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Receding Haiku

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love weaves a perforated web between the spikes of longing

A Brief History of The Real

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A little contempuous aside by the critical theorist guy, Frederick Jameson-- that it was logically absurd to call anything that human beings do, produce or effect “unnatural,”-- has brought forth the following. We are…

O'Arlo's Journal: About Myself

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Every morning if I don't have to go potty....

When the Time Has Passed to Do Good

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Both his parents saved their pent up Puritan pasts to fill his ears with brimstone clichés. "Idle time is the devil's playground", he would tell me, scrunching up his face, stuffing it full of meat lovers pizza.

Marriage

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A cult is one thing; it defies common sense that a commonly educated person cannot escape cultist thinking and belonging. That cult, A.A., is girded by police, fire, therapy, hospitals, insurance companies, and courts.

Last Visit to the Toy Store

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The two walked around, taking in all the classics: the imported Russian matryoshka dolls of varying styles and bright colors; spinning tops, red Radio Flyer wagons, kaleidoscopes, and wooden yo-yo's invoked memories of Christmases past. The hand-stitched

Boardroom Bullshit

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Push the envelope

Grief Has No Welcome Garment

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Twice burned, it buries its graves.

Leg and Leg and Another Leg

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The robot may be grabbing onto something so big I'm mistaking it for the countryside, or the sunset. I could just be one cog in an infinite chain of leg-attachment, stretching from the cosmos to the sub-atomic.

The Clairvoyant Dwarf, The Jester, and the Tame Elk of Prague

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All were part of the household of Court Astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who lost his nose in a duel as a student and went through life thereafter wearing a gold prosthetic one instead and who met and fell in love with a commoner who bore him eigh

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 13

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The next thing we knew, the KGB started tailing us everywhere we went. They must have heard about Lenin’s Paintings, was all we could figure. Because, what if they were real? That night we went out to a pizza place where we saw the worst graffiti in t

Malady

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When the malady struck and the world fell dark at noon, she and I groped the walls and found our front door. Outside, bewildered, we heard the whine of jets in free-fall, explosions in the imagined distance. And we heard a car — or was it a truck that veered…

John Bonham

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There is an empty space, between every note in rock 'n' roll, where they have buried John Bonham,

Last Bell

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Coward, cuckold, she taunts: So be it. He's not a young man anymore, nor as clever as he once was, or thought.

Lonely Hearts

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He didn't hide it. He told her he was a mortician when he called. He had responded to her ad in the Lonely Hearts section of the newspaper.

The Comedian

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Sitting near her desk, like a dunce cap, red

I Would Make the Worst Cable News Anchorwoman Ever

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I'd laugh, cry, splutter with confusion or outrage. I'd probably say “Duh” a lot, grow pale, flush, and wink at the viewers. I'd furrow my eyebrows, raise one or both, and my eyes would narrow, widen,…

Flannery O'Connor's Tea Party

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“He's the one who took five tries to find your vein during your last blood draw, right?” This question spilled from the row of twenty EKG machines that now made up the hospital building's larynx

Or Do You Love It?

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published in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review.

The Art of the Ruin

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The ghosts run before/ attacking horsemen. A heart/ is ruptured by a spear.

Dishwasher

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Last night aliens invaded our dishwasher.

Your Move, Blattarian!

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Scavenge at that address only if you feel possessed of great courage, a profound faith in resurrection or reincarnation, or an impatient desire for a premature date with certain death.

Couples

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She served him pie she knew was ruined.

Madness

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I read my book of names. Over and over again. Our name appeared in the newspaper 254,991 times between 1896 and 1944.

The Red Slit

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Kitchen. sandwich. wife. daughter.

History of Moon Velveeta

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Only ever been twelve men on the moon. And one cheese.

Take the 40 Million Years Without Sex Challenge!

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Scientists have determined that a tiny freshwater organism known as the "bdelloid rotifer" gave up sex 40 million years ago. And you thought the spark had gone out of your marriage.

Over Medium

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He did it in front of the waiter and everything.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 14

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I only knew that my heart was not in my life as I was presently living it. I needed the breasts of my Helen in my mouth forever, or I was going to die. Die! Ah, the life of a poet! I couldn’t go on living like this. Why should I go on living like this?

Too Fast to be Fat

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As it turns out, hypertravel is surprisingly slimming.