Tag: poetry challenge
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Pumpkin Holiday
awake into early chill, season of frostand the pumpkins are all in, yards bedeckedfor holiday of unholy . . . neverone to participate, our family hunchesbehind cinderblock walls, hoards its candyand hides from the general hostilitysociety seems to bear. this benigndistrust seems born in the genes, showing trueas well in all mother’s sisters, one whonow…
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Down on Fifth
forever the beggar, king of no kingdombut the dusty lanes of nowhere, he smilesfor his dimes, a blessing for a dollar;at midday, or when whim strikes him, oronce the coins add up to a little something,he slips down to the huck’s on carpenterstreet for a magnum of malt (and a pintof brandy, E-n-J, on a…
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Boomer Granddame
sad-eyed she says he needs her, but she can’tstand him. he’s a habit she’s had fortyyears now: how’s she supposed to quit him now;she mourns her wasted youth, though praises godover the seven fine children they raisedtogether—though one is dead and a daughteris in prison for life—she wonders aloudto that same god where everything went…
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Roadtrip
it was time for a change of scenery;too long we’d danced in stagnant rain on prairiesand wanted for some elevation, orperhaps bigger sky or broader blue scapes.undecided, we headed west in the carplaying novels on CD as the milesslipped by, the asphalt river racing pastbeneath worn tires and we watching roadsidesfor occasional animals, hawks byday,…
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Sanitarium
she asks if I suffer hallucinations.no, I suffer them nothing; I do, though,enjoy them much more than most other folks—I mean, I like my imaginaryfriends better than my real ones, not that Ienjoy hallucinations more than otherfolks enjoy hallucinations; I mean,your average jo either gets caught up ingames of denial and confusion between,or among, realities—how…
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Nighthag
she’s followed me home every day this month,lurking in shadows, just out of sight. firstI laughed at my own conceit, my own sadparanoia. but then a friend asked meabout my shadow, so I watched closer,more surreptitious, and there she was, coyas moonlight and insidious as night.last night, I heard her panting outside mywindow, her heavy…
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Salmon’s Envy
I was talking to a salmon and thesalmon was talking back, he’s a friend of mine,about the value of oxygen andthe problem of gasping for breath once you’vestepped out of your element to walk inanother’s shoes . . . it occurs to me thata salmon speaking of sneakers is quiteabsurd, but there it is .…
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Between Saying and Doing
you once told me that we all want to bebeautiful. you told me it’s a naturalimpulse, biological, organic,written deeply in the genes, those micro-cosms whence we spring. you told me you werecertain that on deeper levels we allare equal and lovely and basicallygood; you told me evil was inventedby lazy old men as a way…
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how silly it all was
later that night, after that incidentwith the nudists and the police, I wasgetting closer to sober and you broughtover a bottle for us to share, though itwas only a pint, and you had been drunkhours before I started on the whiskey . . .we toasted the cops and nudists and madejokes about protests and how…
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From the Peak
snow falls on the mountainside among stonesancient as the earth, patient as stars, coldas the ice eating their skin inexorablyaway year after year into millennia.just as these mountains creep along their slowpath to oblivion by way of wind,water, and time. water falling from the sky,melting from sunlight on peaks high above. snow falls on the…
Fringemonkey Scribbles 