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Beachcomber's dirge

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

~with every breath~

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she goes jogging with the feet of an angel the sound of crunching leaves like wrapping paper torn open to reveal an expensive doll and the light in her mother's eyes.

White Room

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A white room is empty but for you, a card table and a chair.

Putting the Damage On

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

Ten Books That Have Stuck with Me Off the Top of My Head as I Make Them Up, #2

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#2 The Typewriter Inside You by Harmon Gentle—I found this one at a garage sale when I was 15. Intended as a manual for sharpening one's typing skills, by the third chapter it became obvious that Mr. Gentle's sanity had slipped, and that rather than mastering the…

Dignity Village, Portland

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A cheap pocket knife was the only sharp I carried in my backpack and they allowed me that. The man with the pot tattoo on his neck said, “All of us here needs some type of knife. You gotta cut up your food. We don't…

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…

Ichthyology

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The doctors said, when she was born, that the gills would eventually fade away on their own. Nothing to fear, they said; no more unusual than the rare child born with a tail, or a dense pelt of fur, or a single sharp tooth jutting from its new pink gums.

Global Arms

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~(+)~

Esmée

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Esmée sat alone at a table on the terrace at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota. She had been there ten minutes and no waitress had approached her.

To All the Sisters on My iPod

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It was a wake-up call. A sign that I needed to stop and ask if I was making wise and sensible life choices. My iPod was full.

Flash Gordon in Iowa

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I will show you how, in the spring, the sidewalks here look like a crossword puzzle resting under a glass of lemonade,

Thanking Harry

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At a candlelit table near the back of the restaurant, Jack and Lois greeted the waiter as he delivered their drinks, a diet coke for him, and for her, a vodka and cranberry. He apologized for the slow bar service and promised to return in a moment to take their…

Snow

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She talks about window treatments, how the place is maybe too much for one. Wants me to know she’s not much of a cook, and wants me to smell what’s in her oven and compliment her cooking anyway.

Love Las Muertas

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a dozen girls with Encarnación's face flit past, whispering kisses along the part of my hair, tickling their hems along the cuticles of my nails.

Nose

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At the conference her boss showed off his knowledge of wines.

Dumb Ass

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

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

Pop Tarts

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The currents of events/ strip the molecules from cartilage,// reverse polarity of ventricles—

July 16

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Last night as a duration spent hovering in electronic media-space.

Jenny Whistled Through The Mail Slot

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We all thought, Birds! We all thought, Nests inside the chimney!

Prelude to a Love Story

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Slipping into the Sydney Harbour Tunnel like a nocturnal creature fleeing the light, tears stream down my cheeks, spilling from my lips, the pain too great to care about self-preservation. Drunk still, hands clenched, I strain to focus on the world fading into a blur of…

Take Back the Night

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A woman who is, say, a culinary arts champion or an heiress devoted to literature such as Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) or Peggy Guggenheim might be able to turn me on, turn me out, turn me around.

Glossolalia

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Method of divination. Open a book to any section. Drop your hand onto the page. Read that there is an exorcism happening in the other room.

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…

It is Midnight

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It is midnight in Utah, but I can’t tell. It always looks like midnight in a cave.

Strange

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Words are looking ever so strange today like a hole in space a wind in a cloud a face superimposed over a mountain

Lessons from Survivors

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You cannot go back, you cannot go home, you cannot cannot cannot…Only in memory is it possible to travel back in time. We all imagine it. We relive happy moments, sad moments, we exist, time exists and it passes. We cannot stop it.

Mr. Pickle and Mr. Peet

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We got a sandwich at Mr. Pickle's, but they cut the sandwich in the plastic. Plastic wrap.

Going Back in Time: Song

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If we go back in time We are living in tents If we go back in time We are living in caves We are fighting over rivers We are fighting over fields Near the soft edges of slime If we go back in time Nothing would have us And we had t