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The Cook

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“She said I hurt her and my father, the both of them.” Rose patted her round belly, carried high and in front, likely a boy. “I can see that.”

Common Sense

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'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'

Remembering Ginsberg

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Remembering Ginsberg who howled through just about everybody's idea of the real weirdo poet

Alice in Hell: 13 slithy variations

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1. Having made Alice from one of the Mad Hatter's ribs, Humpty Dumpty told her she could do anything, except speak. “How bothersome!” she said.2. In the church, Alice was horrified to be presented with a talking lamb. “EAT ME!” it bleated and, as the…

Letter to John Berryman

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My dad was an Army Reservist stationed in the U.S.—New York and Texas—the bugler in his corps. He golfed on summer weekends at Hazeltine in the course of his career. I had seen houses water colored prettily within the lines on L.S.D., after noticing not

The Day You Told Me You Fucked Her

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I imagined you going at her in ferocious fucking-- / O, O, O, O, O, O, O Immortal Glistening Cock,

Things Found In The Wreckage Of Angel 1508

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A canister of unused laughter taken from the mouth of a baby not yet born A splinter of wood from a cross, perfectly preserved in dark tea taken from the belly of a dead Irishman A milky vial of smog taken from the air of Los Angeles circa 1965 A

living in the flames

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After it is over, I go out into the world, to the café. The flower sellers are setting up their booth outside the glass doors. Classical guitar over the speakers. A soft rain falling. Heads bowed, reading the news. Coffee, croissants, cappuccino. This g

A Dream in Brick

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A man walks up and faces this new red brick wall The bricks are all perfect as you might expect in a dream And the cement is tuck-pointed without a dribble, anywhere He looks at the wall and puts his head through it And when he pulls h

On Desire

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For two days his parents had been fighting, and they would tell him to tell the other one something every morning that was supposed to be some sort of slight at their personal failings, which had been inflamed by their twenty years of marriage.

Class

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Class (appears in my book Breaking it Down; no journal publication) When your neighbor James Frehley cusses you out for hanging a block and tackle from the silver maple in your front lawn, begin to pull the engine from your Galaxie anyway, smile and nod…

Ninja

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She catches my head in a leg scissors and says for me to say Ninja Uncle. Instead, I bite into her flesh that only remotely tastes like a soft salt pretzel.

Storyboard

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For a time he documented his facial expressions.

Anfal means "to take everything"

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they tried to trick the sun

The Long Grass

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Julius winced, knowing there was no way out. Amy showed him every worm, every insect, every dead mouse she’d found when they were in the fields. She pulled him forward, making his bruised shoulder burn.

The Flight

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Of course, you're eventually struck by the thought that the house you saw on the hill was not your house and that those children and the dog are purely matter for the strange.

Pigeons Have Copied Your Brain

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The Pope is too busy shopping for clothes to control your brain.

the body that has the heat

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Dream, swan, dream of your woman, whenever you get hold of her. Problem after problem lets up under the grip you have. And conquest without plan is what you’ve added to the world. So, share your songs under wild silk, won’t you? I remember there was hel

The Infinite Wheel, Hold That Taxi

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Scientists have discovered what I already did once on dope way back in the Sixties. There are so many other earths out there that they are almost infinite. Now in our other lives we have to shuttle from planet to planet reading our poems. And o

A Life of My Own - 5

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angels give them names of important people, people under the control of evil demons whose influence must be negated at all cost if humanity is to survive into the future and achieve its ultimate potential.

The Blush of Rose

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Rose was the easiest lay in the Fletcher Memorial Home For The Aged.

Day One

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I lounged in my captain’s chair growing a beard. Things continued in this way and then the president called.He wanted to know the meaning of virtue.

Monsters Happen

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Dee startled awake from the dream, sat up in bed and looked around the room. The dream came back--hazy, yet clearer by the second. Dee had been warning the girl in her dream that he was a monster; that she shouldn't talk to him, should stay far away from him. …

Are You A Handywoman? Take This (Not Entirely Serious) Test and Find Out!

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As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…

Vanity Among Pigeons

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About four in the afternoon a pigeon began admiring itself in the shiny panel of a car door until another pigeon came along and it quit acting foolish.

Brasita de Fuego

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I still picture her waving her bare arms and hands into the purple bellied clouds above the trees, her crooked smile, the spiraling silver maple seeds cascading soft circles around her determined reach, as though the very tree limbs shaping the sky above

Other Brothers of American Crime, Chapter Fourteen

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An extended account of his criminal exploits for a criminal syndicate of Midwestern newspapers and radio stations hastened a change of career plans.

Sole Music

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You're on the good side of thirty, probably with a little girl or boy of your own sleeping at home, and here you are dragnetting at three in the morning. We're all broken, and the scars we trade are all that remains of our fragile, once complex lives.

Ghosts

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The man and the woman ate dinner together as they did most nights. It had become a habit over the years, back when they had children. Their lives were busy yet they always found time for one…

Camp Lake (excerpt)

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In retrospect, we should have been a cult.