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Improvisation on a few lines by Mark Strand

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I am tripping on poetry. Purple ink drips from my eyes like ergot of rye.

Insidious

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Thirty years later – and all the years in between – Alan Walton would remember how insidious it was, the anger that started that night with Quinton Harris, fifteen years old and the undisputed leader of the troop, and spread like a virus to the other boys

Unclassifieds 1

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*Must have excellent communication skills and be able to talk pretty good.

*cute little space bat with scissors*

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I AM A FIRE SWAN! THIS IS MY QUILT! YOU ARE MY QUEEN!

a girl's legs stirring the air

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I dreamt my legs were stirring the air up behind your back, as you lay between my thighs. Stirring the air repetitively, like a sea anemone stirring the water to feed the soul, the hunger between the legs and arms, for new life. Stirring up the salt

A D O N I S

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They sprinkled me in the holes of Auburn Maine. They covered me in grain, and salmon colored sand. My shell had swirls of chartreuse, and chocolate painted on it. I was made from glass and Gods left eye. Picked and sorted through, we all landed into a tiny paper bag…

Knocking off the edges

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The chipping sound started around the time Susannah reached puberty. Not all at once, it was just now and then at first.“What's that noise?” she'd say, and everyone would cock their heads to listen. Her mother eventually took her to the doctor. He said it…

renewal

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A raininess envelops you already in the womb. The water that began in the mouth a generation before you, away from any explanation, reason, or need for speech, and now seeks out the same dear lovable blood in you as those who came before you – these are

Red Lady Octopus

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I hand one of them the octopus and run out of the room.

Larry's "Gonna Die" Parrtayye

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When we started plans for the party, none of us wanted Larry to die, most of all Larry himself. Actually, when we first started plans for the party, Larry wasn’t dying.

Beautiful Are the Feet: Part Two

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Naomi saw an ad in one of those slick circulars that came in the mail. ' Wigs by Paula."

Heron

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. . . nor did mine eye apologize.

Rooftop

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People crawling up out of the chimney, then onto the roof, then sliding down it and off over the edge disappearing from view.

Something about that boy

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There was something about the boy that made me uneasy. Maybe it was the reverse widow's peak on his forehead or the way he wiped away his snot with the back of his hand. It could have been his red flannel shirt that reminded me of the hillbillies from the mountain…

Writing Poems

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We bring words together and set them up on blind dates. Watch them build a history together, get married and fight together. Make offspring syllables cradled warm in cribs of punctuation. Phonemes squeezed into existence by two parenthesis. Words…

Lost Poems

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The ride home after Basketball and a little beer; That's when the best poems happen. Poems pin-prick sharp Puncturing through dulled Senses while streetlamps pass Overhead. They find their way inside you But they don't stick. Poems left back somewhere On the…

Battle at the Bodega

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Mr. Lowell knelt down and put his face in his hands, his knees quickly covered in blood. Sobs.

Flowers for Our Dead Lovers

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We brought flowers for our dead lovers

and they are really living!

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These people, what is it with them? Is this who we’ve become? They left their great need behind when they were taken out of the country. They seem to live without thought of that blood. They do not respond to anything that calls to it. They seem sha

An Interview With Pere Ubu

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Performed October 21-22, Gallery 263, Cambridge, Mass. Kathy-Ann Hart, the Hostess; Ryan Wenke, Ubu; Tyler Catanella, Alfred Jarry; the author--technician.

The Ballad of the Headless Bunny

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I stepped down on what looked like a mouse Bloody and lifeless outside of our house. I took bag in hand and prepared to grab it When I realized the thing was the head of a rabbit!

Airline Passengers! Is There A Right To Recline?

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It's called the Knee Defender. But I prefer to think of it as the Schmuck Identifier.

Life Sentence

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“I believe it is some form of primitive recreation with a board and wheels,” the one and a half eyed orange blob said with an Australian accent.

Swimming with Bow Legged Women

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Sometimes, when possessed by a craving for an ornate day my very thinking becomes florid, cursive, prone to rolling my vowels – dotting my little I’s with a love heart, like an idiot who rows out in a storm.

The ZaSu Pitts Look-Alike Contest (Mens Senior Division)

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ZaSu played wingwoman to Gale Storm, who played herself, and quite well I might add–she had herself down pat! But I found ZaSu as second fiddle to be, curiously enough, more alluring than the first chair.

Walpurgisnacht

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Μayday΄s evening, Sabbath of all witches : the moon, Earth΄s faithful sister, sends her light to illuminate the way as the great Grain Μother, Walpurga the Sky God΄s maiden lover transubstantiated now within the dolly as the Spirit of the Harvest animating…

Confessions of a Politician

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Forgive me father for I have sinned.” “Tell me how you have sinned, my son?” Lies, father. I have told lie after lie in pursuit of my personal gain. I have lied to my family, my friends, to thousands of people who desired nothing from me but the tr

The Tombwatcher's Tale

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My name is Lu-chen Wyatt, and I have watched this tomb for seven years with undying loyalty. Tomorrow I am going away, and I wish to set down the story of my leaving and to say goodbye to Set-Yi, whose burial place has been my home for so long.

Heart 1.1

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you wear the warmth of death/ and your heat eternity/ blasts on mourn from your heart

A Little Bird That Sings and Itches

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I guess it was a foregone conclusion that you would be gone at the end of the year. A foregone conclusion that you wouldn’t be coming back, and that after you began writing letters to Sharon saying what you would do to her when you did come back in th