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On the Anniversary of My Grandfather's Passing

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What I remember about my grandfather were his fart jokes. When he wasn't telling us kids about how young David defeated the mighty Goliath or how Saul the pharisee humbled himself to become Paul the Apostle, he was telling us about the baby burp that begg

The Pope of Rock and Roll

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Pope Leo XIII endorsed a cocaine-based drink and at the age of 90 sat in on a session with a castrato that is still available on CD.

Myra's Middle Name

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Maybe our whole generation is going to hell, but I’m not getting any younger or better looking. Life’s too short for the missionary position.

Dude Fish

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the wiggly word / floats toward the crowd

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 15

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Steve Bancroft’s future wife showed up at his door that same night, slamming her hand loudly against the door and shouting for him. “Steve, Steve, wake up. Damn it, come on. You forgot to pick me up at the airport. Who are you in there with? I said wa

i'll give you a large sum of money for finding my kite. thanks.

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sometimes we saw it in the sky. we'd stand on invisible stairs trying to reach it. running like frightened geese. we were going to catch up with it. grab onto its string. pull it down.

The Train Rolls On

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From my office window, I watch the trains roll in and out of the city. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of passengers staring out windows as the train slows, the ones who have another destination. I've been on those trains before, ones that took me far away from all that…

A Christmas Surprise

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"John is going to love it when he finds out that it pees," Bobby said. Kelly laughed and dropped a towel on the floor.

Truthful Possum

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The possum is sneering with truth. I can smell the blood under his fingernails. He has seen it all, the backwoods distilleries and the back porch propane grilles. He has slept under the beds of whores and kings alike.

Working Animal

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There is an air of sulfur about you. I cannot tell if / it emanantes from you, or it is the stink of your clothes / from having been in hell for so long.

Let's All Go Down to the Rising River

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As the pastor of a small southern church, I'm often asked by our younger members about this prickly notion of global warming. They herd around me, as adolescents are prone to do, and they ask me, “Dear father, is this something that we should fear, these…

abra

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Cars like sardines / Fell asleep keggling

For Starters

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A bar of chocolate stuck in pudding (don’t you see where this is going)

Poetry for Cats

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Call me crazy, but I like to write poetry. For cats.

Gun Play

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The guy – it’s Billy Krazik - turns and aims at Jamie Stockwell, sitting there calmly as if he’s in the play or something and he takes two to the head.

untitled

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THE LAST POETS: a blazoned signifier of designer label radical chic stretched across the influential chest of a not so radical chick a sinuous stick-girl a feted model, considered super arranged in cover-girl posture in full exposure …

To Explain the Sasquatch Sitter

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And I was going into the visions you get before you go to sleep. And I heard her moan. It was so beautiful. I moaned back. And she moaned again. And I did too. We pretended I guess that we didn’t hear each other. That we were moaning in our sleep.

A Day in the Life of a Nutcracker Ticket Scalper

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Talk about the Nutcracker–my nuts are cracking from the cold cause it’s freezin’ out here! But a guy’s gotta make a buck, and scalpin’ ballet tickets in sub-zero weather pays the bills.

Decent Men

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“Now let's just start again, real slowly, and from the very beginning,” the taller darker investigator leaned across the desk and spoke directly to the young male bank teller, face-to-face, “you say that she was attractive then — this,…

The Naked Wedding

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New Year’s day was my brother’s third wedding, and people gathered in the Memorial Garden, up the path above the main part of the camp. My mother, Terri, Quebec, and Quebec's daughter, Judy — who was Catholic and just visiting, and who wouldn't go o

A Vicious Deer

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A Vicious Deer The man came across the hall to talk to us. He was buying some paintings. He had a white deer on a leash. Fosca (our Malamute) said: “That's a vicious deer.” She kept putting her paw on its shoulder. I said: “You bet

Drummers

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My mother loves Phil Collins. When my brother and I were young, she told us she was his back-up drummer, that he'd send a private helicopter to pick her up whenever he needed an extra hand. Though we never saw her leave, we decided drumming was in our blood, and…

The Pearl

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“An attractive woman is at a ritzy brunch. She’s drinking a really outstanding Bloody Mary and decides to try a raw oyster on the half shell.

The Perfidy Peckers

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She was a sad angry woman who lost her throat. She traveled to Uranus for help. “How can I get my throat back?” She asked Uranus. “Go home and plant my seed inside your garden” Uranus said. The woman did what she was told. The charcoal

Why is a Hog always Corpulent ? (or Another Special Exhibit at the Met)

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"the initial hors d'œuvres, those good offerings that he would present to his select and redoubtably upstanding guests, at some grotesque banquet where elegant sows, in couture gowns, and astoundingly decorous coiffures, preen and plume about all through

So Different Now

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She’s right there in Thirsty’s. In her usual spot. Drinking her usual drink. Yuengling on tap. One after another. And he’s there too. Behind the bar. Pouring drinks. One after another. Sometimes they speak. But mostly she orders. He pours. And

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 4: In Which A Long Walk Is Considered

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The summer before cancer—the summer of the boy/friend, the summer before Max started high school, the summer when all the decisions about blowing apart their marriage were made—they drove to Martha's Vineyard. Astrid had insisted she wasn't going, rig

Arcana Magi - c.5: Will

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She stood there with ladylike maturity; her eyes were frightening with an unforgiving look, visible in her tears that pierced the very core of Oryn’s heart.

We're The Atwoods

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I remember a time when Calvin, my husband, was like Winnie the Pooh and I was a jar of fine Provençal honey. No amount of my sweetness could satisfy his craving for me. He would spread me on his toast with butter at breakfast and mix me with peanut butter

Frankie's Girl

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Frankie's girl had a habit of making any guy she walked past turn his head and lose his entire train of thought-we all knew it. Frankie was the only one who asked her out to have lasted long enough and worked hard enough to the point of putting a ring on