1912 13 8
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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
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1129 12 9
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The gulls/
have somehow mastered the art//
of avoiding the nooses of six-pack/
plastic rings
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2131 23 8
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1523 9 9
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Our Irish tradition is rich in Yeats, drenched in Bushmills.
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1161 10 9
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The thumb, incarnate, knows/
the moment of the misplaced hammer blow;/
the tongue, incarnate, the cool invigoration/
of water drawn from the dark well.
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2299 15 8
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When you return home, one year to the day that you left us, you will wonder if you can do it all over again.
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1208 15 7
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Cacophony of an engine-braking eighteen-wheeler/
scatters the crows to fences, trees and wires/
in a startling chant of caw, caw, caw.
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1309 14 8
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Even music relies on what/
you know as music/
for its power to enthrall.
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1220 9 8
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It was cold in the church. The Lutherans were freezing to death. The Catholics brought their winter coats.
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1626 11 8
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But it all works out. I guess. Truth is something I'm sure I've never seen before, but the more time goes on, the Less I'm inclined to believe in it. Still I don't want To be one of those giving the finger to God And begging for a showdown with an…
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1959 10 9
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We were young, she said, it was all in front of us. We should never have settled for this.
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1398 10 9
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Margaret will take her seven away from his raging Irish hammers slurry Saturday night honks smashing red eyes. They'll board a secret train countryside bound where they sing the songs of her own dead Mam who lived poor in the world but…
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1348 10 9
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Catherine, after another haunted, bewildering morning wondered if there might be a way to hide from her nightmares. Was there a way to trick them? Shouldn't she try? She drove over the bridge, something she didn't often do, to buy…
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1603 15 7
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It is a sunny day in the autumn of the patriarch.
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1535 12 9
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All young and loud and big and I swear her face like a lighthouse lamp, glowing—I remember thinking, ‘She’s drunk at nine in the morning.’
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1639 11 9
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He asked me to bury him in Vegas.
Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.
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1863 11 7
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I've been avoidingyour beautiful fact for years in just the past few hours it seemslike it was the scariest plague on earth. Andit worries me becauseit's something so new that Idon't know what to dowith myself.Yes I wouldn't knowwhat to…
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1202 10 9
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Your tunamelt cadence / Sank me to ocean floors
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1338 10 9
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Only last Friday, he was introduced/
around, smiling, healthy,/
a fine young man.
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233 12 9
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2266 7 8
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We watched kids tweeze snapping turtles out of the park grass. They dropped them into a styrophoam cup and called it the snap turtle home. When they grow up they will bite your arms off, their father said laughing.
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2307 12 9
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One rainy day I walked to an out-of-the-way section of town where the buildings were old, and the streets were cobblestone.
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1593 15 8
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this reaching, this striving to love like it's there becoming something we need.
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1268 10 9
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The bird sat there some time. Several minutes. My wife and I grabbed out i-Pads and took pictures.
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1357 19 9
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One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.
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1427 15 8
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She is too stylish to be crazy, is what the migrant probably thinks. And he's right.
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1215 12 9
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We perform our chosen duty— naming/
beauties and atrocities within
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1516 11 9
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Neglected long enough, uncalled for/
by the shrinking language of the day,//
my words abandon me.
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1743 10 9
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It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.
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1527 8 9
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Throw them up there but try to make it look tidy. Try to become a little bit paranoid, just enough that you slightly overestimate how much they think of you at all.
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