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Domestic Sketches

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The cats sniff at the small opening,/ one by one, in a furtive casualness./ They think the outside air is sweet

(I don’t know how the nights can be so long when life is so short)

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But I think what I remember most was Lynda really letting me have it. “Right now I’m seeing this married farmer out in Western Illinois. I met him at this bar out there called the Peppermint Lounge. Boy, they sure know me out there! Funny how every town

Bonne Fire

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And the voodoo pins pinged as, folding and imploding, she was reduced to a petro-chemical puddle.

Making Waves in Sculptural Math

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It was a summer full of rage and discontent. The air had a new taste to it, reminiscent of the tang of battery acid.

Three : Sixteen

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We are a city of overworked workers.

In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas

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In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas where over much crowd noise the three of us are discussing Yeats, Joyce and Lady Gregory. We’re in an Irish pub after all, plus the fact we’re literature profs attending a Vegas academic conference.

There are Grandmas and there is my Grandma.

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Last night Grandma got her walker stuck in the snow almost up to her tits. I feel the mark of a dutiful grandson is to come to her aid. And I always do. Even though she usually gets back home at 2 00 a.m. — or maybe 3 — sometimes she's late and we worry but I…

Without Forgiveness

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Click-clack, click-clack. The cadence of the tracks below push George back and forth between what happened and what is to come.

Fidelity

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The night before leaving, we have French toast and red wine in Matthew's kitchen, our packs and sleeping bags and tents surrounding us, looming like golems. Because we're nervous, and a little drunk, the conversation inevitably turns to grammar. "I'm sure I learned…

Night Flowers

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Night Flowers By Zofia Barisas The garden lies in deep darkness even in the noon of blazing day. A steamy pond lies still in wait for uncertain footsteps. Here aquatic green spiders, big as frogs, spin iridescent webs from leaf to leaf. Gigantic, ancient trees stand…

Silent Season

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we are tired, you and I.

Another Way

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If there was another way to describe emptiness, I'd word the endlessness of the sky, of the ocean at low tide.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 34

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—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?

The Dead in Paris, Parts 5 and 6

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The virgins smirk / // We got medieval on their asses

Visitation

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We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.

Zombicil

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I’m told it hurts. It hurts more than anyone ever thought it would. Every light in the room blinds you. Every sound in the room deafens you. The pain is excruciating as muscles and nerves that aren’t meant to work anymore are forced back to life i

Sarah

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Rumpelstiltskin cried because you belong to me;

The Sky Just Now

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has somehow gotten off its swaddled behind and put on its next new face, your own dipped in glass, of many green eyes for simple fair measure , lifting up my own morning lids with softly pulsating …

What We Talk About When We Talk About Photosynthesis

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Minimalist/realist short-story writer Raymond Carver was fired from his job as an editor of science textbooks because of his inappropriate writing style.

A Walk on Ferry Beach, Maine

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"and I turned to you, at some joke we shared, and saw winter ease its hand,"

The Day I Got Fired From My Foundation Job

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But of course, I didn’t get the grant, so my day job in communications at Katzenfeld continued. It was the first job I got out of college. I had been there for over a year and my salary was less than my rent and student loans combined, so I had to keep my

My Neighborhood is F*cked Up

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There is a couple across the street who fight constantly. I feel bad watching them fight but they haven't had curtains since I moved into my new place and no one in this neighborhood can afford cable. I know that …

Heart of a Poet

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He sneezed Hit the wrong buttonDidn't mean to kill him,but he didHeld onto me then, cryingand could not stopI feel so awful, he sobbedHe was asking for mercyAnd I meant to say, "yes,I will spare your life,"but I hit the kill buttoninsteadIt was an accidentHoney, it's just a…

As Poetry Month Ends, Prosaic Types Get Their Turn

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“I’m going,” O’Bannon-Krim says with exasperation as she throws trinkets such as Dylan Thomas beer coozies and Edna St. Vincent Millay hair scrunchies into a cardboard box.

Denouement

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No one has the right/ to script how someone dies.

"Don't look so sad"

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I don't want to see her again. No more pain. This one has barely healed. It hurt too much on that grey day when she said no to my longing eyes. "Don't look so sad," they used to tell me. I'm taking a different road now, I make a detour, I avoid her shop and her silhouette…

Silver Spring to Phoenix

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Vibrations of a cavern a mile beneath silver willows.At two in the morning beyond the Sheratona lumination of pollution intercedes realism.Cardinals and doves develop their melodyprogressively caught in beat/heart echoes,as with spelunker canaries fluting noxious gasa small…

Drug Series # 19: Heroin

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Billie Holiday and I want a cup of coffee and they tell us to go fuck ourselves.

14-B

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It was a forgettable face, to be sure. Neither ugly nor beautiful, she looked like any one of a million American women. She could have been headed anywhere, but at that moment, she wanted to go to 14-B.

The Weirdo Melody Has a Meltdown of Its Own

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They have their own homes to fill with bought and sold dreams. Their own babies to care for and feed. The world is big enough to have more layers than you can ever imagine. The lights will show you a way when you have turned too dark for your own…