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Lire's Children, After the Swans

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our eyes misted white as goatskin

Sunday Morning in the ER

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We do the work of fixing people like him?

Today It Rains

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I chose coming away because here at least I feel good — and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside — and very still — Maybe you will not love me for it — but for me it seems to be the best…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 60

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That is a pretty damning statement.

Wallflower

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It was one of those weekday mornings in early spring when Marjorie and I could wander from chapel to chapter house with only security guards for company.

As If Not Breathing Could Save him

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She turned him down again. Said it was her insomnia. She was so tired, she said, she had to work in the morning, and why couldn't he understand that? She rolled over facing away from him. He sat up in bed, thinking. When was the last time? Three months ago? Four? He…

Emotion is a Weather in a Basket of Clouds

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If you can imagine a ghost taking a shower then you can imagine the kind of emotion I have in mind.

Non-Self: Light, Dark

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You gather their faces in the palms of your hands and their purple eyes blink, blink, unseeing.

Lavender, a Liberal

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Lavender, a Liberal Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at…

Wavering Faith

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Grady Quail wondered why God didn't just have another son

The Sunlight of the Mind

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The nerves are birds that guide us to feeling the loop and lift of reverie.

Summer's End

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sunshine

Capt. Love's Last Command (poem)

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The old man is dead, body propped in its cart like the dead El Cid strapped on his horse by Jimena to save Valencia, and yet...

Erasure

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All else is unmoved/ and relentless in its indifference.

Filter

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The brain taints everything it brings to us/ with its limited apparatus, its precepts,// all the things it thinks it knows.

Cheating at Strip Poker

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I remember one time when we played strip poker in the basement of your house on Euclid Avenue, me, Terry, you and Andy. And I remember drinking lots of wine and fixing the deck so that you kept losing and having to take off all your clothes, and still you

Catching Mitt For Sadness

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He stops smiling and only says he loves me when prompted, as if asking me to pass the salt for his inner peace as it tastes too bland.

The Breakup -- I was Always Yours, You Were Never Mine

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One cold winter's day she met what she thought was the love of her life. He had everything going for him but his age. You see the sweet young thing was a lot younger than her. One might say that she had lived many lives before he had been born.

Playground in the Fire

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People questioned my motives when I became a smokejumper again. They said I had a death wish, or that somehow by going into battle against the big Pacific Northwest forest fires, I was still trying to put out the flames of the burning car in which my sons Jake (age…

Until Again

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Methuselah. That’s what they call him, the regulars that ride my train. Other things too, but Methuselah is the one that sticks in my mind. It seems to fit. It’s not as cruel.

i wouldn't give two cents for somebody to love.

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money ain't nothin next to lovin.

Game Night

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Randy stood in the alley behind Krasnowski Construction with a loaded gun shoved down the front of his pants. His friend Todd was inside, unloading the safe. And when Todd walked out the door, Randy was going to shoot him in the face.

Henry Ground

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Henry Ground was a healthy and well adjusted English man who excelled at chess and folk dancing. One day, for no apparent reason, he decided to fill his guinea pig with helium. He carried the animal under the light of the stars into the shed at the bottom of his garden.…

Secret Lives of Cell Phones

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...collapse of the human world. Go, cell phones!

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. . ."

Thanks, for the Memory

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"So, how did you know my name?" "I read memories." i said

#5

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and the other guy goes

Christmas Email from an Aging Wicked Stepmother

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Your stepsisters send their love. All three are still on the wagon.

The Rats

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I climb up on the sofa and stand next to him. I smell something.

Resolution

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Too often, Calvin's willful head finds its way into his hands.