Alphabetical stories

Debtor's Prison

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You should have marked that territory like a conquistador, mounted him like an equestrian, left no what-ifs in your wake.

Decades

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Every ten days, the Decadent Sisters assembled for dinner. Although raised together, they were each very different...

decades since minutes with moments to

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the drive-ins now are dead and gone / where once we laught through splatter films: / our screens too small, our horrors do not fit— / no monumental screens are left, / no close-ups show us what we think we fear.

December 1, 2016

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Polite society will cheer/ as another body is discovered// and disposed of. The cheers/ will drown out the gasps

December 15, 2012

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Already, I can see that, whenever Harold moves, some of his soul escapes, like an accidental exhalation, like breath on powder.

December 17

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When she finally arrived it was like a cello playing inside me

December 1999

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... and you can’t balance your checkbook or divide a three-way bill in a restaurant but you can still recite all the sixteen ways of SHAUN CASSIDY TELLS: 16 WAYS TO TURN ME ON!

December and a Former Cotton Field

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In the sad suburban subdivision with its cul-de-sacs and broken curbs

December Can Feel Like April Here

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Today the isobars are far apart.

Decent Men

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“Now let's just start again, real slowly, and from the very beginning,” the taller darker investigator leaned across the desk and spoke directly to the young male bank teller, face-to-face, “you say that she was attractive then — this,…

Deception

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Distance.

Decided

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Millicent asked me to stop over at her place for coffee after work because we needed to talk. While pouring, she said she was torn about telling me what her father used to do to her when her mom was not around, but she thought I needed to know how twisted her life was…

Deciding to Leave

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...Yet today, I fear / ordinary names for fantastic objects: Sex, Love, Mind.

Decision Mountain

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For decades the land the village sat on had switched its allegiance between two countries.

Declarative Sentences

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My wife is an angel. When I was a kid, that’s what we believed dead people were. Sitting on a cloud with a halo and a harp. We learned it from cartoons, but I think I’ve heard angels are supposed to be their own order, like

Decomposition

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She can never say why, but guilt rides her bones like the spirit. She rubs worry raw.

Decorum

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So, have your whiskey like a good son.

Decoy

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No one saw him arrive at the half-moon garden just south of Delancey, no one saw him hang his cage from one of the drainage pipes, but by the time the rest of us got there, the bamboo frame was already covered with silky, golden cloth that reflected the e

Decrucifixion

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"Isn't it time to remove the nails, and put Jesus to rest once and for all," Mary asks.

Dedication

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a special heaven

Deep Inside The Light There Are No Dreams

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Mack’s mind held a chandelier.

Deep June Pool

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I may be the shadow that I am, but I only ever loved you.

Deep Pockets

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Garage-sale variety olive-green corduroy, elbow patches, hems too short. His jacket pocket produced answers one afternoon like strips of paper from cracked fortune cookies.

Deep Pond

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It wasn't the sun sparkling Or the dog of the neighbor Barking.

Deer Doctors Black Earth

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The doctor bargained with us enough but I kept saying “give it a thousand years and we'll think about it.” He seemed to mean well and be smart enough to not be feeding us snakes, but he wasn't a praying man and I couldn't see past that look he used to give my…

Deer People

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There was no provision for keeping the post on the door, but I did not have the fingernails to pry it off.

Deerhead Puppets in the Forest

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A spark is a gouged word: stewed to annihilate, scrambled, botched in a pot to dry. Lead us to the quiver, let us tremble. Noon, we paw nails under rugs, run fingertips over books, rip cupboards from hinges and spiral open the machine, for the creature is near the roof or…

Defender

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He had what was commonly referred to in junior high as the ‘bullshit mustache’.

DEFILEMENT OUTSIDE OF HEAVEN, TWO MILES

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The road that passed through the swamp near where the cemetery stood, that is, the road that passed by the cemetery that stood near where the swamp lay—but no, that’s not the case, because that’s not the same road. If I’d been on THAT road—

deflated

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writing because it's the only drug i havesick on sadnessas the weight of the moment crumbling around me comes down some sweet second inspires…