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Another Irresolute Essay on Lit and Crit

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. . . we agree that formal standards for identifying literary merit exist and are capable of being discerned, not merely of being ascribed. —but is this itself true?

Roy and Ray

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Roy Carver owned a big tire retreading outfit over on the Mississippi.

exile on and off the road

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had I gotten home without knowing it? well . . .

two love tankas

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December scent rains coming down sodden leaves underfoot

gravelortian part 22

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This grey is going to kill me

Crossed Out.

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Follow me around a bit. Let me walk you through the rooms, structures, and clouds of my being that reveal junk drawers of "collectibles."

Nathaniel

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sometimes i have to be in the other room just so i can breathe easy away from you.

September 26, 2016

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whatever weaknesses you displayed// as empathetic human fellow traveler,/ your command of English survives you,// on into the last echoes of the human/ once we’re gone.

The Tamarack Swamps

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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.

Sam and the Planets

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No, she hated the vain, overweight, pathetic, glass-of-merlot-a-day, SUV piloting, Carmen-cell-phone-ring-toned, housewives and consumer sluts that charged through the store like starving hyenas through the fallen, decaying, putrid, corpses of a plague-ri

When Mistakes Are Made

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He also looked at the tv with a detachment he sensed was dangerous and the sensation scared him so he ran into the kitchen and felt ashamed alone in the hot room and trembled.

Killing Dennis Gauda

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I killed him. I know you probably don't believe me, but it was an accident. I'll bet everyone in this room knows Dennis Gauda.... or should I say knew him? He was District Governor a while back. He also won quite a few speech contests. Yes... he's competition,…

Orpheus Today

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It is only seven-thirty but the night is full, gloom seizing Highway 66. There is a carcass on the road, maybe a human, slumped next to an empty ice cream truck. Several stars hang up in the East, drunken constellations scrambling to find meaning.

Getting Out

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“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Quel Bordel

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Our friend, M. Dieu-Juste partnered in a used car business with a Vietnamese mechanic, Mr. Tran. Cars however, were not their only venture.

Chinese Jacks

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"Carl, do you think we can fit all of our furniture into that red house?" Jeanne asks. She wonders how easily you could burn a red house down, if a claw foot tub will melt or be left standing in a field of black grass. He reaches for her hair, the dizzy smell…

Surprise!

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We were fleeing hurricane Katrina. We stopped somewhere in Texas at a roadside diner, but found a sign that said it was closed. We were so hungry. All of a sudden as we sat there in our car, the shop's owner knocked on the window and asked what he could g

Peace and Cribbage

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Some things are meant to be repeated

Left of the Miracle

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Wake me up on payday Don’t throw in the towel

Passing by Pallanteum

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Passing by PallanteumOr ‘Dido's Song' Form: Double Sestina, iambic pentameter, rhymed Who knows of hell, knows less of paradise? I've known them both, when vanquished in your eyes, When draws the kelp where lost men had their graves Below…

Advice from the Receptionist

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The president is truculent today.

Extracts

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I nicked this from a 12-year-old famine victim living under a bridge in Disneyland.

Second Career

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“Just how many different bipeds try to hide their nakedness?” “Only one. And that'd be us, idiot.”, Twinkle responded. “Then, why don't we mind showing certain parts of our bodies?”, she then asked. Twinkle could see it was going to be…

The Party

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Mike poured vermouth over his Campari and ice. “Gotta say, you have the most amazing view up here.” “Thanks. It's great when I'm washing dishes.” “Yeah, and the view in your front room isn't bad either. This cocktail …

What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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At least ten people have been shot by their dogs since 2004, usually in hunting accidents. (AARP Bulletin, January February 2016)If somebody phones you claiming to be with the IRS, it's a scam. The real IRS will only open communications with a taxpayer via the U.S.…

The Loam

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From above we see the trampled grass circling the house. Trampled grass from where half starved alligators circled the house, hissing and issuing low moans. Half starved alligators deranged by the red skies circled the house in the late August of the last year. Beginning in…

Maybe Just One More Then

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You don't deserve this poem and I don't deserve to write it. Whatever time we have left is way better spent sitting in a sunny garden with a good interesting book and with a beautiful golden delicious apple to bite into. But…

Invoking Fire

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We talk of his time in the jungle.

The After-Sex Song

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After sex he would get on his old refurbished upright piano and always play that same song. We came to know it as the After-Sex Song. It was really quite lovely, and touching. I think it made us all feel better around that building. Yeah, I remember t

Damaged Goods

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As she slunk to her topless Mercedes sparkling curbside, wax job hand rubbed in Hamburg, testosterone heads turned wishing similar treatment.