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When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.

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When Charlie woke up he couldn’t find his inner Charlie.

The Counter Where Names Go To Die

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One day a woman, one of several translators at Ellis Island, asks him why he has changed a passenger’s name from Checzowicz to something else. “The name was too long,” he says. “Ten letters.” She replies, “But you didn’t change O’Shaughnessy, and it has

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"For God's sake," my mother said. "There could be anthrax in the candy." My mother worried about me going out on Halloween.

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Smoke from bodies aflame tongues the strung moon;

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I was having festive sex flashbacks and wasn't thinking sharply.

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"A prostitute of the Hotel Khadijah in Rahab fell in love with my father...."

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Let the Others Drool

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They are all sleeping, but I know better. I will keep watch and if he comes tonight I will be alert and ready. When he arrives he'll see the slack mouths, the graceless sprawls, hear the grunts, snorts and snores of the other women and then he'll sense me. My eyes will…

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We were in the car more than anywhere else. A few days driving, then a few days to get back home.

A New Kind of Madness

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in my youth I was enamored of the moon—that is to say, lunacyI applauded the bizarre in natureI appropriated the gratuitous from dreamsI drank brashness and frenzy from bookswhat mad things I did!(throwing a bucket of water on the naked couple in the bed)what…

An Irish Seder

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The promise of free food and drink was too much to pass up since I hadn't played a gig in months and was living on peanut butter and celery. When Kelly called I was too hungry and thirsty for drink to turn him down.

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

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he makes his way back / to the ocean, back to the popcorn, back / to the pinball machines

Brick Walls

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Beautiful Girls

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and all the beautiful girls are in the river And they went in dirty But they came out clean

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Alice Invading the Garden

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Heartbreak Waiting To Happen

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I should have created a first-date questionnaire heartaches ago.

Zero

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My round belly is deflating. I disappear a little more by the day. It's been weeks. Soon, I may not even be here.

Evil Humors

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I blame it all on evil humors. Something's leaking.

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It all started when he bought my leopard nightie.

There's No Crying in Poetry

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There’s / no crying in poetry!” says Coach / Bukowski

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The scent of fresh cut grass./ The idiot sense of accomplishment/ mowing the lawn can bring.