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Universal

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For the sake of convenience, we must assume that everything ugly is evil. Lightning rejuvenates. Sulfur preserves. The obvious solution is dismemberment. The ghost appears to Ludwig; “How can you destroy my creation?”

Tendencies

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Will he do it with a gun? If it’s a gun, will it be a short one, shaved so he can hold it against his head. Will it look like the photograph he showed me, black and brown. I told him he couldn’t possibly buy something like that from a Walmart.

Screaming Woman - Excerpt

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Bree was mean as a bag of snakes and had done laid out most of the eligible bachelors in Culloden County at one time or another to the tune that at this point no man who’d heard of her wanted much truck with her.

small pleasures

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sheets, white, coarse redolent with Clorox

Haiku For Birthdays

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The Budweiser Sign and the Ghosts of Saturday Night

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It waited and witnessed the seasons complete a grouping and form a year. Then it watched them do it again. Winter, spring, summer, fall. It watched from the inside of course. But it could see. Big sliding glass doors and long and wide windows stayed the course also, way…

Park

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“It’s time we moved our relationship back into an upright position,” I said.

Ways of Making Love

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the honesty of bodies & the lies hidden under skin.

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…

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

Post-Probity

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After dividing the sabliereand after the outliers roll away,disappear,or sit like a thrombus between two fingers,will there be enough in the dayfor you to watch the sun saginto its everyday tomb,to listen to the sagittal sighof a passing evening,to eat the last fruits of a…

No Prada, No Burberry, No Gaston Lauvert

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Although it was unlikely that she would witness mobsters racing up or down Wabash Avenue with guns ablast, she paced behind the hotel's ground-floor glass eyeing traffic for fifteen or twenty minutes . . .

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

Warning! Please Read this Before Adopting a Pet

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One evening I came home late from work to find my wife drinking white Zinfandel by the fireplace in the living room and reading Wallace Stevens poems out loud to the dog, curled at her feet.

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.

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…

Close/Far

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If you were glassI'd fog you up With my breathI'd leave messagesPictographsIn fingerprints I'd press in closeSo would youAnd so we'd danceBut you are glassAn inch of depthTo catch my breath

Legs

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Rachel Stevens is an attractive woman I notice her long fair skinned legs and think that She must wear sun block to live in Arizona And have skirts like that. Today she invites me inside, She says she has a light bulb for me to change — up high. In a friendly…

Dreamtime

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The problem with drinking gin in the desert is that eventually there is no more gin but the desert is still there.

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

Woman Things

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...when the doctor scrapes the baby out, he cuts out all the things that make babies, too...

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.

i'll give you a large sum of money for finding my kite. thanks.

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sometimes we saw it in the sky. we'd stand on invisible stairs trying to reach it. running like frightened geese. we were going to catch up with it. grab onto its string. pull it down.

Miss Ang Has a Very Comfortable Life

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"Is all life suffering?" Miss Ang asked as she parked in front of the brothel. The concrete monstrosity stood humble and lost in appearance, but the locals knew what transpired there, as did the truckers and businessmen that frequented the Phetkasem Highw

~she dance~

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the lightning horse you never mounted in your inherited dream~wetter than the oceans you never traversed~will you ever ride pure abandon?

Strawberry Swirl

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Keisha selected a strawberry swirl cupcake from the waiter's tray, so pretty, from the hottest, coolest, newest patisserie. Moist strawberrylishious cake, swirly pink frosting, sprinkles. Keisha was one lucky lady, scoring a bizdev gig at recession-proof…

The Weird Gods

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"The weird gods climbed down from the moon, past low-hanging clouds and upon leafless treetops. Their unusual boots first touched ground in a parking lot in the city. The snow crunched."

The Date

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Everything was cool until she used the phrase, "five million dollar home."

Physics 101

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The cellar smelled like an aroused muskrat.

The Moon in Winter

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Winter is a particle yet unknown to science. Someday it will be described in terms of spins and magnetism. It will be set in high school physics books and there contained: look, here is winter. Graduate students will split it into cold and melancholy and poets will…