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El Desdichado by Nerval

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Give me back my / singularity, my tristesse, my photo ID.

Water, Water Everywhere

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Later I asked Mark if he wanted to watch, but his wife wouldn’t let him. She didn’t like kinky stuff, she said.

Space, Blank, Uninterrupted

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Space, blank, uninterrupted, but then a fissure, a crack, a corridor, and down it you're walking.

PTSD

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My therapist told me I have post traumatic stress disorder My uncle had that He fought in the war I guess I fought in my own kind Not between countries Between children and father Between husband and wife Between addiction and sobriety When my father got…

Clockwork

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At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.

The Signal

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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

Paperclip

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The Americans don't want us. They want knowledge. They want to eat with us. They want technology and weapons. They want the results of research they themselves are too craven to perform, answers to questions they ask themselves in whispers, in the dark. T

Noodles

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It's Granny hauling her crooked soul into heaven. Guess who I stole that image from?

A Little Bit of Syrup

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"I made up my mind then, in the backseat, sucking on a cherry Popsicle, that I wanted to be like Ruby’s mother..."

SMOKE & MIRRORS

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These days I wear a flag pin.

Collision

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That black hole isn't really a hole.

Scene from the Clinic

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No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.

77 Words About Saturday

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Another Saturday in April. Another set of scars.

Do the Funky Penguin--With T.S. Eliot

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True story: T.S. Eliot introduced Virginia Woolf to new dance steps including the Grizzly Bear and the Chicken Strut.

Verboten

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Scales were installed on station platforms. Those who were overweight were turned away

Storage Access Framework

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At first we thought metadata rich, non-hierarchical, network based, multi-provider filesystems were our future. An arduous journey but well worth the efforts for the beforehand unimaginable user experiences enabled by new technologies that thereupon displaced the…

The Death of Childhood Heroes (or "Roadkill")

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We were pushing ninety down the highway through a stretch of what rightfully should have been called the Badlands. We were both absorbed and coping with the rapidly escalating stages of desperation and so neither of us noticed when the yellow figure stepped…

Gregory Dates a Witch

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None of us took it too seriously when Gregory from underwriting said he was dating a real-life witch. Being an underwriter is not as interesting as say being a writer. That's why the greatest underwriter in America, Ajit Jain, gets paid per hour what Jame

I used to think the sun was the moon

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I imagined the sun to be the moon and discovered it was not on a road trip in California where I noticed the sun on one side and the moon on the other.

Dead Woman's Shoes

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Loving you, I always knew, was a job I’d only get via a dead woman’s shoes. There you were, the recipient of pot roasts, fresh bread, at a loss amongst neighbourhood widows and divorcees. A tide of them rolled over you in calico blouses, cut off jeans

One Regrettable Talent for Tragedy

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Vandalina embarked on her career of serious dramatic roles to widespread acclaim, her depth of feeling and potency of delivery winning her thunderous ovations and gushing reviews . . .

Reflections Over Jalpeños

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It seemed like only yesterday that she was making sure to remember bottles for Hunter and now he was eating regular adult food, and they were looking into tutors for next year, and Hunter was nearly four. Her runty Hunty umpkins was going to be four.

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter 3 - by Brian Lepire

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I’d made it to the motel parking lot when I heard the footsteps. A sombrero may make me look good, but it does shit for my hearing, so the bastards were able to scoop me up real quick. The first one gave me a hard slap on the top of the head with an opene

Writer's Cough

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Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

Young Turks

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There was a whole group of us Young Turk poets who hung out at the Savoy Tivoli in North Beach. Most of them drove cabs, (whereas I was now working in a damned gas station for Angel, my publisher’s man, who got me a job there.) They would double-park thei

SoliTaire

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She couldn’t help but wonder what 93 year-old Sohrabjee looked for in the torn, dusty lithograph of Marilyn in Persia one of the orderlies had stuck to the wall of the corridor outside Jasmine Wing decades ago.

Edward Ogle the Third

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Assimilated wheat germ integrated ant worm the capital of brazil.

The Galleries

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We invent our beauties// as we find them and engineer/ our horrors

Crackle

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As he brushes his shoulders against other people's shoulders until he almost has no shoulders –

Miss Havisham's Fire

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. . . catching her breath somewhere between ecstasy and surprise. . .