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Hoss Men

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I stood there skinny-as-a-half in “big hair,” ankle boots, and black eyeliner. P. was in radio, not books. He had a sense of humor. I was researching a different man for a novel.

Mama Loves Birds

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Mama loves birds but is afraid to fly.

Moai

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Rain and wind and the pecking of birds

In the Path of Mary

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She walks ahead, dropping matches as she goes. Grassland is consumed by flames and when I arrive all is wasted.

The Donkey

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Since dawn doesn't understand my words, I will give them to the donkey, finely cut for him, let them ferment some time and add a few sprigs of lucerne. The donkey grazes in the meadow down the road and always welcomes me with a grin that displays his mauve gums and his…

are you a life force?

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are you afraid sometimes, in the night, in the wind as it beats down your maelstrom thoughts?

Dear Envelope Said the Stamp

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I have no more use for the beautiful words you used to like so much for me tosend you alone. See my feathers donot so much hide me now as giveme away; I tend to feel farfrom home. Forgive me this. Theend jumped by me quicker than anorange flower cricket on its…

deja not

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I haven't felt my soul leave my body

Of the FTC and the Human Condition

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Humanity comes without a choice

Brocades

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The creatures were thief-walking...

The Death of Tarzan

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Martín stood over the slow, labored panting as if it were a mystery he could not explain. The dog lay on the frayed pillow bed, a knot of fur and skin, in his father’s office. One eye, like an almond floating in milk, stared up at the boy.

InfiniDate

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He envisioned sinking his hands through his fat and pulling out the young, sinewy, long-haired Brendan Yin, the man Evelyn fell in love with. The blubbery shell would fall away to the floor, like a greasy banana peel, and the real Brendan Yin would be lo

Dirty Mother For Ya, a response to Memphis Minnie, with a little help from Roosevelt Sykes and Blind Boy Fuller on Mothers Day

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Just stay at home woman, and do your job / wash those dishes, mama, its what I pays you for

Wrapping Kevin

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Wrapping Kevin It was his last…

Pentagon City

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I had been in bed for a couple of days and by this I mean sleeping for fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. I don’t think that I believed in God anymore. I no longer knew how to stay awake.

Accepting New Patients

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You've had some truly awful shit pumped into your brains for years at a time now. The practice started a long time ago. It's not always your fault. The only lasting way to get it out of your head is to go and figure out exactly where…

Texas Was Better

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The buds were red--it seemed they were dying at the beginning. I had no idea what fall would be--bright fish composing on Beethoven Street.

Enough, Trump

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Enough, Trump.We've had it my dear, with your pink ties, your hairs, your swagger, towers, your plenty of monies,your tempers, your honeys. I don't speak for all, not at all, but for many who never did like your style or bile, your tenacious temerity,…

Kite Flying

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She may never know and it sureis a small world. She may neverknow and they have a list. She maynever know, I'm very grateful.She may never know and I couldhave sworn we were getting along justfine. I refused to say goodbye. I am still wearing those…

The Writer as Rapist

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She's at an artist colony in the state of Virginia. She's in her studio. She should be writing. That's what everybody thinks she's doing out here. Why else would she be in her studio alone at 3:00 a.m.? But there's an interloper. A new painter? Sculptor? Maybe he…

A modicum of madness

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for the moment/ you think you know what you’re/ doing and do it.

Drunk and Disorderly

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Growing up in Mississippi meant growing up in a “dry” State which it was until 1966. Dry State meant selling alcoholic beverages, except for beer, is illegal. Period. By period I mean there was no distinction between selling whiskey and stuff to adults and…

Hard Times

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None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…

Origins

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I was sleeping the night of a hurricane party. I awoke to lightning flashes. They lit the undersides of descending clouds, and lit the shadows of scattering dancers. The hurricane must have turned inland.

In Mimetic Sympathy with the Dark Core of the Galaxy

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It renders the inner ears inoperative-/ Music that once reverberated inside 
/ the brain-hut concert hall squeaks

Alone

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It's not loneliness I'm afraid of. It's how I would be happy to be alone too much.

Second Steps

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The train station offers a pleasant atmosphere, though it exists as an in between place. People only come here to go somewhere else.

Denial

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Then for a few seconds, maybe even a minute or two, we wallow in a sensual shower of raw emotion. Our defenses are nonexistent and we are overwhelmed with care and gratitude. Suddenly, we love our enemies and are willing to forgive our trespassers.

Doorface

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Doorface has a door for a face. Thus his name. He was born with it. The door in his face, not his name. No one is born with a name. The naming comes later.Doorface finds his unusual physiognomy mildly inconvenient. People keep trying to enter his head. No one likes it when…

Futurist

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What will become/ of the resource-sucking poor