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The Red Suitcase: (Conclusion)

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—You must be joking, he laughed.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 10

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O’Toole signaled again with two fingers. The night was young. Suddenly I had to go home to my lovely Penny. All I knew was I didn’t want to end up drinking at a hole like this with my head down on the bar.

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..."

Driving Old

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I drive old now

Daylight

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not to free ourselves// from suffering// but become the window// through which it sees//

Cymbals Guy

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cymbals guy — another way of saying hey turdshitface haul your skinnyass to the front of the bus.

SECRETS

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they don't tell

Tangerine Slip Cat

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I knew my cat was capable of telepathy when I began to have isolated, random, non-cause-related thoughts about food and feelings, little signals, and I realized that the signs — images of tangerines, tuna, bones; the idea of choice; slate, names; the feeling of…

Self Portrait with Google

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Try it with and without/ middle name or middle initial.// Try different keywords.

INGOB

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They think Van Gogh heard music when he looked at his starry nights. Working at a Bingo parlor, you get to believing in a one-in-a-million shot just as much as you doubt the rarity of a sure thing. I only worked part time at the bingo parlor because I ne

Snow Angels (after Sandy Hook)

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The weatherman can't predict accumulation. He can only tell you it will be cold. Expect ice, wind, snow, expect delays. Your daughters play outside, dancing around the Evergreen, its branches bearing the weight of snow, its branches

The Nightly Dance

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The electricity animates my body into myclonic dance. I do not rest. I dance with the demons; I dance with Nijinsky rage. I dance with the fury of Saint Vitus and his wooden cross. My shoes are fashioned with my own fear, tanned and stretched over my feet

Vivian

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When her husband left she was not yet thirty

The Rhythm of the Cows

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A cow wanders onto a roof and falls through the skylight. It's a calamity, but such an innocent mistake. Mightn't you amble onto a rooftop once upon a full winter snow in Vermont?Another cow climbs a gravel mound in…

Metastasis

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I am eternal/ as long as the power holds

13 fragments of a somniloquy, overheard by a burglar lost in the basement complex on midsummer night

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1. there's nothing more to say about it and I don't want to be drawn2. beautiful she couldn't hear me anyway I was desperate and there were moths3. they'd replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked4. none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a…

Glory at the Motel 6

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Rory and Betty Sloan entered the first of 40 rooms in the new Motel 6 to place Holy Bibles in 40 night tables.

Understudy

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All young and loud and big and I swear her face like a lighthouse lamp, glowing—I remember thinking, ‘She’s drunk at nine in the morning.’

Ackermann

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When he took Medieval German Lit in graduate school, Ackermann read Der Ackermann aus Böhmen by Johannes von Tepl. His professor was amused both by his last name and that his grandparents were Germans from Bohemia. Of course, only his grandmother was from Bohemia and…

Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Tree

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I found him dead underneath a sycamore tree. I knew it was a sycamore tree because of all the acorns surrounding the body.

Panorama

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Ben tossed the newspaper aside, muttering. Carol, curled up on the sofa, peered past the glasses at the tip of her nose and past the crossword puzzle. "What?" "The Brits wanted to fight rather than be taken hostage. They had an escort boat ridin

Memorial Day

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War came home tonight. We weep and hug, while he stares over our shoulders, like the statue we'll make of him. We pour a drink for his shaky hands, wheel him past his friends the dead, and lie to each other about other, far off places as if we knew.

Self Help For Daydreamers

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I think I’ll get a tattoo. Not just any tattoo, one I’ll regret. I’ll catch people peering at it, trying to interpret the twists and swirls of the black ink on my fair skin.

Bricks

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There are things we must not say.

Prior...More

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He was drinking heavily again and complaining that there was nothing fresh worth writing about.

The Glass Shop

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She burst Into the glass shop

Hearts

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She thought of an animal checking a scent before mating, and imagined that he said to himself, “All I need is for this woman to be hitting on me.”

Molly was a F***ing Tourist

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The boys drank in one room. The girls in another. Always the same, no matter the letters. Greek Letters. Shabby sofa on the burnt-out lawn.

Emily's Letter to her Husband's Lover

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I almost kept him on the shelf with all the trophies.

The Red Suitcase: Part 1

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He had become an accessory to a murder.