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Center of the Universe

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tchotchke

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tuck me

My 27th Great-Grandparents

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Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…

Brothers of the Sacred Circle: A Prayer to Ares

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When our body falters, deny us rest. When our minds crack under the strain, forbid us sanity. When we are too tired to fight give us war.

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…

A Life Lived In Outline

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He began life as we all do, an almost indeterminate blob. Ultrasound sonar plotting his outline on screen. The echo chambers of his beating heart dispelling the ectoplasmic impression of mere ghostly existence. His rudimentary …

Within You and Without You

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The cloudless sky/ amplifies the incompletion,/ clarifies the imperfections/ of the night’s normalcy-

In Our America

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If I floated about this coffee cafe,Like a spirit, just watching.In this room of framed fake memories,A room of ambient light, marketing to the masses,(It works; it gets 'em in the doors.)If I floated, I'd seeThese people sitting—eating, drinking, sipping, typing,…

Mob

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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.

6.0 in Eureka

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"Shit," said the Charge Nurse. "Not again."

Dream(ed) Life

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From room to room, neither closet nor drawer contained any remnant of pleasant memory.

Lost In The City

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They found it naught however as it was lost at metro stops, canceled appointments and in ever dimming light that failed to reflect what was instead of what could have been.

Carousel Horses

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From this distance, he reminded me of a sleazy pink flamingo, waiting for feeding time at the zoo to deepen the timbre of his feathers and hint at the promise of a narcotic aviation before his commune of hens.

a parable

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jaws blossoming with drool,/ a captured wolf slinks low/ across the crowded land/ for that most tender lamb/ to catch it by surprise.

Road to Nowhere

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I could smell a bold combination of cheap perfume, stale smoke, and sex excreting from her weathered pores. The bus engine hummed as we climbed a winding road. She scratched her neck and tried to finger comb through her knotted hair. I caught a glimpse of

Sunday Service

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How they all beat the small drum/ of the word within the world

version

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THIS is what happened — the dead went into remission. Dated may 10 2010. Or it could have been some other day. They were going to be restored later. That's what we were being told. The dead were being given stones to mark their remission. They were getting…

(I don’t know how the nights can be so long when life is so short)

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But I think what I remember most was Lynda really letting me have it. “Right now I’m seeing this married farmer out in Western Illinois. I met him at this bar out there called the Peppermint Lounge. Boy, they sure know me out there! Funny how every town

T.S. Eliot On His Deathbed

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I guess at the end you’re only looking forward. Or upward actually, since you can only lie there on your back looking upward, straight ahead toward infinity, your mouth in a grimace, with the ghostly pink lips peeled back from the teeth.

The Devil Line is a Violin (ELECTRIC DELIRIUM 1.1)

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Rosea plays a bohemian plainsong for the cosmonauts among us, while her fuzzy apple hips spit glitter, spin strobes: pink shades of pantyline flicker; lip-licked neon hues scrape strings in B sharp, a gloomy clue.

The Important Story

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The best thing about being a cowboy is the cows.

Passion vs. Security

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They blew in the doorway of the café at the French Hotel like two sparrows chasing each other. Their wings down in the dust, unheeding any danger in their hunger for each other. I knew the man who was about to become her husband, so maybe this was her las

prima vera

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a road moment

A Good Man

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Charles tapped the anger management code on his steering wheel. He rolled down his street and saw Jack Watson throwing stuff into the trunk of his black Volvo coupe. He waved, but Jack did not wave back. Jack's face was blazing red. He looked like he might have a…

Valhalla After Dark

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In traffic I cry bloody murder, but my bloodlust subsides once I'm in Valhalla. Chip Whitehead wants to see me on the 22nd floor before I start my shift. Charlie and the other suits have been looking at me funny since I sent Chip a memo suggesting the recession…

next love letter

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Eat me so I can sink in your mouth, my paper fraying along the sharp topography of your tongue, lodging in the holes where your teeth used to be. There, I will storm an infection until your mouth inks my words.

Conditions of a Narrator

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Moore doubted, perhaps, that readers could sympathize with a man who had killed someone for a cause or a girlfriend who forgave him. Perhaps she felt that maiming is (not) worse than murder. Perhaps she decided that the story should be about that.

Smoke and Stars

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as distant lights all must shiver before joining in a Milky Way river

Assessing Beauty

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We can’t be sure. Perhaps it is/ some slight exaggeration of one/ or several elements that steals our breath.

Research Notes - Single Stroke Seven

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It is within my nature, and many others I know, to cling to what’s consistent and certain: the battles fought in the war for survival and the organic camaraderie borne in the trenches. Sometimes the quest and the people we commiserate with along the way