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There's a Panther in my Poodle

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There are glasses in the sinkfrom the water that I drink.And the books in my li-braryare not dumb and ordinary.There's a doggie at my door;did I go to the pet store?There's a puppy on my couch-ywho was happy, now she's grouchy.Was a writer, now an authoror an otter; no, an…

Trader Joe's, on a Sunday

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When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.

Some Kind of Change

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She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.

Wedding

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The service was a disaster. The Protestants bobbed up and down. They didn't know when to stand, when to sit. I

Ghost Questions

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What if I never feel like a real artist? What does it even mean to be a "real" artist? What if nobody ever cares about what I make?

Why I am Afraid of Spiders

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SPIDERS

Parabola Tango

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Is there a recipe for / lasting happiness?

Iowa Voters

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I miss my fire from the first three races

Three Micros

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The earth moves.

some precursors of Mantegna

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Light. And shade. Line and shape. Colour, form and perspective. Wall, wood, ceiling or canvas. Pigment in eggyolk or linseed oil. Stroked by brush or spread by knife. On small panels or plastered on vast spaces. All these problems to be worked over and solved. Then …

The Guardian

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2002 or 3

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She was petite, pear-shaped, white, the girlfriend of a friend who'd done his degree in Russian Literature, but that's not the only reason I liked him. The husband I had for a while traveled whether he needed to or not and so I'd go with Julie and Phillip to movies,…

Which Way to the Vomitorium

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When I saw that Chez Panisse was serving crawdaddies (the menu called them crayfish, but I know a crawdaddy when I see it), I relaxed. I didn't eat the ugly creatures when my brother fished them out of irrigation ditches back on our farm near Roswell, and

Catalog of Disappeared Things

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He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.

A Straw Grasp

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My wife, Sheila, inadvertently clicked my e-mail address, too, when she sent her reply back to him and I read her poet friend's message that her love opened the window of his heart and she replied that his words were knocks that opened the door to her being, then I stood…

The Little Things (three versions)

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It's the little things that trip us up: a small hole in a level field, an innocuous root in a well-trod path, a disinclined sidewalk...

Waiting for a Terrorist

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Tents staked in desert land, a muted building of parched earth, in a thirty year old city with a napalm birth, they wait among gravestones in the sand.

Dream Life

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I'm walking you / through Pere Lachaise

Mariposa

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He would not take Prozac and talked Jesus to her as if from a bucket.

Anniversary Waltz

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He hiked the hills of her condition She biked the path of his delight

Proust's Moustache

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My brother and I had often debated whether we could get our father to shave his moustache off, just to see if his sophistication remained intact without it.

House Rabbit

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I would be proud to be your house rabbit. I make this case: I will listen flop-eared close to your every concern and exhultation. If I doze off nudge me. I wake quickly.

Debtor's Prison

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You should have marked that territory like a conquistador, mounted him like an equestrian, left no what-ifs in your wake.

Picking

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You hear the thrum of blowflies first...

The Birds

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My wife goes away for a few days to the little town where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.

March

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The lungs forsake their love of breath. The arms/ resist throwing off the small weight of sheets.

five discards or less

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weep or go stark mad your amanuensic fool will bury your words

Second Wife

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If things continue to go bad for her she will become second wife in six years.

Limboland

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She was a forward-motion girl. She never bothered to learn to walk as a baby. Instead, she stood up and ran.

Today's Going fast

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screw everything, youth is plinko