Wax Off

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The time has come to scrape the wax from my menorah.

The Cicada's Cry

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In the cicada's cry No sign can foretell How soon it must dieBasho "Hear the locusts?" The woman lifts the child's head. "Hear em, baby?" The child looks blankly in the…

Make Music, Not Love

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We are/no more than heartbeats on repeat.

A Letter to the Girl I May or May Not Have Slept With Last Night

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Can I really be blamed? Look at the circumstantial evidence: you wore that skirt, which can hardly be called a skirt. More like a very wide plaid belt.

Two More Poems

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1. Weeds of the World (Unite!) We invade the invaders and they invade us, these little Blooming weeds. They raise five flowers and let them blow Into the winds like sheets of stars. All of us Steer by their turning tide. All of us will eventually …

In the Sun

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The light was bright andthey sat on the railing of the long wooden bridge in the sun. She looked up at her father."Oh Daddy, where did you go?" she asked.He was young with black shinny hair blowing in the wind. "To Heaven, little girl,"She shook her head."What's…

Blank Future

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I might as well just keep driving. Past my exit. Beyond my job. Just drive. Until the tank runs out of gas. A blank future is better than this bleak one.

Bloody Vodka

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Broken glass attacks me

Silence

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I let go of my properties, my work.

Stop

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The dead girl was his niece’s daughter. Only thirteen years old.

String Money

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I said hey man, how you doin’? He looked up and nodded but his shades flashed and I couldn’t see his eyes.

Eyes that Said Don't Leave Me Here

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Two friends follow the train tracks by their neighborhood.

Wilma

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Every morning, Wilma's husband Richard would cross the street and visit with a neighbor, always after the neighbor's husband left for work. Wilma was a loner, never bothered with neighbors. She enjoyed sitting on her patio in her lounge chair,…

Edward Ogle the Third

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Assimilated wheat germ integrated ant worm the capital of brazil.

Decision Mountain

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For decades the land the village sat on had switched its allegiance between two countries.

Birthday

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Winter Kills

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And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.

Pomegranate juice thief walks home

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That is a six-word story. Notice that the meaning does not change with the word count. Syllabic count: pentameter (ten). Keep these commas.

Flower-Gathering

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I did not understand its meaning until college when I learned that Frost would take long walks—the inspiration for so many of his poems—and would leave his wife at home while he did. And just before he left, she would guilt-trip him just a little by walk

The Bird Nests of Lascaux

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With their brightly-colored bits of found string woven into the walls of their nests to teach their baby birds what the worms of the future will look like. Somewhat like the cave paintings of Lascaux for early man in France, when hunti

Bruegel days, nights by Bosch

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no matter where we sit or how we stare— / all parades now march away to one day.

Albert Walks

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Albert Walks When Albert walks he is astonished. Ripe fruit falls to the ground at his feet, offering itself. The earth's tremor rumbles, celebratory, through his mended shoes and up his shins. The birds darting through the sky above …