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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

Ballspenden

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Even if you're doing it together, there's no unity when everyone's dancing to their own tune.

Cougar

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What follows is one of those moments, though to some people, it would seem a fantasy, perhaps a "Wizard of Oz" era tale.

Beneath the Rise and Murmur of Your Voice

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Beneath the rise and murmur of your voicethere lies a hush more rapid than the silence meets within your eyes; the ghosts of cloudfall also meet them there. Your tongue has murmurs more than I can hear just now, for here my ears are met with something…

A Day in Dusk.

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And a delicacy in the right regrets.

A Rough Dance

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A young woman is seated center stage. She is pretty, dressed in a short nightgown. She sits nervously, her body tense and expectant.

Raymond Chandler and His Wife

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One day it was boring / to be alive.

At the Juvenile Bubonic Plague Telethon

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We’re not like a lot of your fly-by-night disease-based charities. Every pence we raise goes directly to St. Bartholomew’s, where 90% of it ends up in the pockets of doctors so they can buy expensive horses.

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

The Hound - Part 2

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The temperature would drop rapidly once the sun hit the horizon. I had about an hour before this would happen. I stood and put on my coat. The fire had gone out. There was no smoke...

Honoring Heritage

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salmon sits gentler on my palate

Red Sky at Night

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Floating in liquor only to drown the next morning.

Santa's stuck

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Santa’s stuck/you say? In the chimney of course./The lard-arsed ol’bastard struggling

You Can Keep the Keys: Song

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Here’s the keys to the house Here’s the keys to the car I’m going out and I don’t care I’m going out to buy a cigar Don’t bother locking up after I leave I’m not coming back anymore I’m going to drink whiskey out of a jar Go out and buy

Assless

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I heard on WUSF,

My Brother the Painter

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My father bouncing his leg to slow rock music with me on one knee, telling me I should keep a special place in my heart for my teeth, to remember where I lose them, on the playground like he did when he was my age, fighting a friend named Bobby-Joe. Or else I could lose…

Scooping the Fat of Time

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I lift up my sweatshirt and reach with a full fist into my belly button. This is where the fat comes out.

Ghosts

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"Yes. It was moving, and not along the ground, either. We were. . . looking toward the cemetery, and the ghost or whatever was clearly visible. . ."

Hungry

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Why do people kill themselves with food? It’s obvious, I suppose. They’re hungry.

No Respect

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I roll over on the gurney or bed or whatever they call it and pull down my pants and underpants. The nurse gives me a shot in each cheek.

DNA

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my family's Scottish heritage

The next hour

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I allow myself one hour every two weeks. Devoting 335 of my 336 hours to her and the kids is beyond dutiful.

Office Visit

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I was at the doctor's office, having my blood drawn. I was talking to the medical assistant. She was tying off my arm to tap my vein. She was almost 8 months pregnant with a girl, though her belly stuck out straight in front of her enough to be told she was having a boy.…

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

You, me, now, then

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If I seemed disappointed after our conversation, then, for the record, that was never the case.

What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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At least ten people have been shot by their dogs since 2004, usually in hunting accidents. (AARP Bulletin, January February 2016)If somebody phones you claiming to be with the IRS, it's a scam. The real IRS will only open communications with a taxpayer via the U.S.…

Souvenirs

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It is a hot August night — the same kind you remember from that summer after high school graduation. A cool breeze blows in off the ocean, sweeping across the boardwalk just hard enough to dry the …

'Is This a Problem?'

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London, England. 1999.

Attention, Stargazers

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And in the end we're crouched over like children / sifting through this tide-pool

Shooting Smoke

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In our first conversation, she tells me love is a dragon: she has come across it’s destruction, hears of it’s size, mythology, of it’s immorality. I sip my hot cocoa (God, I pray she thinks it is coffee)...