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The First Fifth

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The first time that Beethoven’s Fifth was played, people ran into the streets.

Quatrains Written on Stolen Time

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It is the fragrance of decay/ as paint, polymers and dyes/ outgas molecules of themselves

Zapruder Film

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But there it was, amid the “junk” set to be thrown out with the rest of his childhood, opened accidentally to the page of his Indiana Jones Action Journal about his winter formal when he was sixteen.

Xmas Letter 2015

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Another year has flown, crashed to the ground, and convulsed to its death in a final match with the meaninglessness of existence. Decided to try my luck as a Walmart greeter this year but the apomorphine treatment made me break out in hives and I reacted…

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 5: In Which Lymph Nodes Are Involved

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Astrid did not smoke. Astrid did not drink. Astrid was not overweight. Astrid did not live a sedentary lifestyle; her whole life, aside from shopping, was working out. Astrid had no history of breast cancer or other female cancers in her family. Astrid di

The Cicada's Complaint

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Shiva and Zeus convene a focus group. “It wouldn’t work,” the panel votes. “Those leaf eaters would strip the trees and crops if we let them come back every year.” “That’s true,” Jehovah reasons. “Remember that plague of locusts I sent down?”

Indentured Servitude

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"I’m wearing a white sundress with little strings tied at the shoulders, sheer white panties, and a lace push up bra." It sounded good, sexy, likable. The kind of outfit a girl he’d fall in love with would wear- if he was prone to love, that is. "That sou

conversations with the psychic

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She told me in all my past lives I’ve always been a woman, and I was stuck in this relationship and you weren’t coming back, so I should just move on and get over it. I was a little sad, but yeah, I knew I was going to go back to her one more time, just

cuneus + forma

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the warnings we fear are the selfsame ones of ourselves of our vertical need to be first to the heights redoubling its intractable charm of production— our inheritance.

Conspiracy

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I was convinced that enemy bombers were on the way.

Beasts of the Talent Show

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Finally my daughter emerges from behind the silver curtain, riding piggy-back on a gigantic proboscis monkey. She's preoccupied by his nose, and wrings it like a wet dishrag with both hands. If it hurts he's not showing it.

Assiduity Seven

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Uzma dashes up the stairs ahead of me . . .

Personal Time

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“I”, fuck it. I, I, I, I. It has always only been about me, this voice of mine, indivisibly me. selfishly and pompously. I shall not dispense with the false pleasantries other writers will offer, those writers that say, “Reader, look here, look at the…

October Day Salute

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The duty of a student can be summed up in a sentence To benefit the race of man with thoughtful independence

Woman in a Film Running to Save Her Love

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If she does not get to him in time, / all is lost.

New Kid

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Wild are the woods tucked in the backyards, tame the front lawns of green, manicured, with a hedge and a few flowers, a well-maintained driveway, and a garage door.

Mauthausen

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I was feeling a bit introspective. I was busy in my own mind assembling the history of the place and getting ready for the visit. I was naturally not someone who would cluster up with a bunch of people I had just met and had arrived to participate in this

If You See Something, Say Something

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You think there’s a chance the bag could be holding a severed head, or live or dead kittens.

Cancer Always Calls Collect -- Part 20 -- Stuck on the Pitch of a Roof

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Little things that kept me going are no longer doing the trick, and venting to someone eventually drives them away. People around you know what is going on, but there is little they can do. They stay away at more than an arms length and you understand. Tr

Behind the Ear

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She grew tired of waiting for her husband to give her a flower so she picked one for herself.

I've Seen Way Too Often

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how the world is constantlyrevolving her mirroredorbs around the roomlooking for someone tohypnotize, a goddesshell-bent on catching agoon to mortal with; andas you lie from behindyourself so shall she lie withyou. Now, do you reallywant my answer to…

Global Arms - 2

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While serving in government, she plotted to change it.

Reportage 1

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But oh my goodness ladies and gentlemen, out from under the vast reeking field, under this generation another generation has been rising and they are bursting up out of the soil of corpses they were boiling under there all along and they are bursting up o

Eighth Wonder of Mississippi?

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Lula’s fried chicken should be served on the hem of Jesus’s robe rather than out of a styrofoam box. It’s so good that I kept glancing at the little tray on the steam table, hoping to be hungry again, ready to yank pieces out of the grasp of strangers, to

The Nice Guy

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So much of everything isn't the way I'd do it at all. I wouldn't do myself the way I've been done. Nope, the way I'm turning out is not the way I planned, definitely. I'm turning out to be a limp middle class day-after-day type of guy ... I go to work, I

Lockdown

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That son of a bitch locked me in the house again. Come over and knock in a window. One of them by the roses; he won’t see. Be a dear.

Into The Night

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Under a conspiratorial moon… the shovel my silent partner… organ-less torso to the worms.

skull of a sheep

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You are in a car speeding through Dublin towards the West year after year the journey uncoils past the same landmarks Kilmainham Jail strapped to a chair bullet to the brain on by the Rowntree Mackintosh factory where the black and yellow and orange and r

ancients

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rheumy eyes wink, gnarled hands pantomime

The Passed Away

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Died is forever. Passed away/ Is ambiguous. Dead isn’t/ polite.