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Table Talk

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Her voice gets screechy as she talks of the boy he was caught fondling in the bathroom of a bowling alley. The worst part: the dumb schmuck doesn’t even bowl.

Helpless

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She stiffens and blusters and roars Not like a storm, Not like a lion. Like a badger, caught in the steel jaws of a trap.

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.

What He Lost Round the Mountain

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The plane passes the runway, dips sharply, its shadow straight down below, too cold in the cabin, the sun hitting your arm like a machete below, it is 94, the humidity too, it has just rained for 3 days, it never rains this time of year......

Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue

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At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

The Old Man and the Cigarette

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Flicking the cigarette into the river the man's face becomes soft, as if waving goodbye to the only real attachment that he has felt in decades.

Open Wounds

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Where the skin had grazed, shredded by the coarse gravel to form scabs, fascinated Jack. It reminded him of his youth and his own grazes, scratches and stitches. As a boy he imagined scabs were rough foundations of igneous rock, blood like lava pouring th

You'll Never Get Anything Accomplished on an Empty Stomach

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The Star Trek marathon ends, and he flips channels. An episode of Full House is on. The cheesy plot lines and attractive women (specifically, DJ Tanner in the late seasons) have become a freakish comfort. In today's episode, the Tanners are baby sitt

Sort of Like Bukowski, But Completely Oblivious

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My eyes don’t close but hers are shut tight, and something inside tells me that to this girl, I could be absolutely anyone.

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.

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...

Laughing All The Way To The 2020 Election

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After President Trump was elected, my first impulse was to spend the next four years cowering under the bed, whimpering.While I knew that I needed to keep track of what our new commander in chief was up to, watching the news made me too angry and too sad and just too…

The Centre of the Universe

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"Look Emily, I’m charging your solar powered calculator and helping you relieve your dependence on foreign oil."

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…

Tongues

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I feel his hand on my face, feel it brush past my lips, and I taste my sister's blood.

Intractable

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~ ! ~

My Uncle's Last Day in Hospice

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In and out of morphine dreams, he flies through the unfinished roof of Illinois sky. Below, matchbox-sized farm machines. A silo becomes his father's thermos, the silver-capped tower from which he stole sips at ten, his first secret. Back …

Go Wild

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Sometimes you have to go wild; you have just to go fucking nuts. You do.

A Bad Year

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It's been a bad year, People dying. Some too close to home, Some too far away. I cry down to you, In your casket, and think you might sit up. You were not sick You went in just a moment, Looking stunning and alive. Not…

~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.

Shadow Walker

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Night became day and back again in the span of a heartbeat, the familiar strangeness of the sudden change stinging like dust in the eye.

Love Story

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You are a warm winter Despite the presence of snow

After the Flood

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That TV you got me? Ruined. And the ionizer fan? Ruined too. All your clothes you left over here, all my work scrubs and weekend dresses too, soaked with that river stink water. I kept thinking bout all the dead creatures.

underwater with their thumbs

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And your daughter, Mrs. P, and your daughter Mrs. Q, underwater, underwater in the old swimming hole, in the backyard swimming pool. “They’ve all got children there.” La la. Yet when I’m naked, when I enter with my own body the mirror, the small sha

stung

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Lust

Wings

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He knows I talk to angels, what he would call angels. I don’t talk to him.

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.”

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…

To Zephyrus

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In a field of barley, I see you, ...

Convenience Store

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