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Further Conversation with the Author

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“After your death is confirmed,” I assured him, “a hardcover first edition of your books, will sell for millions at auction in New York.

An Orphan of Fire

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I break your flesh and make music on the harp of your bones.

Leg and Leg and Another Leg

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The robot may be grabbing onto something so big I'm mistaking it for the countryside, or the sunset. I could just be one cog in an infinite chain of leg-attachment, stretching from the cosmos to the sub-atomic.

Quantum Quandary

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I love the notion of uncertainty-/ which seems inherent/ at the level of particles-

A List of Ways I Have Failed to Express My Love for You

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The gaudy belt buckle I got you, which would have been well-received except that you hate gaudy belt buckles.The custom t-shirt I made for you using iron-on felt letters that generously enhanced the shape of your breasts in a way unfit for public display.The wedding…

Abortion Mill

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She arranged to have an abortion at a doctor Greene’s office, who practiced out of a converted house on Solano Avenue on the north side of Berkeley. I took her there the day of the procedure. You couldn’t go to a regular hospital to have this kind of thi

The Good Sounds of Squeamish Language

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Accuracy is a prediction

All I Know About Grandfather

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There were days in my youth when, through no fault of their own, my parents could not drive me the seven mile trip to my elementary school. When I got older they bought me a bike and that proved duly adequate as conveyance. But when I was six years in age

The Yellow Room

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...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

I Made You . . . (April Fool's Day Challenge)

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You cheat with a stripper--joke I told to your wife. I didn't know that she couldn't take a goof.

Nemesis

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Kids said the boiler room was haunted. I don’t know if it was true then but it sure is now.

Cost

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I rifled through the bedside table until I found dirty magazines

Kidz Love Klezmer

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The clarinet and the accordion are brothers, I see. Big, fat men with curly, klezmer hair.

Dog Meat

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The squad comes upon two of the long-snouted dogs gnawing at the bloated carcass of a third.

A Catalogue of Ways to Die at Sea

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Quimby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, lads, there must be a thousan’ ways to die at sea! I’ve made th’ Atlantic passage a good many time; lemme recount some manners of death I’ve witnessed with mine own eyes.”

The Class of '61

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My head is nailed to yesterday.

ouroboros

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if it were a child/ it would be in first grade this year

Thunder at Midnight

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I’ve had it to here you see.

Shrine

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My tongue is clicking. I want to act out. I want an unprofessional bargain.

au

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the way we fit...alchemy

scraps

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i’m trying to remember don’t all the best apples happen in September?

not Baudelaire's “Beauté”

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I charm as any stone-sculpted dream: / men grind themselves to dust on my breasts / in solitude poets spill and spew / enraptured of my adamant clay.

Twilight, Nov. 07, 05:50am

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Light spreads its way across the sky like a drop of inkon dry cotton sheets:starts at one point and expandsas wind shufflesover bodies, seashoist your sailsand I'll throw this oneoverthe night can have itnowhear the waveshow they seem satisfiedwith their…

Haiku Life

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A funny thing this life

Mumbles

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We bobbed and weaved using our words like the sniffs of two unfamiliar dogs in a Wal-mart parking lot. Wary, but sensing we could be more than just polite neighbors, once we got past the normal darkness of strangers. There was no plot to our story yet, but we both seemed to…

No Thanks

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But although her culinary plans are running smoothly, my mother’s mood is lethal. Look closely and you can see thin plumes of smoke escaping from her mouth and the tips of two horns peeping between the rollers on top of her head. This is not uncommon for

That Painted Up Whore

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Some things stay with you. I got off the bus, petted my dog, Nick and walked in our house and saw Mother at the kitchen table, crying and clearly angry. I asked her if she was sick. She works. She said that she didn't go to work today and might not go tomorrow…

Rain Song

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Feelin’, feelin’ good, down-fallin’ down/rain, rain, rain came today,/wet alfresco alchemy

Love, Mortar

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My love for you is like a brick. It sits silent in me when you bring out my food at the Dine and Dart, red tray aloft, your skin gleaming like grilled onions. My love is rough around the edges but solid through the center, fresh from the kiln. My love for you is…

just like James Taylor

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tell me about the time you lived in Carolina, and what my smile does for you.