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Floozy
By Jon Carr

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     At 4 am she found herself under the Broadway Bridge, Mrs. Harney said. Mama said that the woman got no right talking about who done what and where. Mrs. Harney come from a good family, Mama said, but they all gone now. Just poor old Mrs. Harney left. I wondered where families go, I been thinking about that. Mrs. Harney lives in a nice house. She got pretty lace on the windows and Mama keeps it so clean your sneakers squeak on the floor. I go to Mrs. Harney's after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's when Mama cleans. But Mama only really cleans in the morning. After lunch she just usually talks with Mrs. Harney. Mama says Mrs. Harney's a lonely old woman. I ask Mama why Mrs. Harney ain't got people visiting her? Mama tells me ain't ain't a word.

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In those days    I know now    words declaimed the wind
besides pebbles, there were moons, but no lamps
the stars would emerge later from a brawl between two flintstones...

LES MOTS I
By Venus Khoury-Ghata

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Les mots    je le sais maintenant    déclamaient du vent à
    l'époque
à part les cailloux il y avait des lunes mais pas de lampes
les étoiles sortirent plus tard d'une empoignade entre deux
    silex...

Homer Simpson Suppressed
By Paul Krassner

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     Dan Castellaneta, who is the voice of Homer on The Simpsons, and I have long been fans of each other's work. I was impressed by his versatility as an actor on The Tracy Ullman Show, as well as his live appearances with an improvisational troupe and his own one-person, multi-character show. He in turn enjoys my writing and has attended several of my stand-up performances. So, when Danny Goldberg, who runs Artemis Records, invited me to do another album, I felt comfortable asking Castellaneta if he would consider introducing me in Homer's voice.

     He said it would be "an honor and a pleasure." I was very excited.

FUSEE
By Les Murray

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A complex iron finial-head
still jazzling from the forge
smokes in its ash and sparkles
in the shadowy workshop -
but no:

The Siren's Song
By Fredric Raphael

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     1942. 'One cannot always like the unfortunate.' The second secretary from the British Embassy, Gareth Whitebrook, whom Iakobos has been deputed to see, makes this remark as if it established something in common between them. Neutral tone, neutral ground; nothing personal; on we go then, you and I. They are on a quayside on the Bosphorus; two men allotted the same short straw. Iakobos frowns, as if the English language, not the messenger who speaks it, were what puzzled him. 'Nothing more H.M.G. can do.' Having done what? Official sentence is passed; full stop. I. nods in disagreement.

From Here To There
By Luisa Valenzuela
Translated by Jonathan Tittler

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FELINE ITINERARY

I was a shipwreck on Lake Titicaca - Nicanor Parra.

     Forgiving everything I shall go out and populate the world with deathcats. That's certainly required in Rome, for example, or in Chucuito: there people don't die they morph eternally like flies they morph. In Chucuito I saw an old lady turn into a stone, a stone into an old lady, old lady into stone, and so forth until all the ruins were human beings and the human beings, ruins. As it always goes. But I will be magnanimous and making the enormous sacrifice I will take the cats to Chucuito so they eat the fish in the lake, which are dead, and fulfill their destiny.

De Aca Para Alla
Luisa Valenzuela

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Itinerario Felino

 Y naurague en el lago Titicaca - Nicanor Para

     Perdonándolo todo saldré a poblar el mundo con gatos de la muerte. Buena falta le hacen a Roma por ejemplo, o a Chucuito: allí la gente no se muere perdura eternamente como moscas se transforma. En Chucuito vi a una vieja convertirse en piedra, a una piedra en vieja, a una vieja in piedra, y así como en cadenas hasta que todas las ruinas fueron seres humanos y los seres humanos, ruinas. Como siempre sucede. Pero yo seré benévola ya costa de enormes sacrificios llevaré los gatos a Chucuito para que coman los peces del lago, que está muerto, y cumplan su designio.

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Chuck Palahniuk was telling me he'd just finished Lullaby, "the book for next year." It was a dreary November day & the book's release was still nine or ten months away. A big theme of the book, he said, "is what we think of as nature - isn't natural. Nature is so filled with invasive plants and animals that I begin to question if I've ever seen a natural place that wasn't in some way, if not completely, replaced by the invasive culture. It's things that people don't want to know but I find myself having to know them."