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Significant Things

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“This is a Kneeling Bus.” They’re all kneeling buses, why do they even have to say that? Almost every person gets off in the front now when it says it even says right on the bus to please move to the back and exit from the rear side doors. I hate having t

Splinter Off

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When we lived in the attic we were make-believe.

More Abandoned Sentences

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By morning it was over. I crawled farther out onto the ledge. The three year old was screaming like Donald Duck. Trains ran into the night. Several pigs entered the open window.

Oddities

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One day my wife got so mad at me she raked her fingernails down my face.

Ezra Stoller

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captured by his lens and plates/ before humidity and hydrocarbons/ smudge the crisp clean lines

Adrift

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Picking up a perfect stranger—perfect meaning dead, in this case—and shaping him into the man you’d want him to be is not so easy.

Capture This Thing

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Take it from inside you and draw it out. Do it before it decides you are not what you seem to be and, as a result, holds you up by the thumbs.

Truth at a Bonsai Booth

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I envisioned bound feet of ancient Asian women who wore embroidered slippers that hid grotesque disfigurements.

Brot und Käse

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I hoped I did not look as panicked as I tried not to feel.

Henry and the Hungry Hamper

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  Henry's had a messy day. He splashed, he jumped, he rolled and played. He wrote in books, dressed up the dog, And on the wall he drew a frog. He's wearing dinner, seconds too, And for dessert some fruity goo. It's come to live on…

The Marriott Hotel, Downtown Brooklyn

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There was a time when she could quell the loathing that Fred inspired in her. She could force it down. Back then, for instance, when they’d been in counseling, the ball of hatred had only been a little, overripe orange - squishy and occasionally mushed

patti, did art get us?

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often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/ we never had any children, he said ruefully/ that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/ robert, dying: creating silence

The Party

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Mike poured vermouth over his Campari and ice. “Gotta say, you have the most amazing view up here.” “Thanks. It's great when I'm washing dishes.” “Yeah, and the view in your front room isn't bad either. This cocktail …

Heart vs. Head

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Where was it? Tino wondered, craning his neck, plastic bag in hand. He would have sworn there was a Barnes & Noble along this stretch. Had it closed since his mother had last been in the hospital two years ago?

Daniel in a Den of Liberalism

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He had forgotten what the culture was like in certain parts of the city. At the lower end of Second Avenue, there lived an amalgam rare anywhere in the world, save other pockets of Manhattan. Punks, hippies, gays, the homeless, and artists of all strip

The Pixie

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On the bank of the stream, we take off our clothes and dash into the water.

The Sky is Simply White

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The rain is no terrible epitaph

Zen and the Art of Enjoying the Last Laugh

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What doesn't kill you gives you great material.

Major Chaos

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Major Chaos came here one of those hot days. I was washing the floor, wearing old clothes, when he knocked on my door. Since I don’t have many visits, I let him in. At first, he seemed like a soldier, but upon reflection I realized he was a big green fr

Freeway Deaths Attributed to Talk Radio

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"I was just coming home from work listening to Consumer Dave," said Murrietta resident Mick Baylor, through his attorney, "when my eyelids started getting droopy. And he was just talking about how Circuit City was going out of business and I was. . .well,

Ten years later

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Are you asleep? He says. Wake up.

A Body Divided, 5

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Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

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I'm trying to read a Poetry in Motion poem on there wall of a crowded electric train

A Bear Story

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In the spring, my father would dress for class in a bear costume and chase students around campus.

Noah's Ark, NYC

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Two by two they come walking down 7th Ave girl with girl boy and girl boy and boy two pigeons strolling side by side two robins two crows walking stiffly like two pieces of anthracite coal two spiders two dogs sniffing each oth

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 2

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Sometimes I have really violent dreams where I smash Libby’s face in with a liquor bottle, a brick, a mounted boar’s head... really whatever my brain makes available to me. I always wake up satisfied.

Winter Hawk Jack

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Jack, man in black, sporting manicured talons, his smile an iced knife.

Hobo's Pastor

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The three of us traveled seven hours that day and Al traveled as far in the service of finding the right tool for his writing.

The Waves

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...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.

Dreams-in-progress

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A team of reggae journalists played and an unknown man came after work for me in a kilt.