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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.

Gulf War

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Someone's ass should be kicked.

Stars and Smiles

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Older than a star I am

Prologue - On the Lips of Children

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Their tongues were dry, her milk was gone, and the last bit of water in the plastic jug had evaporated.

Coffee and Cream F**k the Shit out of Me

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Of course they (the cof­fee and cream) were lovers, chem­i­cally made for one another, warmly explor­ing their part­ner's par­ti­cles with the pas­sion of a first kiss.

Hollywood Forever

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Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone crack open an Old Bushmill’s and offer John Huston a pull.

Exordium

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Overhead cranes balance ordinance from one end of the palatial enclosure to the other. There are robots, high-voltage, force-fields…more than a hundred ways someone could get hurt. I looked back again…She was gone.

Because we cannot know

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Because we cannot know, we keep walking, keep getting up each morning, feeding the cat, drinking coffee. Because we cannot know I'm drinking coffee that morning in Thailand, not on the beach but just off, because there is only one spot where you can get real coffee,…

Broken Night

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Could I really seduce and rob a total stranger -- just on a dare?

The Sound Invisible

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“Behold!” cried the Lord, on a late September morning,

(On Tuesday...)

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On Tuesday, he wears his suit to the cafe. Of course they'll let him pay! Of course. Under the table, his wife accepts their wadded bills.

Aftermath

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They waited not a moment longer than was necessary But moved right in and Began their loathsome ch

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.

Fargo

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“What does it feel like to run, Thomas?” I yelled across the field. Thomas was so fast. I would never catch up to him. Even if I could run. He was so fast. …

Struggling with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

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No one takes me seriously because I am an idiot.

Quatrains Written on Stolen Time

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

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 32

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—You know, Angelique, said Elaine Aster, dabbing her lips with a napkin, I’ve opened a new gallery in Paris.

Strangers on a Train

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I'm putting makeup on my face. The woman next to me is reviewing legal briefs.

Prosaic Miscellany

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Some days, you want all the red states to secede

Here Comes the Sun/ There Goes the Moon

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still have the yellow rose that I did not throw into the grave.

50 Minute Fight

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Snap! Dylan’s arms flung forward as the rod bent toward the ocean. “Holy God! What did I snag?

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 43

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—Have you ever fired a gun?

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

Famine

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To be perfectly honest, I was lousy at my job. Or at least most aspects of it. The typing wasn’t a problem: I can get up to a hundred words a minute on a good stretch of unbroken text, and I’m pretty accurate. I even edited as I went, fixing passiv

Four: Of Moths, Poets, and Streambanks

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“And what kind of man would prefer all these dusty old books to my physical form? Who would memorize archaic incantations, when he could be whispering in my ear? Why search for the ancient splendors of metaphor, when one could be searching for the ...

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.

Cats

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Steve lowers himself onto a lounge chair and lets out a long, overdue sigh. Cliff and Jim, the frickin’ and frackin’ of the built-in pool industry, are making a Burger Chef run while the cement sets.

Diet Plans

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She positioned the mouse cursor over the word Bikini and double clicked. The hard drive of the ageing work PC chugged into life as an Excel document dragged itself onto the screen.

Assiduity Twenty Four

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The grand piano, . . .

Driving Years

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There was a form to it, not reproduction. I wanted to write Moby Dick without a man in it. [I wanted to write Moby Dick with only a woman in it.] But I didn't do it. It's like a seven-year diary, and it did happen. I might write it as memory then.