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Tour Guide

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“It is not your shoes the Americans complained about!” Roberto yelled, sitting behind his desk, cigar smoke curling around his purple face. “It is your UNDERWEAR!”

Thanksgiving

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When our kids were very young, my wife and I believed it was important to give our children traditions that they could grow up with. One such tradition that we shared each Thanksgiving was to walk down by the cliffs along the ocean. We'd all go, our kids…

The mannequins

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I try to enjoy my bookbut the mannequins keep tapping at the windowWhen I look up they vanish Outsidefibreglass clouds are kept in placeby invisible wires——Sometimes the mannequins …

Wiscasset, Maine

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She bought a dog with short legs to make her own legs look longer.

The Jade Rabbit, Chapter One

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Even when the sun is gone and things get dark, usually the moon comes to reflect some light of hope until a new dawn can emerge

Chip's Bar

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Bill texted me at 3:44, invited me to join him at Chip's, where he was having a drink. Chip's Bar is a great dive, and I accepted without hesitation. Ten minutes later I was on a crowded bus filled mostly with fat people, and twenty minutes after that I was…

Every Thing is a Hole in a Thing That It Is Not (A Theoretical Fiction)

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A is a hole in the series of letters, each of which is also a hole in the series of letters.

The Replica City

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From somewhere beneath the train, steam rose, which was—of course—puzzling as the train was powered by electricity. The steam condensed on the windows of the cars, making tears streak across the surface. Perhaps that was why the woman’s cheeks were shinin

Mississippi

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“I won't live here,” Beth said, waving her hand to indicate the small Southern town in which they were having dinner—the most delicious fried chicken either of them had ever tasted—in a restaurant located in an antebellum mansion. She looked…

West Side of the Tracks

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The bus heads west on Route 36, toward the next stop – Howell, New Jersey. After driving ten minutes, and after crossing the tracks, the bus gets a flat.

For My Sons, a Poem

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In time, I will forgethow he said "smooshie" for "smoothie"and "eyebrowns" for "eyebrows,"how his upper lip dimpled when he laughedin that uproarious, wild toddler way.How he wheedled to be wrapped and rocked,after a bath, even at age five,his long calves uncovered by…

Fanmail to Ellen Page

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You and I will never meet. You will never even know I existed. Even in dreams you will never imagine me. Someone told me once that your sleeping mind cannot conjure up new faces. It just spits out all the ones you’ve ever seen and that’s it. That’s it.

Sparks Beneath the Surface

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If I should wake/ before I die,/ just shoot me through/ the one good eye.

Blues Repeat

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don't look at me honey, I fell on the table, my hair is on fire, my heart is unstable

Quicksand

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At 25...

The Beach

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The wind blows off the ocean soft and cool. I close my eyes in hopes to strengthen my sense of touch. A bit of sand wriggles through my teeth; crunchy and salty like spoiled oven-roasted peanuts. I imagine the air would smell like low tide if it wasn't constantly…

Santa's stuck

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Santa’s stuck/you say? In the chimney of course./The lard-arsed ol’bastard struggling

What I'd Like to Say is That Something Special

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that doesn't need any words to arrive fully formed, or too many words to be believed in at all I should say, a little something we can simply send back and forth across your time and my space without having to talk at length about it, but being a …

the menace from prague

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...the dead have...communicated into the high tech microwave towers of modern Prague. And their messages now may mount to the stars, confusing millions.

Ah, The Drink

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My mother was Irish as Paddy's pig. So all her family. Lovely people they were. Also, seldom seen among the Folk; stone cold sober. My father's family; Bavarian German. Bavaria's the wrong side of the German tracks. Frankfort people laugh at Bavarians as people in…

Mosaic

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MOSAIC Your eyes coal-rimmed, busted, burned by betrayal. You and I, knee to knuckle, skinny with disorders and blurred around our edges. Challenged by our experience and the ash of past-love dusting the grate, the state, the…

Navigation and Perseverance

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“Gladys Miller!” the dog shouted. “Live a little. TiVo it.”

What I Did For Pho

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Once upon a time there was a Vietnamese restaurant. And then there were two, and four, and eight...

Mockingbird, Mockingbird

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I remember when I first came to California, I heard a mockingbird sitting in a tree, calling out in the names of other birds. It was down in L.A. I was staying at my brother's house in San Gabriel and driving in every day to the campus at UCLA to go to s

Bloodsport

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At last one of the men on the line bowed his head in a silent prayer for deliverance from what was about to come, then lifted his head and shouted loudly for his fellows to charge.

black tulips

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the memories return like they do every year at this time

yet mo bands

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Doofus National Puppet Radio Total Bogascity Sex Cowards Mein Kampfire Boner Hyperventilate Sewer Video Rats Psychic Umbrella Fire Your Psychic! Tender Brisket Megatrouser Puzzlement University Housecoats Fuchsia Big Ass Dawn

Friends

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“Hi. I’m Rita Bates,” I had said. “Can I sit here? The boy who introduced himself as Thomas told me I could, so I did, and his friends all introduced themselves in turn. Around the table there was Bev, Ernest, someone whose name started with an F – maybe

ID

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He does not read what he’s giving them permission to do to him, just signs the release.

You Never Forget Your First

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There is nothing like your first time, and by that I am referring of course to the first time you purchased a 45.Going to a record store and buying a 45 is a uniquely Boomer experience. Because, alas, there are no more 45s. Or, for that matter, record stores. The…