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Honey Bee Men

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"...she's been seeming like she's been dreaming while awake lately..."

Two Takes on a Flickering Moth

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Take 1. The Love Letter to an Unspoken Name Well we're beyond our appointed Moment now. We must step On what's left, alone, but That begs some explanation to These days that pinball between Stars and to the sad dreamers…

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

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Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.

Split second

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When people talk about the end moments when one's life flashes before his or her eyes, they often refer to time as slowing down. I can attest to this phenomenon during my final moments, before the collision: the song playing on the radio, the squeal of tires and flash of…

Childbed (cenotaph song)

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Those who don’t die, desire, descend. No song aloft arises from my irk. The seeing chieftain, not of sea, nor sand, nor boat, I till nightfall stammer alive, dig boneless trenches against tiding dregs and lathe, hunt, wallow, plow the hours, call in awei

Supernova

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Ben had us over, me and him and his boy, Benji, to look at the supernova. Ben was always coming up with these things with the telescope. Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings. On his wedding night he made everybody stop dancing and run out to the golf course so he could show us…

PAPA'S TEARS

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Darkness was fast approaching. I stuck out my tongue at Naya, and she reached out as if to grab…

Half Awake in a Fake Empire

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Cooking dinner for one in a city that isn’t my home. A beautiful city that I’m slowly losing interest in, just as I become a local. In a tiny apartment set in the most realistic part of town, I’ve turned the music up loud to drown out my thoughts.

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

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There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows.

Consider The Son

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Don’t forget, I’ve watched the evil you’ve done to the lawn for years, not to mention the chaos you’ve made of the woodshed. Don’t you remember me showing you how to properly stack the wood?

August 1976 Jefferson City, MISSOURI

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"We gotta find a way to get high!" "Shh! My parents will hear you Tommy! Their bed is right above us." …

Safe

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Safe does not ride horses at sunsetSnorkel in MolokaiRaft down a swollen river.It does not steal kisses in a darkened theaterTouch the inside of a thigh under a restaurant table.Safe does not declare war.It chooses dinner every night at sixMass every SundayConfession once a…

The James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

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In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.

Tiger Milk ( Part 3)

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"Soviet Mandelstam rose like Christ from the Nightmare, Rises from the gulag, sunrise on the page."

Faces of Death Revisited

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He looks outside, sees everything disappearing like crumbing cookies into what appears to be a giant mouth.

Veined and Green

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Where we’ve penned heart shaped question marks, seeds sprouting bowed heads, a congregation of confused supplicants.

Grannies

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The four Grannies say, “GO!” and leap from the window. King's pickup is below, and he has lined the bed with his mother's throw pillows. Sundresses fly. Blue plastic diapers billow. They want cigarettes. I light their smokes with King's pearl-handled lighter as…

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Trip the Rime

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politics only add to assault and distract

Pen Pals

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Sitting together at Starbucks, we composed a long love letter which we've been mailing back and forth to each other, signing our name upon each receipt and returning it for the last nine months and it has grown to eighty seven pages, barely fitting in a shoe box.

Scar

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I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

surrogate

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the vigilance that informs a parent's every hour had momentarily lapsed

How Things Fall Apart

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The leaves/ seek reunion with the ground// and leave the oak tree naked/ in December’s cold.

The Green Eyed Lady in the Glass Café

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Is this sought sea dream of the Arctic fox? The green below the circles of the white, above her eyes? On Formica tables where the woman smocks beneath glass borders of their vacant smiles, they pass by windows formulating styles,…

The United States of America

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In the United States of America children everywhere are waiting for summer vacation. To a child in the United States, there is summer vacation and then there is everything else. Summer vacation is freedom. The united states was built on the foundation that one day we will…

I Am Quantum

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He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.

Books

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'Like poems,’ I said she paused and nodded her black mop.

Is This Seat Taken?

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A single woman should regard every train ride as an opportunity, I once read in one of those “How to Find A Boyfriend” books. “When boarding the train, don't take the first available seat,“ the author advised. “Walk through all the cars…

Mobiles

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My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.

The Lycanthrope Fun-Time Activity Book

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an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.