David Alpaugh

Turns out Richard Cory had pancreatic cancer;
Was told he had, at best, six months to live.
After the initial shock, he called his lawyer
To help draw up the will in which he’d give
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I met the old man again last night
sitting by the side of the road.
I see more and more of him now
since my father died.
...

are begging theory
to spare them from experience
politics from history
poetics from the line.
...

What we did that summer evening
was turn our bicycles upside down
so the seats were on the ground
and the wheels in the air—
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“This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.”
—Robert Frost, “Directive”

At Mattel Toys in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1973,
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“Will you please get that cat out of your bed! ”
I shout, opening Janet’s door to say goodbye—
on my way down the hall, out to the garage,
onto the freeway towards work.
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For those of you
who come here
out of spite
expecting to hear
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Why must they turn and look back?  
Ruin everything at the last moment.
Lot’s wife... Eurydice’s lover...
...

as we walked along the railroad track kicking stones
Paul Herschak showed me what the 5: 15
had done to his Indianhead penny:
no feathers... no warrior...
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Today I am throwing old checks away
That lay in a shoebox five years, fearing audit.
They’re free—free, at last, to burn or decay.

Money still talks, but her ghouls simply say,
...

I look him over and almost want to cry.
Yet another of their adolescent “soldiers.”
Undernourished body, filthy, lice-ridden
hair—teeth a good pediatric dentist
...

I’m vulgar.
If I were wheat I’d be bulgar.

If I were a bird I’d be Crow.
If I were absurd I’d be Pozzo.
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That you could drop it on the floor.
That you could hit it with a sledgehammer.
That you could back over it with a Mack truck.
...

Down by the duck pond at Greenbrook Park
where we’d go summer evenings to catch
hop-toads—holding them between thumb
and finger so they couldn’t soil our skin
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“A contentious granite monument inscribed with the
ten commandments was finally removed from public
view at the Alabama state judicial building yesterday,
in the face of furious protests.”
...

(watching the evening news)

Someone’s campaigning.
Someone’s been shot.
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I am François
maybe you know me
perhaps when I was short of coin
I pulled you deep into a doorway
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“What God hath joined together, let no man put—”

I used to solder.
The reasons why are now obscure.
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