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An Admirer Visits Paul Bowles

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I dropped out of college and flipped a coin, a 1929 half-dollar, and decided if heads, suicide. If tails, a life of perpetual travel.

All Else Stopped

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it seemed odd from even the first few seconds.

A Strange Girl Like Me (Leda 2.0)

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I was a peasant girl, believe me, and nothing much to look at--- close set eyes, one blue and one green, wispy brown hair and a chin that dominated every other feature of my face.

June 29

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the only thing that impresses me now is the state of my inebriation

The Wind

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The wind comes up relentless in the afternoon

Thirty-Two

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This morning Katie and Jimmy are learning about the potters field—the one where Judas Iscariot was buried—from their grandma.

A Letter to the Girl I May or May Not Have Slept With Last Night

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Can I really be blamed? Look at the circumstantial evidence: you wore that skirt, which can hardly be called a skirt. More like a very wide plaid belt.

black friday

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She is laughing, watching me spit out a mouthful of seaweed. It's a soft kind of laugh: small gasps between small sounds of her eyes closed, curling with the corners of her mouth. Her left eye curls a little less, closes a little more than it did when she laughed a year…

The August Heartbreak Suite of Sorrow's Poems

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My heart hurts as I miss you here./This was your intention, I know./ And nor is my reaction unique.

Who In This Room Shared a Drink with Johnny Cash? (Memoir)

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...where I grew up the only celebrity one could count on seeing was Santa Claus...

On Mondays, Francesca Takes the Stairs

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The first flight is effortless

Ten Amazing Don’t-Miss Writing Prompts (Especially Number 6)!

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Write a list of what's wrong with everyone else.

the note read

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Orchids, and irises. Tulips, and a sunflower too.

The Light at the End of You

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I'm reading your remains.

Frankie and Alice, 2013. Brooklyn, New York

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1.)At the corner deli, sweat dripping down my face, I ask for black, but Frankie adds milk. Just to spite me. Because I won't sleep with him. As if. Wonder what his wife would say? Punch me in the jaw, right? Like maybe the rules about holy wedlock vary…

The bamboo stick

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I no longer go for walks without my bamboo stick. Tightly held in my hand, thin and light, it beats the invisible particles which try to land on me and bite. My face is hidden as in shame under a rough gag, my hands are getting rusty, missing the touch of other hands. My…

4P28

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He’d kept the parking space open. She used it most often, whenever she and her husband, an old drinking buddy, came to visit.

Jesus, Borges, Jelly Roll

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It was Judge Fogarty who said “Thirty days in the market—take him away. Give him a good broom to sweep with—take him away.”

We do not make the most of situations

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We do not say the phrases that would smooth things over.

The Color of Silence is Radium Green

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...the teeth she began to lose went under her pillow, though no money ever appeared. She could not bear to throw them away and finally deposited them in her jewelry box next to the string of seed pearls she received on the morning of her confirmation.

Hardly Used Tractors

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Now Carver Smithton has a paunched belly as stout as the beer that fills it. His upper lip is thick, fat and flat like a caterpillar run over by a semi on Highway 17.

You Have Something I Don't Have

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So, as the lines on my face grow more pronounced, the lines on my finger prints are fading away? All I can say is that it's a damn shame it's not the other way around.

Staring at Waves

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the waves all green and gooey, all / pommes frites, ruinous, insolent, half / fractal

Walt's Frozen Head

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What if Walt Disney had himself turned into a cartoon?

Lullaby

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One morning, she used a few prim phrases to break up with me. She had her suitcases packed by lunch. She was gone by dinner. Two weeks later, she emailed me a picture of herself sitting on a small brown couch.

Snow Bird

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Snow Bird Then Bess was officially a Snow Bird. She was on the waiting list to become a permanent resident at the camp as soon as the expansion they were planning was completed. But it was being held up by some county people who were doing every

Responsible

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This morning, she woke to the banshee: “Individuals must get up early and put in a full day’s work in this economy!”

Cary Grant's Underpants

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Cary Grant wore women's panties. Not boxers, or even briefs. Panties. He said he wore them because they were more comfortable, according to “An Affair To Remember,“ a memoir written by one of his lovers. It gives you a whole new perspective on…

Jail Bait

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Jessie and Hannah drop mescaline together, and screw in an abandoned storefront crash pad. We call it the Rock Shop.

The Solid Table Fallacy

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‘Do you know that tables aren’t actually solid’ he said suddenly. ‘I mean there’s loads of space in the molecules that make up wood or whatever. The only reason we can’t push through them is because of the force.’ Nearby the Android called up his light