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the honey ant of Kaapa Tjampitjimpa

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1I'VE BEEN looking though books of paintings and I've been thinking …

Hardware Store Tour

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The Plaza had a chess-board floor, green wood booths, and the lights stayed up. I might be combining a memory of Fitzie's in Binghamton. The Plaza felt like a preppy soda fountain with beer.

A Dialectical Digression

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It performs the dialectic that intertwines real and ideal through her mounting concern about being choked to death then eaten by a very large pig.

Land's End

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Wearing Land’s End clothes at life’s end Driving around in circles in your Codgermobile with 3 good hubcaps. Who wouldn’t want to steal that?

My Third First Novel

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One of the publishing industry’s dirty little secrets is that first novels sell much better than second novels. So why not enhance your chances for success by calling your second novel your first?

I'm Never Going Home

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After the ship stopped shaking, the angry flashes of warning lights discontinued, a few people could be heard sobbing or whispering prayers.

As Poetry Month Ends, Prosaic Types Get Their Turn

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“I’m going,” O’Bannon-Krim says with exasperation as she throws trinkets such as Dylan Thomas beer coozies and Edna St. Vincent Millay hair scrunchies into a cardboard box.

Desert

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On a trail, Richard and I came upon a saguaro cactus that had dried in the shape of a human figure. Its arms were lifted and its back was stooped. I said, “It looks like my mother.”

~American Woman~

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…like candy and puke on your tongue, the fakest broad ever, cruising like a busted prow, busted wheel, mast and stem, these stately wrecks and rotten flowers of perfume and the deadly bitchiness of the modern woman’s expectations.

Henry's Moment

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“You need to keep a close vigil on your X-Ray binaries from the Sun. The star and its blazing temperature could spill over at its outer-most edges. The material would be such a high temperature; it would destroy all life on your planet, and…

Masquerade

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. . . music and dance, theatrical performance of tragedies and comedies . . . a primeval orientation, celebrating the cultivation of herbs and vines . . . ritualistic use of intoxicants, to remove inhibitions, to liberate participants . . .

Long Island Roulette

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We sat quietly in my truck. My lit cigarette twitched between my lips. Samantha and I stared at the front door of Planned Parenthood in Worcester.

Arcana Magi Pure Vol.3 - c.4

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A pair of flowers leaned on each other, almost holding one another, their petals hanging off by the edge. Emi touched one of the petals to hold it up, but the dark mist appeared and made it fall off.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 11

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Many weddings took place at the foot of the Astronomical Clock Tower. One every hour, on the hour. It turned out these were set-up photo shoots for things like men’s cologne, brocade bridal gowns, and smoked carp. At night we wandered around the many

Love apathy

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I smell it, it smells/Of giggles and leg shaking

Spitwads

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Two types coexist- the sanguine/ and exsanguinated./ My skin is cool/ and pale as moonlight

We'll Always Have Bakersfield

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"I tell you about ten other men who want to love me and two I could kiss in the smoking room of a jazz club, you wonder if I’d love anyone."

STIFF NOW! The Early Embalming Craze Sweeping the Nation!

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Originally designed for para-morticians and pre-professional undertakers, the Protocol has now been certified and approved for over-the-counter purchase and is completely safe (check local regulations for sales to minors: not approved for veterinary use).

Sacrifice on Maple Drive

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Sacrificial vic bleeds out . . .

Beverly Abbey

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Downton Abbey and The Beverly Hillbillies. They're practically the same show.

If You Want To Work At Club Arseni

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I hev my girls shave.

Present Tense

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What fascinates me now is now, this instant, this moment. This fugitive, this delinquent, this indiscreet, this forever elusive now. Now now. Now is now and now it is not now. Now is the adversary of time.…

Six Quarters (from Grand Street literary journal)

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Yes, my old uncle liked roses. Grew them. He had a way of smelling a rose—after he smelled a rose, you are surprised the rose is still there.

Delphi and Parlor Games

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Ghosts// and the voice of God/ never actually visited you

Santa Breaks Bad

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It was bound to happen. Even celebrities can only take so much. The constant comparisons to Christ (people still think He was born in December), assumptions that he was anti-Semite or anti-Islam, and accusations from PETA, now ad litem for…

Breakfast for Ten

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Chuck woke when he smelled cooking.

Pink Lipstick & Cigarette Machines

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It was that pink lipstick found on the end of that brown filter yeah, think it was an Old Gold

The Assassination of Sadat

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Just beyond the corkscrew slide / the President of Egypt was bleeding to death

Working Girls

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In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…

Kingfish

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Time stole you from underneath the goldendock. Writhing there, slick as a flapping tongue;lips gored, red, whose gaping could embolden weak hands behind the blazing buck blade, long ago pierced in your summer quietus, beneath the soft shade of a tackle box, as the…