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Big

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I found the knife in a fishing box in the closet. The box was made out of varnished wood. My father’s father had made it.

The Longfellow Bridge Diaries: Part 2

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They sway from his hips, the torn knapsack, and the corners of the pushcart

Settling

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But she knew what she would find. She knew it all the moment she felt the sticky fingerprints behind the slat of her old oak slay bed. The fingerprints that would only be left from a person grabbing it from behind their head. The fingerprints that she

SIX POLITICALLY INCORRECT SONG LYRICS

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I hope I don’t have aches and pains in heaven Cause here on Earth I ache in all my parts These old bones don’t have the spring they used to I sure hope heaven has electric shopping carts

Billy Strayhorn: A Short, Gay and Lush Life of Beauty

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“I don't have any position for you,” Ellington told Strayhorn. “You'll do whatever you feel like doing.”

What's missing from their bodies is nothing compared to what's missing from their heads.

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What's missing from their bodies is nothing compared to what's missing in their heads. One man in particular, now almost 80. Wakes to the smell of napalm, cigarette smoke, gasoline. Is he still feverish? Will the fungus rot his foot? But he remembers he

Lang's Dragon

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Fritz Lang. Even before I ever met the miserable son of a bitch, with his monocle and superior airs, I hated him. In person, he was an insufferable asshole.

Vanya

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That spring the war still moved north but we did not go to it any longer.

My Kentucky Fried Ascension (Memoir)

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...as a boy I rode once in an elevator with Colonel Sanders...

Miss

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On Saturday mornings, by noon, the delivery car comes from Boston and unloads fresh bread and sandwiches, pork ribs and ground pork stuffed inside of breads and buns and banana leaves, bean shakes, and sticky rice desserts.

Anhedonia (excerpt)

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Things have happened. It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.

The Hamster Eulogies

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But not once did we mention heaven. The next day we bought another one.

Cactus Subconscious

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The voice in the sand: "If it has soul you must funk it."

Dunes

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I went out through another cold still morning erasing my steps behind me not because I did not want to be followed but because I did not want to find my way back again.

Pi in the Sky

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The possibility for numerous outcomes – the possibility of anything, really – lives on the writer’s page.

White

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“White,” he says. -- “Black,” I answer.

Nevertheless The Plan Was Not Implemented

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Thomas Friedman was right when he said, “Much of this biodiversity in Indonesia is now under threat.” It had been this way since gasoline became currency; I remember bartering with The Governance for the newest edition of The Guinness Book of

Arcana Magi - c.5: Will

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She stood there with ladylike maturity; her eyes were frightening with an unforgiving look, visible in her tears that pierced the very core of Oryn’s heart.

Cactus

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I counted telephone poles and the seconds between them. The old highway cut straight through the sand and it seemed the road would never end. No curves. No hills. Just poles.

Seasonal Discord

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“I killed a man.” “Whaaattt???” I'd been meditating on the sun. I figured he was trying to jolt me awake.

Zohra El Fassia by Erez Bitton

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Poem: Zohra El Fassia by Erez Bitton

The Last Words of a Genius

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The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words. He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w

Summer Girl

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You’re bro­ken. Your eyes don’t see quite right, and your hands don’t feel quick enough. I love you any­way.

Hoss Men

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I stood there skinny-as-a-half in “big hair,” ankle boots, and black eyeliner. P. was in radio, not books. He had a sense of humor. I was researching a different man for a novel.

stinking nightgown

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Frank says if I eat the whole bowl of live crickets he’ll give me five dollars and his grandfather’s silver bullet from the war.

Soviet

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The neatly-gentrified Mtsensk District plaster buckled in all the right grey-painted places. The aged, yellowing windows rose and fell in fashionable decay. It was a well-upholstered citizen's slum, drawn to exacting state specifications. Local housing authorities…

Life of the Mind

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Days went by as I stood in the woods waiting for a tree to fall, and when none did, I determined the universe is cold and indifferent and that man’s only hope is to buy wood chippers.

tea

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what a mess

The Elvis Latte

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Elvis at a Starbucks. Some graphic words.

The Accordion

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If I play my accordion too loudly while you're painting, you complain. You stamp about in your room under mine. You fetch the broom from the closet and use it to thump vehemently on the ceiling. I feel the vibrations through my feet.