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Sorrows Know How to Swim

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That night he dreamed about a duel with toothbrushes....

Sinister Age of the Draft

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The so-called good, a weak but whiny lot, who actually clung to that abstract of "justice for all," would tattle to Mrs. Pufry...Mzzz Puffy, she hit me...Mzzz Puffy he said the bad word...Mzzz Puffy, I gotta go...Mzzz Puffy, Thomas is hanging in the cloak

Stone Cold Sexy

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You drink in women's bodies, without reserve. You take a sip at the post office, a gulp at the gym, a teensy taste when we walk together. Tonight you even indulged as we were looking for a parking spot and passed some twenty-somethings, then followed up w

Exit 30

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They meant no harm when they flooded farms in its swirls and eddies

It Stops

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We made our escape on grimy streets under skies filled with crows, flapping like litter in the wind.

Twenty.

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His face is lined, lost, resigned,

Self Portrait with Google

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Try it with and without/ middle name or middle initial.// Try different keywords.

First Job

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I thought each day died inside the clock.

Bad Back

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Sharpie marked, Free Still Works

Disassembly

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Maybe the thing is over by now. They have gathered up all the pictures and mementos of our dad’s life and hauled them away.

Not Calculable

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saw the world was a mess I did nothing about it, poured myself some apple juice

Transformations

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Some nights now I sit at my window

Baggage Dreams

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...

The Intervention

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"You're publishing too much too / quickly. We think that's unhealthy. We want you / to slow down. You're becoming a fame whore."

Ethics

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If I wanted cautious I wouldn't be in her bed. She would only sleep with her husband. Adultery is not for pussies. So I dive back into the conversation which has made my dick limp and ask where I'm wrong in our post-coital chatter and she says it doesn't

Prairie Yields

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The river’s not/ a river but/ a FEMA map/ of flooding probabilities.

Minnesota Menage

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I talk to her, whispering endearments and flattery. I tell her how incredible it feels to be between her legs.

He Said, She Said

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Maybe she would get married and have a baby, she said. Not with me, I said

Departure. Arrival. Return.

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Put down your bazooka, Marianne.

Out of the Loop

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Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.

To See Who's There

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To See Who's There Able these days to search through centuries, I click, scribble, cut and paste, skim, reject, record, resurrect a wet stone wall, the smell of burning peat. Bob's your uncle, Peggy's …

Twedes

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“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."

Cranshaw on the Road / Chapel Access

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"Why so ornery?" she asked.

Butcher Knife

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When I was young I used to carry a butcher knife to bed. My grandmother placed it in my small hands before tucking me in.

How Poets Die

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Mark Strandover decadesa steady diet of dictionenlarged his heartone day it just burstRobert Frosta crazy ideathat he couldbuild a wallwithout mortar tookpossession of his mindhe piled stoneon stone higherand higher untilthey toppled overcrushing him beneath Wilfred…

Ibambe

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If this was the day when the bribes of whiskey and US dollars would fail to work. If on this day a black bag, smelling of shit and fear, would be pulled over his head – the bloodied roots of a knocked out tooth tickling his neck.

Magritte

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Arriving at the pier I see a sailboat in dead wind. "That is pathos," Magritte says, pointing to a barnacle.

Central Washington State On Five Dollars A Day

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The tailfins of our ’57 Plymouth Fury dip and rock from the stress: Three boys—say no more?—jumping into the car. And Dad, loading suitcases into the trunk, working them around the steel cooler heavy with Cokes, root beers, ice. He slams the trunk lid dow

Cornfield

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This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.

In Dreams

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I always wanted to head on up to New York City and be taught by a decent painter, but as time kept on trucking, it became clear that that was just a big dream that would not shake out and I'd never be a real artist because I was shy of the money I'd need to stay up there in…