2118 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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1276 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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2295 23 8
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1692 9 9
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Our Irish tradition is rich in Yeats, drenched in Bushmills.
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1326 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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2485 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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1390 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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1470 14 8
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Even music relies on what/
you know as music/
for its power to enthrall.
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1364 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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1846 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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2156 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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1561 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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1581 10 9
|
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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1801 15 7
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It is a sunny day in the autumn of the patriarch.
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1758 12 9
|
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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1789 11 9
|
He asked me to bury him in Vegas.
Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.
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2019 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…
|
1357 10 9
|
Your tunamelt cadence / Sank me to ocean floors
|
1529 10 9
|
Only last Friday, he was introduced/
around, smiling, healthy,/
a fine young man.
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233 12 9
|
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2455 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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2521 12 9
|
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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1772 15 8
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this reaching, this striving to love like it's there becoming something we need.
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1403 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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1458 19 9
|
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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1571 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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1375 12 9
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We perform our chosen duty— naming/
beauties and atrocities within
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1744 11 9
|
Neglected long enough, uncalled for/
by the shrinking language of the day,//
my words abandon me.
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1942 10 9
|
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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1709 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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