1754 8 8
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Before the saw came my fist through the wall. Now I kneel on the crumbled drywall in my son's closet holding a flashlight, peering into the hole at the plumbing parts I'm supposed to replace. On the other side of the wall the bathtub faucet drips. It is my second…
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175420
|
...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...
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1754149
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I assemble myself daily//
from the ready-mades/
of a fast talking world,
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175444
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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.
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175466
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He hung up and I sang some whiney lyric about wanting him back. You know the songs that say the same shit: I’m an idiot. Love me anyway. I’m Velcro with nothing to stick to and you’re a nappy surface that gives me a reason to exist.
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175453
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Now that school is back in session, we move through our days like cage fighters, tagging in and out of matches: The Battle of the Bottle, The Diaper Duel, The Pout Bout. So while I'm assembling a casserole for tomorrow, Susan feeds Margot. While she washe
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17531413
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The one-legged crow was back in the yard again today, as it was yesterday and may have been before, but yesterday was the first time I noticed it among the murder while using the binoculars that I often use to bring things closer, things like these iridescent and beautiful…
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175366
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My father was dating already. Her name was Shelly. She had a man-like body, buck teeth and red hair, a big forehead. I don't know what bog she climbed out of. She wanted to fill in for my mother, but I locked her out of my room. I just wanted to be sad and hold…
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175345
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I have/been you/years before/of course
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17531211
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Bag worms hang in their cloudy white hammocks. This is the month of webs when long-bodied yellow and black spiders sign their autographs.
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1753117
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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.
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175342
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{A} So I think maybe I am a robot. If I was a robot, I would do lewd things, metallic (cold, hard, shiny, heavy, malleable, loud, acrid, industrial, immovable, unstoppable) things. I would do the things I do in my dark powerless dreams. People would understand and…
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175321
|
What do you do when someone’s in love and you know it’s wrong?
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175300
|
I would be the mortal to hand justice to God. It wouldn’t come in the form of steel from a blade or by gun powder of a revolver, but by my disbelief...
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17532913
|
With such demeaning precarity, I can’t read/
anything more than a thousand words
|
175232
|
A woman walked in from the kitchen. She sat next to him as he poured what was left in the whiskey bottle into each glass. “They could’ve given us more time to make a payment,” he said.
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175253
|
Her time was spent in its usual way, breakfast, pills, organizing and cleaning. It was just hours behind today; hence the late swim. She was proud she did it, that she went outside. She swam, moved herself in the pool, chilly as it was. The pump made a wa
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175221
|
the champagne foam cascades like cherry blossom ensnared in the first gales of spring
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1752188
|
I told him he was just paying for his sins. He gave me a look. "Why me?" he asked.
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17521914
|
Maddy knew how to make a sauce. It embraced the meat in a thick, buttery ooze.
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17521513
|
I almost kept him
on the shelf with all the trophies.
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17521110
|
It was just lying there by the side of the road next to a mailbox, pockets turned out, weeds kinda rolled flat around it. I counted three nickels, a dime, and a cigar butt too. I could sure use the change for gum, but I didn't want to get near it. It looked dead,…
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17521512
|
You should have
marked that territory like a conquistador,
mounted him like an equestrian, left no
what-ifs in your wake.
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17521510
|
He died a printer finding late/
after so much selling himself selling/
a craft that pleased and paid enough
|
175230
|
As they left, Roddy kicked over a statue of a blindfold and half-naked goddess of justice. "I piss on you Justice!" he yelled. The bailiff pushed him out the door as he continued his rant, inaudible.
|
175200
|
Tough boys with loose pants come out at this hour; their long chains swing from low pockets, their virile scent bites like steel in the cold night.
|
175121
|
Xao Ping reflexively dug her claws into the plush chenille of the sofa and let out a low yowl. She knew the old lady would be mad if she tore the fabric, but she couldn’t help it.
|
175111
|
The world waited with bated breath as Tiffany stood in the grocery store aisle that housed the various kinds of fruit spreads for sandwiches and toast. She tapped her toe and nodded her head this way and that while she compared the qualities of two jars of…
|
175176
|
Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.
|
175120
|
I dared to dream whether she was coming or was she going
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