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Getting There

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The monarchs that migrate to Mexico and California in the autumn every year live for only a month.

Foreign Film

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They are watching a movie about a man who cheats on his wife, whom he loves, and is so disconsolate that his wife eventually loses all patience and leaves him. They are at the point in the film where the man considers his many blunders as he walks…

Close/Far

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If you were glassI'd fog you up With my breathI'd leave messagesPictographsIn fingerprints I'd press in closeSo would youAnd so we'd danceBut you are glassAn inch of depthTo catch my breath

My Wife

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My wife thinks I should be committed.

Turbidity

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Where seldom is heard an encouraging word

Maître d’

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Before the days of “customer experience,” Eddie figured out whatever information he could about his clients. He asked them for business cards, recorded their phone numbers from the reservation book, snapped photos of them in his mind…

No One Will Ever Give You This Poem

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and say did you know it was written just for you? But I will. No one will walk up to you on the busy street one day and say did you know he loved you this much? But I'm telling you now. What good would a pyramid be or a hanging garden or a starry…

Punk

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My mother used to say she'll be just like you and you‘ll deserve it. I was a Punk Rocker. A rebel. Emily worries about things like grades and sports. She's on the soccer team. I got stoned under the bleachers. Emily, is a good kid. …

The Dead in Paris, Complete

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Did we get Jihadi John?/ And the highway to Mosul?// What’s the score?

Galactic Butterflies

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will we become artifacts?

The Book Mind

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The book mind, just like its namesake the book, is capable of movement only after its assembly: otherwise, it boasts no moving parts.

Blizzard on 105th Street

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severe snow storm coming. I'm looking for a parking spot and listening to Machito & Charlie Parker

profanity

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@#$!

Peterson Park

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The bungalow was unlocked. The screen door was unhooked. The trout on the counter was deboned.

Snatch X

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...the astonishing discovery...

The Eyes

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I've never liked kind eyes;I prefer drive.Or fire.And when a woman's eyes are described as "doe,"I hear "dumb."Like an animal.

Dog Days

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The air is dry and smoky from a fire some miles away. The air is cool. A pair of vultures is soaring in a circle high above the rising land.

19.

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WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKER

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WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKERWhen his fingers sped along the keys, I'd need to sit. I'd such weak knees. I thought him charming, tall, and able, then he overturned the table. Chili, crackers, cheddar cheese crashed on me-he'd been displeased. I…

The Literary Writer (Female) and Sex

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When last June V.S. Naipaul remarked "women writers are different, they are quite different. I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me...My publisher, who was so good as a

Low-Country Squirrel

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Maddy knew how to make a sauce. It embraced the meat in a thick, buttery ooze.

sunflower 9

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born to be mistreated by beasts in human shapes

like rain

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This is your mystery, your story Full of beauty and all-encompassing loveA brushstroke washes the canvas cleanYou start over with a new directionDreaming of me as you paint your wordsWriting just like Keats, Shelley and BrontëAbout sorrow, rain and the wheels of passion

forever

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over tea & saltineshe read melike an obituary

David

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I keep encouraging him to write stories not poems, but I think he enjoys writing things that don’t fit together. Things that stumble.

A June Defection

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I came from the only flat region in the kingdom of mountains and fjords, and called the city “Down in the Dumps”. The beleaguering mountains smelled a flatlander when they saw one, and hated me right back.

Christ walks the streets of Venice

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Christ walks the streets of Venice,/has long since become a regular . . .

Florida

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In her paper, Emmeline compares Mary Todd Lincoln's crazy, which involved spending lots of money and going to séances, with her Aunt Janine's, which involves wearing cowgirl outfits and running with strange men.

Solzhenitsyn Juke-Box

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My handwriting, slow in coming over many years, is good for lists, but I don't want to read sentences or write in it. Amber is on a list I wrote of things I want to remember of Russia: Rasputin's death and Peter the Great (6'7”). One of my lists I read as a poem in…

Visiting Sally

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Buddy was in a garage band. They were pretty good. “Soul Harbor“ they called themselves.