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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.

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…

Looking Back On the Night That the Easy Went Under

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Where were you the night Katrina destroyed New Orleans? Oh, what a night... A week later, most of the city was still underwater, with hundreds or thousands of folks presumed dead, and tens of thousands…

Love

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I said: “Doesn’t he understand? People like me, geniuses—great, mad geniuses—are prone to failures because we do not accept the common notions of society? Doesn’t he understand? I’m not like the others.”

Apiaries

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I’m reading an article about honeybees as I wait for the results of my blood work at the doctor’s office.

This Old Man

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“Have I told you this one before?” I can’t think of one he hasn’t told me, but saying so won’t stop him. I fire up the FreeCell game, put the phone on speaker, and pour a tumbler of chardonnay.

Broken Night

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

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. …

Puddles

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The first inkling that I might be in love with Josie came at our high school senior day outing at, oh, what's its name, state park. I forgot, but it doesn't matter. She smiled, did a little wave and stepped away from her friends, lifted her sundress a little to keep it dry,…

CARTOGRAPHY

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Your brother is not really blind.

Dear A. Lien (Letter Two)

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You’ve got Wikipedia. Look them up: vagina and penis. What Wikipedia will not tell you, however, is the thousands of years of human anguish, and rapture, wrapped up in those two organs.

Tomcat

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And, if you look real close, you see there’s a bullet hole next to his left ear. A stray one went past his head and straight through Santa’s heart.

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?

Paradise

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From the rumple of pre-dawn Queens, sure South on 95, to almost Savannah by dark; still cold, but we’re full of what’s coming:

you weren't this way

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i was in the fields, i was moss, was sticking my head in the columbine

The Blush of Rose

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Rose was the easiest lay in the Fletcher Memorial Home For The Aged.

The Kill

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I kill because I can’t stop. I kill because I can.

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.

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.

trixie

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she had a chipped tooth...

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.

Ascension of the Conquistador

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One of Montejo's cap­tains has us drilling in the rain again. The sun hasn't shone for days and the air is sti­fling, like try­ing to breath under water. Every­thing looks gray except the palms. Each green leaf droops in the rain like a…

Jackie Kennedy, Marge Simpson & Longevity: What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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The title of the overdue book returned to a public library in San Francisco 100 years after it had been checked out? Forty Minutes Late.(Readers Digest, 04/17)In 1999, Kathy McKeon, Jackie Kennedy's former assistant, went to a Halloween party dressed in a Marge Simpson…

The Cosmos as Gerunds

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There is no there or where but rather/ trajectories of probability

1940 What I Wanted

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But this ache wouldn't leave me.

Quatrains Written on Stolen Time

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

Prosaic Miscellany

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Some days, you want all the red states to secede

Getting By

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The were two things and two things only in the town of Comfort, Alabama, that were older than Bella.

Tree Yaupon

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They clog the skimmer basket/ and fill the small Polaris bag.