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before hell freezes over completely

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I remember how silk felt against skin, dressed in my damn flimsy things, while the cold bit my nipples. How I would lie in your arms when I was young, after being awakened from my pubescent slumber. (Enough of that!) In a rush to grow up for good, holdi

The Eyes of the Inmate

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The courts had scheduled the date long ago but the time, an hour always left to the warden, had yet to be decided.

Ways and Means

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the bodies of the poor become/ a simple logistical problem,/ disposable as any gnawed bones

Tilt-a-Whirl

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the carnival ride hurtles the spinning man over canyons of light and barkers & streams of cotton candy girls

hush

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every timeyou openyour mouthan angel fallsinto a vat of whiskyshut ityou're fucking up heaven2013 - Rene

Good Belongs to You

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I hope you enjoyed the celebration last night. Good things always come to you. I thought your family would never go home. I didn't get to sleep this morning until 2:59, although I had set my alarm to 6:10. I didn't want you to miss your plane. At daybreak,…

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

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Lu loved his mother, but her anxieties nagged at him like poison ivy. You can't avoid scratching it, but the more you do, the worse it gets.

A political parable

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One of these days we aren’t going to believe whatever they tell us.

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.

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…

reality concedes, for once

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beckoning with citrus streaks blue cobbled streets/and stuccos lit with gold lamps guide strollers here/to Place du Forum in Arles and this café . . .

DOOMSDAY CORN A GRIM FAIRY TALE Written under the guise of a children’s story But primarily written for adults

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Our entire planet became poisoned by the monoculture system of agriculture. Mother Earth, who is the very soil we stand on, play on, dig in; Mother Earth, who is the very air we breathe, laugh in, talk in; Mother Earth, who is the very streams, river

Koo, The Queen of Nowhere

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Koo ate the sad, bitter pills just so she wouldn’t have to try and make small talk about La Donna’s deformed, retarded kid.

In Real Time

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We are the same shits/ we were in the Bronze Age

Cube of Boxes

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...he was suddenly and hazily relieved that he had something in Persepolis and blue agave plants to talk to her about.

Another Ending

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you tell a stranger's story...

Dear Feline

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Rocky, Arne’s elderly cat, was perturbed by invisible phantoms that provoked him to leap up on his hind legs, batting his front paws at the air like Don Quixote attacking windmills.

soften the lazy honey

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Pots of wine crowding the forehead until irrational thought crowds out the stubborn lizard of sanity and, God knows, my elegance. What else is left? As the young seeks change, so will I. Seeks the carmine lip, so the white bud seeking God, the unchanged

Night Flowers

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Night Flowers By Zofia Barisas The garden lies in deep darkness even in the noon of blazing day. A steamy pond lies still in wait for uncertain footsteps. Here aquatic green spiders, big as frogs, spin iridescent webs from leaf to leaf. Gigantic, ancient trees stand…

philanthropy from a cardboard box + a detour to Han-shan

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philanthropy corrugated with a smirk / printed aside every cardboard box and room / every cardboard house with every cardboard door.

A taste of competition

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We called him Mickey Habanero, because he could fill his mouth with the hottest food imaginable, the kind packed with the sort of heat that would melt the gums from the teeth of a novice, all without taking a drink of milk or anything else that would otherwise soothe the…

And Father Makes Three

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His father whistles The Torreador's Song in the kitchen; Mirko smells bacon.

this never happened and yet i tell myself it did each morning

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i watch my mind not wanting to touch the vanished rusty notes remain objects of consciousness heaven and hell inside us each moment birds fly through mental speech dark garden rain olive green cool breath of betrayal siempre mixed with greed awakens…

Five Million Yen: Chapter 74: Coda

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It was the first warm day of a late-arriving spring. Ben was sitting in his divorce lawyer’s office on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

The Noise

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I'm hearing a noise. I can't see it. It's hiding and seems to be coming from the other side of the creek. With boots on I slowly wade across. The water makes its light lapping sounds. Reaching the bank, I search for the noise. It must have a face, suntanned and warm, that I…

VENICE IN THE AFTERNOON

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It's cloudy out. So I go to the Assisted Suicide Center on Venice Blvd. It doesn't mean I'm gonna off myself because it's cloudy. There just happens to be a kind of puzzle of clouds in the sky the moment I decide to head over there. I find it fitting, thi

My Heroes Now Are Robots

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I understand why Warhol said/ “I want to be a machine.”/ Forget this sorry clay.

The Humanists

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“She’s very sick. She’s dying,” and he smoothed my hair along my neck. “It’s leukemia. A very rare type,” his hand reached my shoulder and stopped there. “She only has a few months.”

Appeasement

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"Asaka-sama, we have been beset by the foulest of demons and nothing we do will rid us of it." The prostrated villager quivered from head to foot on the tatami floor. "Please, we are unworthy but would beg for your help!"Ietsugu's heart raced at the statement, though he…

My Single Mother

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Like the willow she stands alone, swaying.