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Breakdown Lane

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I'm on my way to work the Saturday night dinner shift at Slug's

Off the Record

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“In other words you're going to lie through your teeth..."

Silly Old Man Acting the Young Fool

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The green on your shoulder Is worth all their papery property taxes And then some. They cash in every friendship As if it were nothing more than a Ripened apple for pie. Get rid of The thing before it begins to Rot into some…

Found Poem

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The waters rose / on the earth

Karmic Tide

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Digging in another garden, jumping into another space and time, I impaled a toad on the tines of a garden fork. At first I thought the toad was a clump of clay, stuck to the thick tine, but before I could kick the clay off with my…

When the Germans Were on the Roof of the World

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Flew a Messerschmitt. Drove a tank over people in Poland though not in Prague, and claimed he was never a guard at the death camps.

Du Fu's spring scene

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state a shambles, mountains and rivers endure./meanwhile, the city hides amidst spring's thick growth . . .

Ambassador of Nowhere

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Before you tripped on the third rail, you were like any other: coat a shard of midnight-blue, eyes filled with gratitude but for nothing. You were a lost coyote on a snowy hill. With sad magnificence you wandered, terrorizing passengers who secretly wished to pat your…

How I Left Onandaga County

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So, like I said. Da. I have dealt with the men, when I was a lap dancer. The men they need the….manipulations. I have good hands. They want me to see them naked, their power. Here it is only the women. The massage, the facial, the waxing...

Odds Are

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We're on a bench in the park under some trees close to the carousel when she tells me I can't count on having a career as a professional gambler.

Dispensation

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My life was growing on me like a soft Scottish moss

Zhou Yu’s Train

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Are we like a poem, a short hand of words curtained together, evoking a mood, but in the end, impenetrable? We follow the clues to our lover's heart and what we find isn't him at all but ourselves. We fill every part of his life, every part of his past and even become…

Jeanne's Song, 2010

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I think that I write toward death and to stave off death and to remember the dead and to address what is dead in me.

A note from Liu Xiabo

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I think about the weight of those words—how they are silenced by the weight of stone, by the weight of 11 years in a Jinzhou prison cell,

My Dad was a ditch digger

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men sitting on stoops women earning the rent by working as servants in the rich folks yard

When I Asked You to Sing at My Funeral

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It's because poetry would not do because the fireflies were alive that night, aflame

Wedding Day

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A bride, dressed in white gown and flowing veil, totters in high heels down the uneven pavement past Simone’s Café. She holds a bouquet of red and orange chrysanthemums. Three men, wearing black tuxes, accompany her; one of them holds up the hem of her dr

Strip (Her)

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There’s not enough cigarette cloud to conceal her, malnourished and pale beneath blue and pink lights that summon 80s-era skate rinks. She saunters towards the center of the stage, asking her bored expression to convey detachment, while a DJ that fits the

Betty Superman

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No, I just liked what it said "All at Once Is What Eternity Is" which seemed right to my seventeen year old mind, explained it all to me the way nothing else did. I matted the poster in art class and put it in a frame over my bed. Betty hated the poster.

The Death App

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The phone owner pre-writes his or her dying words! The app stores them and releases them at the moment of his death!

needs

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addict for validation and cat tongues

End of the World

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The world doesn'tend just becauseyou want it to.Bonus poems:The Poet(Series 1)by Darryl PricePoet in a TreeYeah, well, it's not up here either. Although the everything and nothing view is nice. Only because it doesn't have any abandoned cars in it. I'm…

Ghoster

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Ross, I've been a ghost hunter for almost 10 years now and this is a place I said I WOULD NEVER NEVER EVER go to!

On the Roof

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Marie was on the roof. The deck, with its cool concrete pavers and faded cedar Adirondack chairs, was one of the reasons she and Harold had bought their condo in this building. The only ugly part of the roof was the chain-link fence along its edge; soon after they moved…

Grandma's Fingers

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her hands twined up, as carved from stone, each to fit the other.

Who Was This Guy

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Luke and Diane sat at a round white table looking around the room. There were clusters of people forming an archipelago of cordial exchange and small talk. All but a few were strangers, friends and family of his sister-in-law Mary, now a widow, though the word sounded…

By the Time the Oceans Rise

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By the time the oceans rise/ enough for Kansans to care about,

eleven by eleven by five

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(the hourglass has not gone digital, oh no,/but these days, silicon is in with the sand)

13 circles of Hell revealed to the Bird King in a series of hallucinations caused by medicine for a urinary tract infection

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1. The Kingdom of MaggotsBillions of tiny naked bald men wriggle and squirm through a derelict mannequin factory.2. The Sea of KnivesThe crests of waves slice and slash. Maimed mermaids wail.3. The Eye MoonEnvious mirrors ape the sun. An astronaut falls forever into open…

Svalbard

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there is a vault in the mountains / that in itself contains infinite vaults