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On the Rocks

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On the Rocks What matters these, to all, below the crest… If privilege of mind-blankness is the bay's? Remembrance breeds no fathoms of its rest- As plumb the circuit lulled, at each rephrase Of capture,…

someone tweeted f. scott fitzgerald reciting ode to a nightingale

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poor son of a bitch

Texas hold ’em

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. . . at midnight three zombies and a vampire gather for a game of Texas hold ’em.

Why They Cried: Ted

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Ted did not understand turn-of-the-century costume dramas, and because he didn’t understand them, he often referred to them as "chick flicks" or "English crap." Even when the principals were not British. Even when the principals were Winona Ryder.

Come and be a part of it!

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Do you want social justice! Do you want a good and fair world!

Medusa Song

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She scrambles the eggs while the baby howls at her knees. To drown out the racket, she hums as she jabs her fork into the yolks. She enjoys the way they spill their yellow color and swirl into the whites. She matches her tune to the schook, schook, schook of the…

Moving On

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When we say "Nanoism is looking for twitter-fiction serials for its current contest," this is one example of what we mean.

The Blue of Milk

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She said this is our abode and it sounded like a warble and she made a sweeping gesture with her arm and the boy started to cry.

War Nurses and Lost Fathers - For Memorial Day

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I have been mother to a hundred soldiers, holding their hands barely knowing their names

Waiting for a Terrorist

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Tents staked in desert land, a muted building of parched earth, in a thirty year old city with a napalm birth, they wait among gravestones in the sand.

The High Line, New York City

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She doesn’t notice the small group of women in saris, emerald and garnet, sapphire and citrine, the cloth covered with mirrors glinting in the light. Or how they link plump brown arms, frightened or delighted by the attention, huddled close, bird-like ch

The Goodbye Meets the Hello at the Station

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"You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them out flat."--Renoir "Dreaming is free."--Blondie "I can't vouch for my ability to avoid dullness..the odd position in which poets find themselves explains their often-sentimental identification with the…

Little Meadow Simms

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"I looked at this skinny, little female child, Meadow Simms. It wasn't only that she was small. Meadow Simms didn't look like other children. Her parents were hippies."

The Other Side

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The 49 Days

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Where was she exactly? There is, of course, no answer to this question. But that didn't stop me from asking it. Constantly. Obsessively.

Disappearing Ink

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They didn’t run out of each other’s ink.

The New World Act

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It was said that in order to decrease population— and thus poverty, crime and the growing uneducated workforce in Etherage, New World— they needed to limit, if not abolish, the Social Reform Act of 2013 that provided government assistance and aid to famil

Keisha

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Keisha was the name she gave us. She said she had no father and no last name. We wrote her down as Keisha B. We already had a Keisha A. She was about twelve though she told us fourteen. Her eyes were older than we dared think. We knew her mother had been murdered and that's…

Redux

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I peeled his tongue, word by contemptuous word, until he had nothing left but a scrappy shred of muscle flapping in his empty head...

Hitler's Angel (A Meta Christmas Carol)

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Christmas is here and there's work to do.

The Summer Reading Program -- A Librarian Tells All!

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It's July, which, if you work in a public library, means that the Summer Reading Club is in full swing. The SRC used to be just for kids, to motivate them to read when school wasn't in session. But in recent years many libraries have expanded the program to include…

Like a Calm Sea

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“We should go again,” said Krishna. But Iqbal didn’t reply. He sipped his tea like he hadn’t heard, but a tremor passed through his right shoulder. His left arm was bandaged, and the wrist and lower arm were in a c

Why Can’t God Send Us Some New Kind of Animal?

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I guess the ultimate, penultimate failure would be to write a love poem that turned on everybody but you.

1998, What I Wanted

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What I wanted was long-in-the-sheets sex...

Early Thoughts on the Oedipus Complex

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Conversation becomes Electra, as do her eyes. Electra’s head is grey, like the head of my Frau Freud, Martha. Her intelligent irises are darkly pigmented, and her sclerae are edged with a dramatic, black line of the sort that Cleopatra affected. In ou

MAIZE

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Now, these explosions announced, political bribes and propaganda weren't going to be enough to push things through. There would need to be survival from blunt force trauma and fear tactics, a relentless forward march

Killing Noise

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I ate a novel. I digested a film reel. I vomited poetry.

Son of Uncle Sam

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He’s hooked on the pinball / excitements of adolescence

Lord of Autumn

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Gordon He pressed the side of his face to the pillow and waited for the sound of birds. The room was black, the window open; when a breeze came the curtains billowed out against a lighter sky. He heard the clock. He heard the dry sound of Helen breathing;…

23rd Psaltery

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The Lorelei is my sherris ; Ibibio shall not want. Head count maketh me to lie down in green patchwork: Head count leadeth me beside the still watercress. Head count restoreth my sounding: Head count leadeth me in the pathway of Rig Veda for his Namen…