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Playground

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The Keds-stubbed grass, toy trucks without wheels, and Band-aids threaded in the sand… Most parenting is vigilance. Seconds ahead of its own sound, a passenger jet spears the heights not far above the treetops, …

Doctor

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I asked her how she came to be at our little party. We all knew she was an intern. What would she want with the likes of us, the orderlies and techs and strays? She just held up Ed's flyer and said, "Why not?" But she didn't look happy. We fired up and someone said, "Let's…

Mon in the forest: a fragment

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Mon wakes up surrounded by trees. The light is grey, the trunks black.How long have I slept? he wonders.He doesn't know which way to walk. In every direction, the same prospect of trees. He looks up at a blank sky. No sign even of the sun.***He starts walking. Slowly,…

The Clarity of Loss

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This year I did not markthe day of your death.I let it slip by in an afternoonfilled with music you'll never hear,words you'll never read,a chorus of voices raised in protestat the unwavering passage of time.I don't need a numberto know that you are gone.Since you went…

The Cliffs at Fayburrow

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Whatever the world is it is alsoyou. This leaves me smiling. I'm glad you arein it. I'm glad for the deepest colorblue like the Mediterranean sea,for instance. Baby orangutans. Forclouds and mushrooms and seahorses. Songs fromtreetops. Whatever the world has it has…

A Terse Invocation of Cuttlefish

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Once the limits of human commitment to logic are conceded, cuttlefish may in fact be deemed superior logicians to all other aspirants.

Blind

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My mother saw the Devil everywhere, even in my dance teacher, with his black leotards and chest hair like bean sprouts. "You're flamingos," he'd say in class when we balanced on one foot; when we lept into the air, "Now you're panthers!" I pictured him in a dark robe,…

Cups for Saucers

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They were everywhere walking right above us or so it seemed, back and forth, back and forth with their lousy, crunching heels making hollow chewed up noises that took all the sweet sounds left on earth and had them march along…

Chemistry (Valentine's Day Massacre)

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Whenever we’re carressin’, I find you quite engrossin’, I’m filled with vasopressin endorphins and oxytocin.

Neat

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His audio archive of Bay Area musicians extends along two walls, twenty-five by fifteen feet, in drawers of C.D.s hundreds deep. Where will it go, I asked, permanently.

Angels Carry the Sun excerpt: Chapter One, In the Woods

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Chapter One In the Woods Everett Finn liked white-bread sandwiches. In June, Flora forfeited all her free cafeteria lunches to sit with him during his quiet lunch breaks in the classroom. "Eleven more days until graduation," she told him. He sat…

Nothing in the World (an excerpt)

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All night the moon had watched him, and he’d been unable to return its stare. Finally there was sunlight, and Joško took up his rifle and rucksack. He had trouble keeping his balance at first, but gradually his legs steadied.

Otillie

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Shhh. I am here. Otillie Augustine, from Trieste, an Italian city to you, but when I lived it was part of Austria. Such things as who flies their flags over a city? Not so important after all, after all the losses and the victory speeches. These were not…

No Nows Now

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. . . did you notice yesterday afternoon how for an entire quarter hour five o’clock itself looked for a few minutes as if it would never arrive?

His Laugh is My Yellow (or explaining skin color to a six-year-old boy)

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Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.

Things being said

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Things are still being said in a world that sounds like rough bows and straight slicing arrows communicating with (smashing like fists) a poor pool of tired animals. There must also come a time to surprise these same cruel machines…

Best Place To Eat in Town

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Often I eat lunch at the hospital. The cafeteria may be the best place to eat in town.

A Natural Consequence of Things

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Belief is a hammer, like saying the mind is a piece of iron.

Constable Pulce and the Sunny Dystopia

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Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.

The Invitation

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The poet could not speak of himself but only of the gradations leading toward him and away. ~ Mark Strand

Darryl, The Biography

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"I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be. And so I'm on my way home."--Bob Dylan I don't owe you anything. If I'm a recluse what does it have to do with you? I have the right to be poor. Some things cannot be explained away by letters that…

the weather past where roads end

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a soft wooden clatter, wind-battered reeds/bound to the banks of ditches rank,/ill-purposed waters slide into low swamps/whose waters into rivers seep and crawl.

Unsent

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this is where we end -- the exorbitant eye of forgotten days.

Nepenthe

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Alas, the wind, the rain/ and plate tectonics take temples,/ fire and sediment papyrus and clay,

There are Grandmas and there is my Grandma.

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Last night Grandma got her walker stuck in the snow almost up to her tits. I feel the mark of a dutiful grandson is to come to her aid. And I always do. Even though she usually gets back home at 2 00 a.m. — or maybe 3 — sometimes she's late and we worry but I…

Stretching to Understand

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You looked like someone I didn't want to know. I guess that's why I got in the car that night. My penchant for self-destruction was aroused by your black nail polish and the lavender circles under your eyes. You looked like someone that could hurt me, yeah, that's why I got…

And then the Heat Broke

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She did not know Robert’s skin was sliced and bruised from the twelve pound ball and chain locked to his ankle for sixteen hours that night.

Flood

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My mother's afraid the dog will drown. It's raining and our street is flooding and the dog is standing on top of his doghouse. My mother is pregnant. I can stand beneath her stomach and not even see her face. I watch her from the kitchen window. She's shoeless. She holds…

Fatherhood 101

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The instructor moved over to the whiteboard and wrote in big block letters “FOOTBALL” and then crossed it out. “You should just never treat your newborn like a football. That means no passing it or punting it.

Will #17

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I want crazy at my funeral. I want clowns, a petting zoo, fireworks, craps tables, male and female strippers, and a three-person band composed of old men wearing striped vests, black pants, and straw hats: one plays a banjo, another on tuba, and…