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THERE IS AN I.V. OF THE TIMES I HAVE THOUGHT, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT" AND IT IS SWELLING MY VEINS

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god bless my shapeless head. we are good at becoming older. i feel incredibly negative all the time.

Papadad: a portrait

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Papadad has one good eye. The other fell out during a rant and has since been replaced by a rifle scope, which he uses to scrutinise enemies.——Papadad is an authority on everything, even topics he has not researched. He expatiates on these at the dinner table,…

Obituary

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He drifted for years: No forwarding. No phone.

Frog Kissing

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All right, so the frog I risked my lips on (not to mention the contents of my stomach) . . . .

Do you dream?

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Megalomania is a kind of backwards leprosy. It rots your insides out while your skin glistens and grows tighter around your bones.

Not Tired

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Three hours isn't that long.

The Widow's Morning

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Whispers flew, like wild darts across the room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Right then, it wasn’t my job to figure things out; it was my job to cry.

Under Water

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When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.

Tatters

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They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.

Turbidity

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Where seldom is heard an encouraging word

To the Manchester Children's Monster

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“As you do it unto the least of these so you do it unto me.” —Jesus These children that you murder are not your enemy. They are not your pain or your personal sorrow. They are, if anything, flowers blowing and …

Zombies Calling

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The zombie apocalypse was long foretold as a rather exciting bit of bother involving shotguns and chainsaws, but the reality of it is rather depressingly boring.

His Laugh is My Yellow (or explaining skin color to a six-year-old boy)

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Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.

Body to go

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I’m squatting naked over the hand mirror, feet cold on the terrazzo floor, looking at my winking arsehole.

The Bicycle Mechanic

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The hour reflected those pleasant moments when evening hunger can be satiated by anticipation alone, before the pangs become demanding.

Upon Learning the Fetus Has Fingernails

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Upon learning the fetus has fingernails, Missy texts her boyfriend: It has nails! He won’t reply because he’s just left for war, but she does it just the same.

Disparity

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sacred ground bleached with the salt of bitter tears

Avatar Of Chaos

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He has one good eye and is missing the other. The socket of his missing eye squints with a disturbing and unfathomable insight.

Polaris

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Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,

Imago Mundi

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in which creative destruction holds the heads of entire populations beneath the surface of the water in bathtubs until the bubbles stop

Ribs

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The moun­tains of humil­ity went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes

Everyone Is Going Away

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“I don’t know what’s going on there,” Hank, who hated his name and wanted a more Biblical name because those names (Jeremiah! Matthew! David!)—although common—sound ominous, said as he pointed up to the top of the apartment building that housed the whores

Holding Hands in Public

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Take my hand. Take my hand and we will sail through the atmosphere leaving trails of rainbow speckled life written in musical notes behind us. We can go anywhere you want, whenever you wish. The moon in 1974. I hear the earth looks gorgeous during the seventies.…

Happiness

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Can you find happiness in the middle of a kidney stone attack?

Letter to the Bean Factory

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The figure was covered in a light blue chenille bathrobe, splayed out on her back on the floor by the glass door, her hair done up in large curlers, a slipper lying askew by her left foot. Richie crouched near the face and the rancid flame of bourbon lea

Serial

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He beats the girl, stabs her 22 times, rapes her, then uses his fingertips to push her orbital sockets into the back of her head before killing her. At trial, he laughs about whether or not there…

Contagious Blinking

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He pulls on his wispy goatee and shifts his weight a few times from one foot to the other. That doesn’t help. It rarely does, to be honest.

Time

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time. Night after night he's up, restless. What if she knew his plans? If only he'd bypass his miscalculations and slip through

Aloha

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It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

When Borders was Alive and Well

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I'd been working for two years as a barista in a Starbuck's in a giant, two-story Borders in an upscale mall on Rt. 355, a main artery between Washington D.C., and Frederick, Maryland. I'd finished my M.F.A in 2000 and was trying to build up steam for more grad…