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Recipe for the Broken

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This poem first appeared in “Walt’s Corner” of The Long Islander, founded by Walt Whitman in 1838.

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.

The High Price Of Wisdom

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Billy took acid and blatzed into a 7-11, holding his dick like he hoped the store guy would think the thing was an Uzi. The guy laughed his ass off, reached under the counter, and pulled out a .38…

The letter.

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I am useless. A freak. Different. They all hate me now. All except you, of course. You will never leave me. Never. I'd kill them all if I could. Every single one. But twenty-four, that's a lot even for me. I'm so sick of the cliques; the special groups and hastily strung…

Mon in the forest: a fragment

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Mon wakes up surrounded by trees. The light is grey, the trunks black.How long have I slept? he wonders.He doesn't know which way to walk. In every direction, the same prospect of trees. He looks up at a blank sky. No sign even of the sun.***He starts walking. Slowly,…

Beachcomber's dirge

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...clash of gulls wend upwards, disappearing into grey night's high tide recedes

Edge of Wolf

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edge of wolf howls and howls past sunflowers and skeletons

A Break in the Cloud

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Each had jostled and laboured for his or her place upon the blunt outcrop, in the cold persistent darkness, where the outcrop was merely something that had fallen and not quite been washed away.

In Brief

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I can admire Falling Water and find Mr. Wright a complete shit.

Miss Zoldac's Fifth Grade Class Balloon Launch

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INSTRUCTIONS: To all students, please address your index card: "To the Finder of this Balloon." Beneath that, write something that will encourage the finder to email you back. Then tape the index card to your balloon's string.Happy Ballooning! To the Finder…

cross-quarter days

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sentinels in a frost-blackened field

Polaris

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On the coldest day of the year, the weather man walks back from the measurement booth across a snowed-over plain, solid as cement and tinted with the pale yellow glow of the northern lights.

Destiny Narrowly Avoided

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Then it started extruding tendrils and tying them all into intricate knots.

The Bird Nests of Lascaux

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With their brightly-colored bits of found string woven into the walls of their nests to teach their baby birds what the worms of the future will look like. Somewhat like the cave paintings of Lascaux for early man in France, when hunti

Death by Dinner

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I can't believe it's Frankie, but there he is at a table on the far side, just in front of the big picture window. I hold the menu close to my face and peek again over the top, watching as he reaches under the white linen tablecloth to plant…

A Strategy to Overcome Rejection

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“If your work is good you will get published. Just keep at it."

Chair and Umbrella, $25

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If white t-shirts are only an SPF of 8, she couldn’t even imagine what a white nylon-mesh umbrella on this godforsaken beach might be in terms of protection.

Archaeology

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I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…

Convenience Store

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

Sorry, Charlie

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Vietnam, Tet, and beaucoup Charlie

The Raging River

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We'll all face the raging river, some sooner than others.

Dumb Ass

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I want to tell you how the odor of the flowers/felt her funeral day

Putting the Damage On

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My Thursday head belonged to a former Miss Brazil named Rita.

1935 What I Wanted

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embarrassment

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, …

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…

Seeing Me

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I got to see me the other day.

Have You Seen Me?

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It’s as she reaches into the fridge for the carton of half-and-half with the grainy waxy photo of the little girl—Last Seen 10/2/06—that the memory surfaces: “Hey. That’s mine.”

Magdalena

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Magdalena followed the receding tide, her tiny feet leaving no rumors in the hard sand. She gathered only the most beautiful shells and presented them to her waiting Abuela. Her grandmother told her that the only things that a woman truly owns are her dreams. She told her…

Aurora Borealis

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I recalled the one night stand I'd had with the girl one balmy summer night in Minneapolis. We lay on my bed in the moonlight, and I touched the nipples of her tiny breasts with the thumb and pinkie of one hand.