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Playing Boggle with Lowell's Mind

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lewd sinew swine

When The Conversation Ends

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It was a strange mood, unfamiliar, not one of her usual “I'm busy wrestling with my personal demons” type of moods. She'd been steeped in it all day and I, like a shipwrecked victim reaching out for any piece of flotsam…

As Anti-Vegan Bias Spreads, SaladShooters Fight Back

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The Vegan Defense League is a vigilante group formed to fill the gap left by local law enforcement, who jam the parking lot a mile down the road at a donut shop. “By the time the cops finish their coffee and chocolate frosted donuts, we could be dead.”

In The Wake

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Any form of exertion would defile what we are trying to do

What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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In his heyday, Burt Reynolds owned $100,000 worth of custom-made toupees.

Nose

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

On Clearance

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She clutched her fat rolls and tugged on a pant leg. "I'm so embarrassed! You caught me on a bad day!"

Worn

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The shirts hanging by the back veranda serve as our memorial to them.

~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.

Feeling fences

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... he could feel the pointed picket spears.

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

White Room

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

The Tale Of Lys

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Even the old medicine woman seemed to grin with a perverted sort of understanding when she opened the door to find Lys waiting outside. She was comfortable nowhere and ready to flee at any moment.

The Poisoning

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The Poisoning I used to call my dad Serpico. Thirty years on the police force, and though a respected officer, he never fit in. He never had beers with the guys at the end of a shift or engaged in the more lewd locker room talk. None of the other cops were privy to which…

#32: Deep in Structures of Awareness (Structured Poem)

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In ashen hills of yonder

The Fetishist

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Sex is a fetish war -- a battle of trinkets of desire

Those Brain Motility Blues

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Philosophy: a muscular exercise of throat, jaw, tongue, and brain.

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,

Click

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I am going to quit clicking refresh, only because it is clear nothing is happening out there. After I click refresh just one more time, that is, and then I am closing the window. After clicking one more last time. …

There's a Pube in My Coffee

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Connor didn't bother to wait in the line of busy professionals, opting to cut in front of the sign that announced "Line Forms At Other End."

Paint-Can Harry Lets in Some Much Needed Air

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Welcome the one and the all of you, welcome all you scraggly long haired weeds, welcome the no longer rolling stones of the new you, welcome you most beautiful little wonderfully…

Postcard from Shambhala

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Dearest Z— There is no way to describe this place. It is a pendulum, caught at mid-swing or maybe just a millimeter on the up side. It is a sense of sweeping, a cleanness. Distant clouds remind me of the day we took the train and the mountains acted petulantly,…

11am, Sunday, in Green

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The eyelid of the sink blinks silence. The clocks choke on smoke.

My Belgian Waffle-Hound: Song

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I was walking my Belgian Waffle-Hound Past the Belgian waffle shop I found a penny on the ground And did a tiny little hop I spun around and went inside The Belgian waffle shop And bought a little waffle For my Belgian Waffle-Hound

Regarding Hank

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Won't speak a word against 'em. Car trunk stunk like bad chicken long after, but I won't speak a word against 'em.

You're Breathing My Relapse

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I was an alcoholic for ten years, starting in my early twenties and continuing into my thirties. Then finally, after many attempts, I got myself straightened out. My son's birth finally did it for me. It wasn't like a switch flipped in the delivery room…

One Sick, Two Sick, Red Sick, Blue Sick

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I found a diseased fish / wedged between some boulders near the pier

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…

ice becomes a new marvel

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at all altitudes and at all latitudes / glaciers in furious melt: / both Greenland and Antarctica headed both / to be ice-free isles adrift / and with shorter coastlines amidst higher seas.

MASS OF TANGLES

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I leapt up to retaliate when the clang of a distant door quieted my retesance. Shit, why am I so popular? I guess it was my turn to be thrown around like the guy in the Hotdog suit on the corner... Don't shoot the "Hotdog" guy... Please, please don't