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How to travel with your Demons (5)

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She believes that this started with a phone call when she walked out of the deli yesterday. She believes that it started when it was snowing this morning in Brooklyn, waiting for her car to arrive, but the truth is, this journey began a long time ago.

How Circular Turns Infinity

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Saga of the Sugar Ants

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They’re persistent, I’ll give them that. They keep coming. And coming and coming.

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

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1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

Puppet X, 8

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After too much I had forgotten how to fly. There was a small owl with me on the old dirt road by the wind. It was a very dark gray, like an ash. Its beak moved, it opened and shut, opened and closed, but I had also forgotten the language

Leox

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Whoever came up with the term kismet is an absolute moron. There isn't a single reason, or word, that can describe what exactly my brain has concocted in the face of him. No, kismet isn't what makes it happen. It's my own stupidity..

House of Dreams

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The cat wound itself around Megan’s neck, its purring curling through Megan’s consciousness. She was the cat and then herself, both things at once.

The Work of Constant Rising

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The poet said, ‘I feel the fell of dark, not day.” but day it always is. Bright! Bright! the city claims its blue salutes; its stopping in mid-sentence at a name where fingers roam a stone.

From This Distance

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Yes, I can imagine it now/ how we could each disappear completely/ connected only through memory's fault lines/

Intro to Philosophy

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We now live in post-Postmodern Absurdist fear of course, says our smiling Prof. That’s the price we pay he tells us. . . .

To Swallow Us Whole

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The east wind probes through the eaves, pushing at the walls, as though it wants to drag us out into the cold, to swallow us whole.

Smite the hindmost of them, Joshua 10:19

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Marlene smiles at me with her lips pressed together. The young girl standing with her can't be more than fourteen or fifteen although she is tall for her age. She too smiles. She has an intricate set of braces on her teeth. I can't tell if Marlene has teeth

The Dirt

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The coffin-sized pit in his basement wasn’t freshly dug.

Counting the Stars

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Everybody's trying to just not get killed. Cut flowers. It's an illusion. The grand smell of our deathly beauty. They were so afraid of the ghost dance once upon a burning time that they decided on murder to get it to stop. Those were the days. That's…

Leather

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When I was 17, they said in an e-mail that you would get too drunk to function and that you would abuse them, verbally, and do way more than embarrass them in public. They said you'd yell at them and hit their mom for any reason. They put a restraining order on you.…

A hushed something

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Her skin is muddy earth/ I'd gladly play in.

Stella

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It was never this warm down where I was born from an excess arm. Or maybe I was wanted. As an arm, I mean. I could have been shed defensively, though I don't know who would eat anything as spiny as my species. Of course I don't know what would eat me; I have not been…

Touchstone: Excerpt 4.

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His wealth showed best in her full figure.

Spring Uprising

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Some people might find it strange and a bit obsessive to mow their lawn every day, but to Shiram it was an irreplaceable part of his daily existence.

The Lesson

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So, when Daddy grabbed that cock by the neck and threw him into the hole that he quick covered with dirt, I knew right then that men would play a subservient role in my life going forward.

Cassandra Folds the Poem in Her Hand and Loses My Heart in the Process

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Ours is but the very small effort being made here.But it's a good enough keeper for all of usto always remember off. All the tins thataren't really going to save usfrom starving, now are neatly arranged all around, justin case, stacked…

Paper White

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With each step, that cold hand steals ever upward.

Acute Amusement

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Nostalgia is irrational.

Why We Need To Keep Writing

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We need to keep writing because the great ones aren’t always that great We need to keep writing to insure that the future even has a future We need to keep writing because the wind won’t know how or when to listen if we don’t

Elevator Music

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Of course, no one can control what goes on in an elevator.

A Certain Boy

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Every single girl, from junior to senior (and a few counselors too, I suspected), wanted to make out with Marty Miller. Did he know how drunk with attraction I was?

Love in the Afternoon

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“What took you so long?” she asks. She seldom asks me that when we’re done, but today I feel ready to protract the glory, to tease out its rise and fall like the lingering chords of a Debussy pastorale.

The Mender

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I polished his shoes to an avid black; sewed buttons backand mended torn silk and cotton.His clothing was my busy work. Needle, thread, stitch, and iron,I was his apothecary of linens.Blood, wine, soup, vomit --these I cleaned too, until all theircolor and scent…

Round Dance

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Cold smoke from the crater Breathes on our eyelashes; The abysmal emptiness held Its breath just once.

On the Beach

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I wear my Whittier College mascot-logo-inscribed ballcap: FEAR THE POETS. On Lovers Point I write haiku. A man and woman picnic —— he never off his cell phone. I approach and hand her my poem. They depart without exchanging a word… or a look. man and…