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Popeye

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In one of the cartoons I watched as a child, Popeye the Sailor gives Olive Oyl a bouquet of flowers. She is thrilled, he walks on air, thinking they will marry. His one-eyed heroism is soon challenged by Bluto however, who pours cement into Popeye's bath. It goes…

In This Lifetime, Oh How We’ve Drawn This Close

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Together at last, we'd gotten this far toward the warm end of those sweet Promises we made, once, with our sincerest written and passed down smart Words, done all on our own deeds, with some real gusto, and offered them as Christmas Lights,…

CBGB

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Lou Reed was sitting in CBGB, I was sitting on Greenwich Ave. and West 10th street. I didn't know him then and I didn't know him later either, but we were both there.

Penny cosmogony

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On his knees he divinates diverging lines with belly laughs he levitates the rebel spheres into geodes .

If I Were a Chemist, Not Now, but Maybe In The 1920s

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She said, “I think I’m pregnant,” but I thought that the sidewalk looked cleaner than usual,

First Rain of the New Year

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Compartments trickle together/ in light diffuse and unreliable./ Fortify yourself against the day.

Delphi and Parlor Games

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Ghosts// and the voice of God/ never actually visited you

I Can Take Satan

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It was all I was convinced / in designing the encounter.

The Watch

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I packed food for a lifetime, clothes and boots, all the guns, and the audio of our poetry...

Brief Requiem for the Twentieth Century

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The crumbling meccas/ gnaw/ Each fiscal year’s quota of blood and bone,

Гумилёв и Ахматова via странников

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Walking down an unfamiliar street, / I heard a sudden caw of crows, / some thunder afar, strums of a lute— / a streetcar came flying along.

There is no such thing as stillness

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.

Paper House

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Because if they’re wavering, it's about the coin, always about the coin.

From the Plague Year 2020 Part 2

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So today was basically mellow. The blue jays argued over who would bathe first in my fountain. When a squirrel showed up, the birds left, but the doves took their place. Our local woodpecker, apparently recovered from a day long headbanging session, returned to the…

Small Potatoes

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I kiss his sunburned nose, so nice under the beach house. We hear the shower of palm leaves like wings getting ready. We talk about a time we'll no longer know each other, when he'll be sad in a bar in another state, slipping and sliding and petting lost dogs in the parking…

Let Me Drown

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Our local low rent ice-based superhero said he’d had enough and would check back in early spring.

Whatever Happens

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When Matthew calls I'm sautéing garlic for the polenta and Joe is squeezing buttercream rosettes from a Ziploc bag onto a spice cake he made from scratch. Or trying to—we…

First the Newborn Birds on High and Then the Awful Climbing Beasts

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"Stop watching the news!Because the news contrives to frighten youTo make you feel small and aloneTo make you feel that your mind isn't your own"--MorrisseyThe world has gone crazy, but please let me make you One of my healing songs. You can eat it now, if you…

Lost in Suomi

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Wind pummeled me awake, smelling of pine and some quality of newness I could not identify...

Love and How It Gets That Way

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and we spun you, / spun you!

Swimming Lessons

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I’m from the Land of Sky Blue Waters. I grew up in a lake. I think I’m half fish.

Dragon Lady

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What happened later that evening is unclear. When Mickey got back to his quarters, he was in good spirits. Buoyant even.

A Writer Abroad

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Here’s an obvious fact: I live in Germany, but don’t speak much German. Okay, I speak very little German. Truth be told, hardly any.

Beach Scene

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Larry works the concession stand / near the pier.

Eggman

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The last one I tipped over the edge was just like all the others: fragile, pale, humming to himself as he sat on the ledge overlooking the gardens.

Homing Pigeons

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Sometimes, they beat their masters home...

There is a Sadness

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now I cannot shake. I am only one person. Thereis a sadness I cannot understand. Fathom. Control. Manipulate. Detonate.I used to kiss her tenderly. Do you think this sadness is wise to us? Don't point that gun at me! There is a sadness. There is another war. Iam…

A Place in the Sun

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What grabbed the mind when you heard about it was the way he did it.

Poet Begging on Subway Car

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The subway train pulled up and I shuffled on board. I announced to the whole subway car: “I’m a poet.” And that was all I needed to do. It was like a miracle. Someone got up immediately and gave me her seat. People got in an orderly line and began

Land Fill at Morning

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The gulls/ have somehow mastered the art// of avoiding the nooses of six-pack/ plastic rings