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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…

Regret

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Regret takes the shape of little clouds ...

Speak

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She can still be normal, says Momma, knowing my sister can’t hear, forgetting I can.

Sleeping late in Cahuita, Costa Rica

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The light of day is screaming, shook by the calls of howler monkeys, their low roar hanging in the salt, in the black sand riding the wind, as Playa Negra outstretches its infinite arms.

Two Weeks in a Dristan Land

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I smelled the bleach of burst anemones the sweet arousal of the Dungeness crabs the seaweed of sour twigs and feces

Nothing

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I dream about the boy in The Neverending Story, the gate of mirrors, and the Nothing, a dark cloud that floats in the sky, takes away everything.

A THOUSAND PARROTS

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  The parrots woke Eddie up. That and Rocker snoring in the twin bed. A thousand parrots flying over the motel? They squawked, God how they…

Ritual

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The dance draws deeper whirling witches weaving rhymes The fire spits fierce in the falling rain soon the spell will spill from secret times

Because

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He spoke the "Why" and it stuck out its tail. He tripped and fell with his face wedged between the W. She kept the answer in her chest so the words wouldn't crowd him where he lay. The "Why" found its way back into his cheeks and puffed his face out like a disease. He…

Need food for family

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The young man pulls out his wallet, grabs a couple of bills and stops short of handing them to the bedraggled man. “So how do I know you’re not going to go out and buy some crack with this money?”

Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get To the River

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I think we could be twins, our hands hitching us together like paper dolls, our parkas making blobby round balloon shapes as outlines for our bodies. I imagine each of us holding onto someone else, and the line continuing on from there until we have a cha

Beachcomber's dirge

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

The Autobiography of the Falsehoods Which Are Not Love

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he wound up hating the woman he betrayed in his heart for betraying him in her body

Lucky Strike

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...when they entered eager lungs hungry from deep and sweaty love

Threshold

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But we proliferated back

SWING-SET

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Soon, out of the womb ‘down there' is nuance. It guides you, like a legality, like your own breathing, in and out of overtone, hardcore hodgepodges, those inklings near sacrosanct beyond breakfront negligees and neo-negligence leading the good life. Isn't it…

Lost Keys

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The most unoriginal, trite and hackneyed story ever written!

Buy Me Some Peanuts

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The voice on the other end mumbles, not forming words, but I understand: I am to be the starting third baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 30

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Anatoly Gringovitch took a swallow of beer, thoughtfully put the cap on his Ferrari da Varese custom fountain pen, and launched into his story:

Winsome Mshindi

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The cold and the ice’ve really stoked a fire in those old bones of his. He runs with the gait of a racer, front legs straight out—each extension producing a crack like Jack London spitting into the cold...

Legs Unwilling

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Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.

To a Young Atheist & Intellectual with Dior Glasses

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You have such a complicated mind / for refusing to believe in God / just like any damned liberal / whose fingerprints / crowd the faces of a thousand / dollar bills / being passed around your great nation...

What's that on your glasses?

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The shit just doesn't want to come off.

Secrets of Philadelphia

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Bruce Springsteen begins singing from the loud speaker he was bruised and battered and couldn’t tell what he felt.

Jeremy

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My name is Jeremy, and I am in love with a zombie.

I Once Knew a Sparkledrop

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"And then I, and I believe, I alone, saw this small child run..."

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

~switches and shade~

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  mis-placed       the change           she goes looking for.        her folks        missed another hour...          her worth-while spent wasting        the voice wouldn’t leave the leaves alone.

Noises

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