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The sun was a dish of burnished courage

Kiss Me Quick

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You, who reaches in, touches me in that moment of decision, and knows I’ll be everything you’ve looked forward to tonight.

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A daydreams about a woman whose name he’s forgotten next to B, who’s been drunk since afternoon.

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It seems the law of gravity will exert its influence even in such mundane matters as the afternoon rush hour.

After Eliot

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Her breath was on me

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

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In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?” “Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.

Hellgate

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Either it was rescue--if the customer was alive to be found--or recovery, the term for bringing out the dead.

Graduation (For My Mother)

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I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

The Continuum of Flames

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Molly was from dull and wet Kansas City, Missouri, where she learned to pass the time in the many record shops and bars that lined it's inconspicuously storied streets, catching the attention of a young red blooded all American Kansas City man, from time

Mom Dream, from the Family Album

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She was trying to hold something, gathering in … lips blue/ black, saying: “I’m all right.” I remember her telling me, over the phone one time: “It’s a baby rabbit, and he was having a picnic. He was chewing away and chewing away. I had six tomato pla

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poetry less than poverty: / fair warning to poets, but a good sign.

MILOSK BLONDYNKI

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Milosk had lived in the hills above Stari Vlah a long time, and while he did not care much for political matters, he knew the men were heroes of the state and deserved what Milosk could provide for them...

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I think I’m the best Marilyn Monroe there ever was.

Lule of Raw - 3

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"I'll tell you one thing I don't want to see, armed confrontation, leading to domestic warfare."

Living on Non-Skid Row

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Here’s the local group of grumpy gray-haired men Chewing over politics as if it’s important As if their endless discussing of it, Waving their hands in the air, gesturing, Is going to change the world How do these guys stop from having heart a

Resistance

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I can no longer conjure the sweetness of a plum

Facing the Music

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The spirit bottles line the top of the bar

My Notes on "Quittin' Ain't Easy"

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Sorry, I think I was jotting and not writing. I see a dropped article that would clarify my interest. I purposely didn't describe my alcohol use. There, I just did.

The Edge of Night

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The night wrapped its arms around us as we drove west, taking the highway past Medford towards Philly. The kids were asleep in the backseat and we were both counting the mile markers, staring out the windows with quiet eyes. I listened to the drone of the…

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When you're scared to write badly, that's when you write. You are probably trying to tell the truth.

A Young Girl's Passage

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"There's a dead mouse in the toilet!"

Hello, My Name Is James, And I Am An Asshole

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By my calculations, all hell is uncoiling. At the moment, this fact is not really obvious to anyone, but I'm confident that will change soon enough.

Whatever Happened to Sue Ellen?

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When she awoke in her yard, she poured what was left of the rum into the dead grass. The man beside her lay with fingers curled, a claw she’d found wedged up her skirt when she woke. Tom, she said, his name nonsense, tongues. Might as well have been any

Backwards

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One of her favorites was of an old axe asleep on a desert floor. She told people the axe had the western lips of September. That it held the song of the ocean and the dreams of a scarecrow. Some thought she was mad to talk in such a way. Others believed h

Return

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We head home, skirting along the coast, humble before catapulting waves; the lighthouse near invisible if not for a single band of red.

The Night Shore

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Somniloquies rise like the drowned . . .

Raincoat

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“It’s about basic working conditions!” she says, rubbing ice cubes on her nipples.

My Piper Laurie

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Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

Redbeard the Communist Pirate

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True facts about Redbeard the communist pirate.

All Stories Need An Ending

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Drugs, after all, once in the system, demanded unfalteringly more drugs.