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Stretching to Understand

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You looked like someone I didn't want to know. I guess that's why I got in the car that night. My penchant for self-destruction was aroused by your black nail polish and the lavender circles under your eyes. You looked like someone that could hurt me, yeah, that's why I got…

Hard Times

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None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…

Give Tongue

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"Penning a slight of tongue well versed or worse, a salacious lie..."

Text Adventure

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Twenty-two tornadoes tore through Toronto, spiraling steel and stone to the streets where she stood, texting her best friend.

Smoke

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She wanted handcuffs.

Forerunner

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Morning time had come again. Kojo felt the beginning of the day, but couldn't know it yet. Awareness came first: the temperature of the room, the light behind his eyelids, how much of him could feel a draft. Then, before it was taken from him, he recalled the memory of a…

Sleepless #3

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My ex-girlfriends live in a pastel-drenched cabin on the edge of a hemlock forest in Canada somewhere,

Effort

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For you – because you deserve more effort

This Is the End

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I guess you’re gone now That’s okay I guess I can live with my own ghosts I had no idea What it meant But now I do It meant I was standing At the end of everything And did not know it

Hobby Lobby

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In human rights, a man and a woman may marry and bring forth a family. It is a civil right in the U.S. but not a human right (as far as I know) to raise a child singly without the knowledge of the other parent.

The Hangman's Poor Gift

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of placing the rope just so; of settling the veil with care --

Tiger-eyed

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The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known?

Lessons Learned

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What was so bad about other religions that their followers were automatically condemned to eternal damnation? The priests were so convincing when they claimed Christ was the only true way.

Make Music, Not Love

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We are/no more than heartbeats on repeat.

Song: Got a Sixth of a Cow In the Freezer

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I got a sixth of a cow in the freezer That’s not meant to be just a teaser I guess all I’m sayin’ Come on home and you’ll be stayin’ Cause I got a sixth of a cow in the freezer Got a rack and a half of ribs I ain’t tellin’ you no fibs

ouroboros

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if it were a child/ it would be in first grade this year

Say What

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Jane says to Roy, “What are you doing, Roy?”“Fuck off, Jane, I'm reading,” says Roy.“Well you could have just said so.”“I did.”“I mean just without—”“Yeah, well fuck off anyway.”“I've had…

The Need To Tell Somebody

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He just had to tell somebody. Anybody. So he called up his publisher, L., who agreed to meet him at Oliveira’s for a drink. It only took about ten minutes to walk there from his big duplex in the Elmwood, where he was still living with his wife among

To Hit a Woman (Lightly)

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Tension slipped from my grip on the dagger as my legs and faith fell apart.

How Would Jesus Drive?

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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

Three Wives

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The heart attack felt like the time Alison stabbed me with knitting needles. It made me want to see her. She was the fun wife, the first of three. I was morbid and full of regret — my drinking had driven them away, no kids in the wake. I decided to visit all of…

Crash

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My God. It never ends

A Place in the Sun

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What grabbed the mind when you heard about it was the way he did it.

Residual

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Our afterlife depends upon// what interesting shape

Honesty

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Bill decided he hated his neighbors on a Sunday morning in June.

The Ex Flies

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"My ex Maxine claimed red wine was the healthy alcohol choice. When we were married and I still had money she drank the expensive stuff, as if drinking Chateau Montrose 2005 instead of two buck chuck made her any less of a wino. She would have been better

Divorcing Delia

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I held her hand through two divorces, I warned her that gorgeous Geoffrey was homosexual when she was oblivious, and I fed her children when she was off at rehab (four times before it 'took').

Reversal

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For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.

Mausoleum

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you might as well be blind

Must Not Be a Working Bird

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I said, “That bird is hungry.” The sparrow was eying both of us At our separate outside café tables As it hopped around looking for crumbs. Then it would look up at us Expectantly.