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A Lovely Ghost Sings a Haunting Thing at Her Own Reflection

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We've come this far. That's all we know. We've watched others reach their abrupt ends. They've given us this exact moment and we've taken it from them, sometimes without thinking. It's time for the next communication. I know what concern is…

The Cat was Wrong

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Bitch My brother is the only person who dared to slaughter a bitch and its five puppies. It is sickening to write this story. Sickening to read it. This happened on Sunday night when the muezzin called for the prayer. The puppies were…

My Dad Builds the House

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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…

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

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...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...

Parallelogical Circuit

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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…

Tomatoes and Onions on the Bed

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That led to the first aid box on the bed at 3 in the morning, but what about those veggies?

Sky Without a Song

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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.

Beowulf Is Pillow

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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

Then, But Not Now

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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…

Mine

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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…

For the young couple in the stairwell passed on my way to teaching Medieval World Literature

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I have/been you/years before/of course

Signs and Wonders

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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.

Baking Bread

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the champagne foam cascades like cherry blossom ensnared in the first gales of spring

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.

Stories of Love Under a Full Moon

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What do you do when someone’s in love and you know it’s wrong?

The Hound

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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...

Why Things Are Just OK with Me

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With such demeaning precarity, I can’t read/ anything more than a thousand words

Debtor's Prison

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You should have marked that territory like a conquistador, mounted him like an equestrian, left no what-ifs in your wake.

Annals of the Naked Rowdies #22

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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.

Green Animals

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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.

Before the Dance

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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.

Residual Flashbacks

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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.

Cymbals Guy

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

The End of My Second Life

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We are moments away from the end, and it feels like it.

A Drowning

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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

Black Orchids

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I told him he was just paying for his sins. He gave me a look. "Why me?" he asked.

Low-Country Squirrel

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Maddy knew how to make a sauce. It embraced the meat in a thick, buttery ooze.

Emily's Letter to her Husband's Lover

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

Octopus

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My ride, my good friend Morning was due any minute, but of course, he/she was always late. My costume was a dog. I was stuck to another dog, in the act of passion. A stuffed one. A basset hound. I said my name was Lightning.

Long Sticks Are Often Useful

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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,…