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Route 346

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Route 346 is the way Pop drove to Troy long after everybody else took Route 2. Today Charlie and I drive in the opposite direction. Back then, Pop drove us to Troy on Route 346 on Sunday afternoons with the car windows…

You Don't Listen

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What time is it? 3:47. Adam says before 5 is too early. Maybe he should stay home with our daughters once in a while. Let’s see him make it to 5 o’clock. It is Friday. I’ll mix it with orange juice. He never notices. I better check on Debra.

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?

She Called My Poem Nice

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“There is no future in art, you will not change lives with flowery words. Please don’t rock the boat”

A Day At The Beach

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Rothko and Stella loved the beach. To Jalapeno it was just one big litter box and for her it held no great appeal. She sprawled sunbathing on the dashboard lifting a lid occasionally to watch Lauren riding a wave. The dogs delirious with freedom romped and chased tight…

IT BURNS

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“Again,” Danny said, and I hit him with everything I had until I was out of breath and it was his turn to hit me. We did this three, four, five days in a row, took the weekend to admire our bruises and heal a little, and then on Monday we were back up th

Dusk

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Her memory was a faded pastiche of the past, and indeed the present sat uneasily in the middle of the dreams that governed her mind; so it was that often she would forget the day, the time, the year.

"A bit less hot Tuesday"

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The faces of the sun remain unaltered across the seven day forecast. I am sweat-glued to a poem, looking up at the wall-mounted TV in a diner in the Valley

Were I Konstancja Gladkowska

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My playing would falter languidly, and transcend itself like a wishful Nocturne

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.3 - c.5

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The old man moved on an automatic wheelchair. He stopped just short of Sora. He waited for her to move, but all she did was shed one tear.

Bait Shop

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They wanted to go fresh water fishing, so I had to buy worms. None there in the saltwater town. Drove about 10 miles over the long bridge to cross the bay. I'd been there before. Walked in and a crusty, little skinny man got up from his chair. He: Watcha need? Me: Fresh…

Luce

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Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.

BUNGEE

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The drop is like a hangman's drop, an executioner's, but farther and longer, perhaps three or four seconds.

My Friend

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Remember when we went to New York to take our test? We looked for cheap hotels near the test site, and there was the "Hotel Earle." Twelve bucks a night. The clerk behind bullet-proof glass, smiling a knowing smile. Pubes still on the sheets, but we couldn't sleep anyway,…

Strangeness

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The goose on the roof isn’t aware it is doing anything odd...

How (not) to Cheat

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...I’m honest enough to know that fucking around has never been accidental or unplanned. Every time I did it, even in the rock bottom throes of esteem, sobriety, and life, yes, even on the brink of suicide, I knew exactly what I was doing...

The Bird King's Eggs

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1The Bird King's eggs are subatomic particles created serendipitously by a sneeze in a quantum physicist's dream.Occupying a space between existence and nothingness, reason and madness, broccoli and…

The Voyeurism of a Free Faller

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I wrote this piece after I told the originator of the youtube video "Mieders Alpine Coaster" by David Jellis how I felt watching it. I admitted I was a voyeur not a participant, but that his video fascinated me to the point that I needed to write ab

Absinthe

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In a dazzle of emerald softness, it flew out into the breeze wanting for the red apple in the tree just outside my window. The power had gone out, spare change to total meltdown, and the air inside was stifling, thick with mind-numbing languor and mosquitoes. So I…

The Feet Must Go

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There's something wrong with my feet, if they are my feet at all.

The Book Bindery

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In a mad tipsy leap you came up short and hard on the chipped stone counter Bruised and blue below the seams against the inside of your thigh. Your grand jeté a little too low, left you on the black floorboards Wincing in…

The Two Stairways

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She remembered how cold it was in the factory that day. A few of the high windows stood open as usual, necessary for ventilation when the machines were all running, when the concrete floors were packed with the sweating bodies of warm human workers. The

The Ageing Beaver

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This was just noise now – pure, raw noise, grabbed from their throats and flung high by some sharp claws of violence buried in their breasts. Even from his third floor apartment, they sounded like they were right outside his window now. It was if they h

solace

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the frost has made all tender greens bow

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.

Sugared. Spiced. Salted.

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They continued sitting by the fake oasis, drinking single malt, eating soy crackers and chatting about the quality of escorts in glitzy glamping resorts. The Paring happened on number three. Just as the gold leafed chocolate fondant oozed decadent Bolivia

Kilz

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He flipped through a book of poems Ani’d given me. Nothing fell out so he tore it in two. I said his mama must notta read to this one and one of the older cops laughed and he hit me.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 15

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—Jesus, a snoring cat. No wonder Alex put this cat outside.

Anthropometamorphism

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I have known a head become / a callus, matriculate, stop / shaving, move to Vegas

The Lookout

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I had never seen anyone die. For first time in my life, I was afraid, even more than when my step-dad got drunk and roughed me up. When Dale Franklin got shot last year standing on the corner outside the laundry-mat it took the ambulance forty-five minu