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My Back (Facebook) Pages*

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It's all over now, Baby Blue...

Unconscious Primate Pandemic Panic

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I wrap my left foot

Vincent

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They were really big, a lot larger and taller and stronger than he was. Sometimes they were holding him, all of him, high up in the air. Sometimes they would have him crawl in front of them. Often they put him into some form of holding cell.

The Vote

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God had decided to resign. Not even two weeks notice. He just resigned. Point blank.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 31

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I was always bi-polar. I didn’t realize it was a mental illness until my divorce lawyer had the court order a psychiatric analysis.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 40

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—Mazel tov, schmazel tov!

Cheap and Convenient

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Later, when she said she'd had miscarriages, I should have put it all together.

Blackish by Reason of the Ice

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"Sara, do you taketh it with your eyes?"

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

Lovely

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I would open an eye, waiting for it to absorb the scant light in the room, and I would see her on the far edge of the bed, the topography of her hips now a battlement to keep me at bay.

Wall talks to wall

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Wall talks to wall. One has a clock, the other a window, the third a cupboard with bandages etcetera. The fourth a door that opens and closes a thousand times a day.Chair is across from chair. Occasionally the one looking for care picks the wrong one to sit in, and there is…

Uncle Harlequin

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My Aunt's husband liked to dress up like a clown

Catch & Release: Dog Person Depression

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Instead, I get things like, “Why can’t you find a nice man with cancer or a bum leg?”

Ethnomathematics

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His academic nightmare is set in an examination hall, where the student takes a seat at a folding table in the center of the room.

Sand Dollars

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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.

Rising

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The coin, so little, the watch chain, the youth, the fading softening speech, each hand and finger, the panic modeled on your own eyes, the ashtray, certain stumps along the way, the long distance, the odd feather, the jazz rope gone,…

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…

The Old Dog (in response to Brian Warfield)

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Blend the dog a drink and sit down beside him and draw straws for regrets.

Nightmares from the Wanted Section

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WANTED: a Muse. Former Special Forces solider turned poet seeking artistic inspiration. Brunettes preferred but blondes will not be turned away; gingers, however, are out of the question. Must have a voice that sounds like money, a self-destructive tem

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 21

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Francesco needed a magnifying glass to read her little missives.

A Change in Status on the Facebook of Cement

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First he wrote it in wet cement at the intersection: “Tad Loves Kimberley,” with a big heart around it. He was real proud, you could see. But then later on that year, the graffiti began appearing everywhere, on all the store walls: “Kimberle

Mr. Wazzeldot

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Mr. Wazzeldot has seven legs. He lives very comfortably. He likes to sit by the fire. There's a large cushion for a chair, and in the evenings, he sips his Bloody Marys. I know because I visit him…

The Suicidal Juggler

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The man wore a bowler hat and stood on an open patch of grass, with a pyramid-shaped stack of baseballs at his feet.

Accidental Discoveries

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They look like giant golden raindrops, or flying saucers, or peculiar fish out of their element

The Night Shore

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Somniloquies rise like the drowned . . .

Okay

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I supposed reluctantly that Princeton is soft as Macalester College is soft. A person could die just for having attended U.W.-Madison or Yale.

The Dock

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Row, Caps of white, A salted escape beneath reflected light. Brother, remember those old lies? I’m off to sea to make those things right, now.

On the Roof

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Marie was on the roof. The deck, with its cool concrete pavers and faded cedar Adirondack chairs, was one of the reasons she and Harold had bought their condo in this building. The only ugly part of the roof was the chain-link fence along its edge; soon after they moved…

The Ice Cream Mantra

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Chant the ice cream mantra. Prance the do dah day ballet. Trot the t-bone tango two-step. Dance the livelong day away.

Mother O'Grady's Last

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Christmas night was closing in at the Cantrips alehouse in Aberdeen, a firm favourite for riggers and other men and women who lived life close to the horizon. Sometimes, on a Saturday night, things might get a bit rowdy but Mother O'Grady would stand firm and bring out…