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Dealing With a Small Box Epidemic All On Our Own

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Sometimes you've just got to dance to Be heard. You have got to sing out loud To be understood. Other times No matter what you splash 'n' paint on 'em The beauty goes on shamelessly Not arousing any type of newfound Curiosity. We're…

With Emily Dickinson as Walt Whitman Walks in the Bar

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Oh no, here is that Whitman man I’ve heard he is a bounder. Don’t look his way or catch his eye- Just get another round, dear.

Oversleeping & Getting in Trouble for It

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A few people bristled and looked at Jim, but since he was avoiding their gaze, they had no choice but to return their attention to their own table and pretend to pay attention to the conversation they previously had been pretending to pay attention to.

The Guerilla Drive-In

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“Don’t you wish it always ended that way? The right people fall in love? Romance leads to marriage? God, that was a great movie.”

Emotional Gentrification - excerpt Single Stroke Seven

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Sunday, Nolan and I drop by the ice rink on 10th and Alma to watch the amateur hockey leagues battle it out in an unspoken yet assumed class war: the buff, unemployed rink bums who can grind ice, cross-check, and stick handle like the pros, versus the dou

Rose Gold

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He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…

The President is Giving the State of the Nation Address Today

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But the world is smaller when I see it / from the crook of your neck.

Life during Wartime

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Nothing good comes from being lowered into a well to take a photograph, boy

News That Stays News

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Some trick of the morning light makes the tattoo on her ankle look like the burn from a branding iron. She had watched her father as he slept last night. He was handsome and innocent, like a baby boy.

Heart of Gold

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"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."

The Tattered

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The snake-like veins began to pulsate angrily, and viciously about his body. Quickly he rose up about the girl. His heart was now pounding rapidly against his chest. Outstretched, were his wings, the width of the balcony, white and decrepit and old, yet s

INVIDIA

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"I always disliked such display of religious fervor. I dislike religious fervor. Period."

Block Island Sound

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So I’ll wait for her to clear all burden from her head and feel the ocean move us. Stand up, walk over to me and kiss me as we glided through open water.

Graduation (For My Mother)

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I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

Honey

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Cellulite is legal to have, either way.

A Message from Your Local Superintendent Concerning Sex in Our Public Schools

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Such behavior will result in no disciplinary action only: 1) if all blinds are drawn; 2) all doors are locked; and 3) loud groaning is masked by appropriate use of the volume control on the classroom’s closed-circuit TV set.

The Serious Writer Tracks His Stats

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The officers carried him away in cuffs as he yelled "I NEED STATS! PLEASE! JUST GIVE ME THE STATS!"

Her Hair, a Braid

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She’s there, in a tin, loosely wound beneath sepia tissue paper, a braid to worry in your fingers.

Decomposition

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

We Are Not Joaquin Phoenix

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Joaquin Phoenix has inspired me to quit writing and purse my true lifelong passion.

DMV

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When you bring information, it does not arrive.

Novembering

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Cinnamon and smoke infuse the days that shorten, chill, accelerate.

Seascape

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They had been wintering on the Cape under gunmetal skies...

Burma

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Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…

The Karaoke Girls

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The Karaoke Girls are not appreciated. Not nearly enough and not often enough.

Ghost Searches Downtown

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No one told a story.

The Year Michael Got His Own Page in the Yearbook

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You can use your shoelaces or an Ace bandage. Loop a belt around your neck and toss the loose end over a shower curtain or closet pole. Pull. Try to lift yourself off the ground.

On Being Bald....

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Hair today...gone tomorrow The sun beats down on my balding crown.

Eve

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When God blessed creation, a ewe gave birth to Adam. When he cursed Satan, Eve hatched from a crocodile's egg.——In naming the animals, Adam marked them for death. His own name was a slow fire. Eve's was an inferno.——In the shelter of the Tree of…

Early Decision

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Melinda said forget the kegger last night, what we’re about to do will help you figure out whether you want to apply here.