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What People Do With Their Hands

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I said, “If this rose doesn't grow another petal in twenty minutes, I'm burning down the neighborhood.” “Just let it go,” said Paul. “No,” I said. “That's what's happening right here.” “You'll try again next…

The Gift

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Margie sprayed the gift with her most expensive perfume and tucked it into her sweater’s front pocket. This way she could hold it close to her on the subway, so no one would see the pretty wrapping and try to snatch it from her

Five Million Yen: Chapter 6

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Sure my man. Show me the token I’ll show you the slice.

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

Five Million Yen: Chapter 43

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Ben was in no mood for games. His ribs hurt and his eye was painful. He would have to tell this girl, who had flicked her tongue in his ear and who did not sound like Sophie, to get lost

maybe just a little too sensitive

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"do you know what your problem is when it comes to girls?" she must mean other than the fact that they're all completely insane. or at least all the ones i've dated.

Deadheading

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No matter how much he composes and prepares, he cannot override the electrical trigger in his brain. Something to do with the resonance of physical memory. It remembers amplitudes of current.

The Creative Use of Meal Time

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We’re more into the punishment that works its way in through the skin and coats the heart anonymously.

Morphine

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Until the ivy hides me in

Sounds like leaving

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chains across all the old doors

The Code of Hammurabi

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We pull up chairs. I breathe in her Bath and Body Works vanilla, read her paper slowly and aloud because the ears catch what the eyes miss. Her sentences are awkward, stilted.

Phenomenology- Short Stack

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The fly comes in against my will/ and hers. She would prefer/ the wider world with its piles of shit

The Unlucky Thirteen

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They were working on the factory floor when they died, the auspices of mayhem filtering out to a host of ravens gleaning the neighboring fields. Clouds of them fled the scene around the time of the incident turning the day into twilight…

When Spectacle Replaces Ritual,

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The aisle, nave and/ transept twist themselves/ into an auditorium.

The Infinte Wheel

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Scientists have discovered what I already did once on dope way back in the Sixties. There are so many other earths out there that they are almost infinite. Now in our other lives we have to shuttle from planet to planet reading our poems. And

The Trapper Boy at Work, One Mile Underground

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The coal carts come and go like the seasons, never stopping.

Call the Cultbusters!

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My twin sister Ilene has recently taken up with a man named “Darrell,” who is a member of the Shriner's Fun Korps, a motorized paramilitary group.

Strange Times

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From my place, down here amongst the earth, we have many names for you.

TRAUMA

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Everybody breaks. Everything splinters.

The Eleventh Brother, After the Swan

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I turned a maiden to a witch / and back again

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.

Ladybird

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On the other pillow is a ladybird which escaped from a dream. It reminds me of when I was a tiny red polka dot. And then bigger, and other colours. And then… I stare at the ceiling, searching its soul for little things. The ladybird touches my arm, whispers…

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.

The Interview

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What follows is an interview George Bush gave to Barbara Walters in 2006. He came off like something out of a swamp. Dick Cheney made them deep-six the tapes and we never saw it on prime time. I got the transcript, however,…

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?”

Poem for Ivor

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How to capture in word, in song, the fleeting moments of our loveYou were hereAnd now you're goneEven as I used to lie next to you,bathed in the care and concern that emanated from your warm black brown eyes,I knew there would be that day, that you were no moreDestined for…

The Ogontz Branch

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There are stories I will not tell, stories I shudder / to remember. You'll forgive me for withholding them from you. / You may, of course, not tell me everything about yourself either

Northeast of Eden (Memoir; Editor: Charlotte Curtis)

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Snakes have no eyelids, no hips, no lobby in Washington (some creatures do!) and little support at home.

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

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…