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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

WHO'S RICH?

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she flips you a smile and a white plastic menu, and all the blood in your head, and upper body rushes to your crouch, and god-all- mighty, space aliens from the planet Vanna White could be landing in their unnumbered hoards in the parking lot, and all

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

The Bridge

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Anna's daily train commute from the outer suburban fringes to the city reveals a message that changes her life.

Woman Things

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

~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?

Probably for the Best

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“Kids okay?” I didn’t mean anything by it–it would have been innocent small talk any other time–but he took up the suggestion.

small pleasures

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sheets, white, coarse redolent with Clorox

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…

Hindsight

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You were a mine field

White Lies

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On these days, while Momma counts the money, we go to Blockbuster where we can pick a movie each, play on the playground at McDonalds, lick tall ice cream cones.

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 . . .

Babbling

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She’s gotten more involved in the game with menopause.

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…

Bookmark

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He opened an old book,flipping through its yellowedpages. A small piece of blue paperfell to the floor; he picked it up."Meet Tom at 4:00. Julius Bar."Standing there, Tom appearedas he sat down with the note,putting Tom back together:Tall, he remembered; Irish,green eyes…

The Ridgeline: Day 1

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The first burned slowly in the distance. I built a small fire to keep warm. Snow covered the area as far as the eye could see. The sun burned bright in the sky above and the mountains disappeared onto the horizon. My gear had some wear and tear from t

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

Conspiracy

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I was convinced that enemy bombers were on the way.

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

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #5

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The big wigs call it aiding and abetting. I became an left-handed accountant with a tendency to fudge numbers for the damned.

Entomophobia

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And I admire// the orchestrations of ants and honeybees/ and the persistence and adaptations/ of the cockroach.

Deer Doctors Black Earth

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The doctor bargained with us enough but I kept saying “give it a thousand years and we'll think about it.” He seemed to mean well and be smart enough to not be feeding us snakes, but he wasn't a praying man and I couldn't see past that look he used to give my…

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."

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.

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.