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Misunderstood, Meet Cynical.

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The blaring scream from my alarm clock suffices as my wake-up call. It disrupts me from my dream state that I so rarely get the privilege to experience any more. I've always loathed that alarm clock, so I turn it off in the most sensibly aggressive manner I know how: just…

Flutter in Night

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Have you heard this yet? The daughter flew home to care for the mother, whose pump is still tick ticking—though now with aid—which means she leaves the kitchen when the microwave clicks on.

Noises

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Another noise, softer than the first: swish, thud. You are still. The house is very loud tonight.

Let's Walk This Dog

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if you don't quiver with anticipation you'll barely manage to explode

Convenience Store

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I’m casing the place; my boyfriend Jimmy is about to bust in and rob the store.

Heron

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. . . nor did mine eye apologize.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 10

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But the restaurants put pig in every little dish. You couldn't eat there without encountering some portion of pig. It was in everything, including the cabbage. Who puts pig in the cabbage? I'm asking you. And in the dumplings too. For God's sake, give it

January First

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Enumerate the small delights/ this bright first morning

Summerset Bangs from Oldtown

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blackberry pie and huckleberry wine and litte Maria with her summerset bangs

I Dated A 50 Foot Woman

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There was no need to drive. She could travel ten miles in ten minutes. She merely had to be careful not to step on any cars or trucks.

Saturday TV with Dad

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By the sixth - Dizz, Falstaff buzzed - Croons - The Wabash Cannonball

Love Story

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You are a warm winter Despite the presence of snow

Sheep

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Sheep are very philosophical, I hear. Stop this hopeless dreaming.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 23

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After the Tokyo experience, Frank and Michiko decided that when she went on extended tours, Frank would accompany her.

Girl in 'Nam (Part 2)

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A life in NYC was one I always dreamed of but I found myself turning into a bitter, sarcastic person who was losing the ability to see the silver lining in just about anything.

This Can't Be True, But I Remember It

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She calls me by my name. She says I am her daughter.

To Cancer, with love...

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Why do I love you? The monster that you are? I love you for revealing to me my strength My determination, my will My need to survive I love you for showing me the gift that is living

Storms

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Sirens wake me, screaming warnings in the dark.

Settled

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Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…

The Three O'Clock Sun

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Here the three o'clock sun is an old patched up fellow, with a stained yellow beard, walking in a small crispy rain of brown leaves, looking at something that requires a bit of squinting no one else can see, on the far side of the softening…

K2

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Now it's late. I am hanging upside down from a rope coiled around my crushed left ankle, the pain too sharp to be really felt, as the excess blood to my head makes my thoughts fuzzy. I am almost two meters from the rock face, thirty-five hundred meters above sea-level, the…

Blue Moon

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I suppose it was inevitable, This crashing of souls, This recognition of possibility to create. If we were younger, We would make a baby, The ultimate act of faith. Now it has to be something else, Nothing to force a track with night feedings, …

The Finding Smile

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My mother gave her all to convince him to be a politician. My sister begged on bleeding knees for him to give her head. I just needed somebody to help me find things.

A Friend From Back Then

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That afternoon she met me in the lobby of my hotel and we simply smiled at each other in the elevator going up to my room where we sat on the couch for about three hours and told of our lives, of being apart, for so many years, then sensing our time was nearly used up, I…

Sit Down, Here.

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“The window is a much better place to read,” she said.I wasn't aware she was talking to me, at first. In my typical manner, I was thinking about far off possibilities and realities completely detached from my own. Yet, here she was, a far off…

Things As They Really Are

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I slide my CD toward Eric Burdon who sits, smiling and gracious and fatigued from Seattle traffic, at the table at Silver Platters, where I have just purchased ‘Til Your River Runs Dry, and stood in a line of old gray heads to have him sign it. I remove my hat and…

Assiduity Twenty One

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Blue skies greet us as we exit the forest . . .

Oh Portland.

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The purple sweater brought out the blue in her eyes. Fantastic eyes made of ice, she was a stunner, and she knew it. I met her at Slabtown

Five Million Yen: Chapter 67

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Anatoly Gringovitch sat in the police car returning him to the Opera House.

The Listener

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They think because you are a writer you are not much of a listener and so you begin to recognize all of the great opportunities to be much more of a listener and then you shut your trap and get sucked into the whorls of her big wet brown eyes with Italianate…