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Breath and Shadow

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I do not like it when the dead look back at me.

Flirting With Immortality

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That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible. And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it

Dragonfly

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You surprised me then, / climbing onto my finger: / climbing into my heart. / Your long, cobalt body felt weightless on my hand.

Driving Through Mississippi Wearing a Chin Beard in 1964

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Ah, the nerve of hot-blooded youth! But the drinking age was only 18 in New Orleans, and we couldn’t resist the call of all that legalized drinking (even though I had fake I.D’s my roommate at Urbana had given me.) You and I had already consecrated

our ragged wits, ragged minds

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Our ragged wits, ragged minds, after acting out all, imitating all honey-like tunes, air song, excellence of song, true flower of the world. So the sun has some of its honey wintered away, to bring it into contact with such a human voice as yours.

With Torture Banned, US Tries High School Awards Night

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“He’s a tough nut,” says CIA officer Marlon McGrath. “He says he’ll die a martyr rather than crack before we get to the Booster Club award for outstanding female athlete.”

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 14

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I only knew that my heart was not in my life as I was presently living it. I needed the breasts of my Helen in my mouth forever, or I was going to die. Die! Ah, the life of a poet! I couldn’t go on living like this. Why should I go on living like this?

Crescent City, Spring '97

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It takes almost an hour before I drift to sleep on the bus. When I wake up in Crescent City, I’m surprised. Maybe I was going somewhere else in my sleep. Walking out of the station, it feels like a strange place. Somewhere I’ve never been before. The

The Theory of Color

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The story of the black pen drawing a dark hole makes everything seem so elaborate and obscure. Or even a seven-year-old leading police on a wild car chase to avoid church. Or naming a new band Fuchsia, which looks like the beginning of an

7th Avenue Local

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The harsh lights of the 7th Ave. Local revealed dark circles that had remained hidden during Vivian’s performance.

My Bossa Nova Years

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It is no coincidence that the bossa nova craze coincided with the years in which I achieved my greatest romantic success--first through sixth grades.

Taking steps to ascendancy

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... in view of her sixteen-year-old step-daughter’s barely-concealed hostility, she held her tongue, as she had done for the past ten days.

Lost and Found

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Adrienne found her calling in Africa feeding poor children or whatever the fuck you do when you're in the Peace Corps.

The Key

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"No idea yet, why it was so important, what could it possibly mean to her? Was it someone who she knew, a distant relative, a character for her novel, something was just so strangely haunting about it that she could see it even when she did not have it in

Her

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If you were looking for her She's in the backwoods grafting your skin from her thighs

A Proper Passsing

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He trudged up the steep, antique, spiral staircase to his study. Many hours had been spent in the sanctuary of this room, studying, praying, sleeping; however, now his intentions were much different.

Disparity

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These were strange realizations, and each built upon the one before until I was completely mystified and unsettled in my life.

Vacuum City

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What chaos comes from / insufficiency? What else can calcify dreams?

The Sin Eater

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Priests didn’t just disappear, not without a reason, so there hadn’t been any doubt when Merrick was suddenly replaced. No one had said it, but they didn’t have to. And her boys, thank God—at least he’d done nothing to them.

Leather and Something Like Infidelity

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Part of me feels like a wounded animal surrounded by hungry cougars. Another part of me feels like being mauled by a cougar might not be that bad. A third part of me wishes he could punch the second part of me in the face.

EAGLE

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It was an eagle in the waves Those eyes make no mistake Especially from a mile high Blue fish and tuna Too dumb to run

From T.S. Eliot's Copybook

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Thanks for the invitation, although you don't make the Undergraduate Verse Society Ice Cream Social and Poetry Slam sound very appealing.

The Scarlet Tanager and the Sparrows

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“Eat more bugs,” said an old one.

Revolution

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Suppose a bowl of mushroom soup. A table and a chair. A woman arguing against the uselessness of war. A bomb ticking in a man’s groin.

Runt Of the Litter

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I remember so many things … do you remember who I am yet? I attached pictures to jog your memory, including the house on Euclid where I lived. That’s my high school graduation photo. I was wearing my hair short that year, and blonde and natural,

Haiku For Birthdays

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Hunting the Thylacine

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“Ah, there’s the Tasmanian tiger,” the visitor says in an American accent, maybe midwestern. “It’s called a ‘thyracine,’ right?” “Thylacine, yes.” “Un huh. Thylacine. Extinct now, isn’t it?” “Oh! Let’s hope not

The Scream

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Coagulating sky, a turbulentheave of orange, blood red,hell's fire smeared —below, tar seas bulgeat the seams, engulfing ships.Pier-bound she streaksand wails as the seaswells and threatens to claim —, corpse head, baldeyes, her death robescling to…

And We Are Laid To Waste

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August 14 I remember the smell of fresh air. The feeling of clean air in your lungs. I haven't had that feeling in quite some time now. I guess few people have.

Good For The Ducks

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It's dawn. It's quiet on the pond in the Public Garden. The light is calm, the pollution is mild, and everything is still,except for the occasional cruising taxi. It's the beginning of spring-- tulips out, leaves…