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The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 16

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Depression had Frank in its craw.

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.

Grandma's Fingers

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her hands twined up, as carved from stone, each to fit the other.

In A Lightning Storm, Sheep Run Through Barbed Wire

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I used to fear things. The lonesome wind come through the clapboards. Dry hillsides rustling. My own skin in the summer heat. Rattlers. Lurking. Abandoned coal pits. Pa said I was afraid of desolation. I didn't know what he meant by that. How can you be…

Left at the Tracks

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Shivering in the car, he watched his parents arguing under the porch light. He saw the smoking anger of their breath as they jabbed the cold air with accusatory fingers.

The Woman Who Loved Water

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I hear the woman upstairs running water. But that's incorrect. I should say the woman upstairs is running from water. She loves water. And water loves her. She loves cooking and doing dishes but especially running water. She runs water all day doing dishes, doing laundry…

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

Unintentional Hermits/ Animal Cities- The Bubble Dancer

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Gaston could remember the first time he set eyes on Deno. He'd gone into the back of the house to enquire after a lost order and found himself face to face with the dish washer, a man in his late 20s, dual heritage, tall, staring eyes and dangling useless hands. The…

Smackdown

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you escape by finding the bubbles

And Father Makes Three

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

Flying

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I gazed into her soft eyes. I was a little scared. This...this meant something.We'd "accidentally" played footsies and I could feel my lonely feet finally touching the floor."Please listen carefully to these safety instructions — even if you are a frequent flyer…

To The Little Mouse Who Started Feeling Slightly Nauseous

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I heard them praying to some god none of us had ever heard of. I'm glad I went to the funeral and still have the yellow rose that I did not throw into his grave. At some point you have to stop nibbling from the moldy cake.

A Broken Frame

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The photograph has no date,but these are my long-ago kin,ancestors just before the boat,six stone-faced on the English shore,sepia on cardstock under glassstill clear in severe, dark clothesexcept one who has been markedout, maybe with black wax,which runs to the bottom…

Long Division

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This energy said, "Fuck it, I am going to be the fucking sun." In it’s language it sounded more like "Khershhhhhhh Hhhhhhhhhhh Zirshhhhhhh."

Duck for Dinner

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My friend and I were once walking the aisles of a supermarket because we decided we were going to have roasted duck. We didn’t know how to cook, but as the old Filipino reds used to say: If not now, when? If we don’t learn how to cook now, as in NOW, then

Chapter 1

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“The King,” he paused, pursed his lips, looked across the crowd of eager and fearful citizens of Ki, “is dead!”

Do Not Spank the Truth

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Do not spank the truth Whatever else you do You do not ever Spank the truth If you let the truth be spanked You will be diminished And it will never let you Be finished, instead When you are dead You will dangle in the land Between

Found Out

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The other day my friend, Donald, said Shirley always tells him she loves him and she probably does in her way, but it didn't comport with what he walked in and found her doing again last night. She was back at it, hunched over her computer, having chat sex with the…

BLT

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I had a sister-in-law who was a licensed nutritionist. Not sure what “licensed” means, but she had some certificate and worked in a hospital. Hospitals! Places not known for their cuisine, much less their nutrition. —So, what do you…

From The Plague Year 2020

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I went to Costco

Grounded

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No temporary solace upon this patch of earth, stymied in your injury; labored by your girth.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 9

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The Third Defenestration happened during the Soviet era, by the apparatchiks. The only thing that saved the people from certain death after being thrown out of the window of the Prague Castle, was an enormous pile of horse shit below, or haufen mist, as t

The Judge's Wife Part 3

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Everything clicked.

Up & Down Stairs

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Nature has patience.

Objects in a Field

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Cacophony of an engine-braking eighteen-wheeler/ scatters the crows to fences, trees and wires/ in a startling chant of caw, caw, caw.

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #6

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Instead, we found his red-inked list of boys who would never be saved,

Mom at Night

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Mom stayed up all night again Tending to her papers Pushing them around Trying to make order of the debts, the dreams and the obligations She couldn't get the columns to add up, So she shuffled them around some more and Rearranged the piles …

Room

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a man and a woman in a room at the end of the world.

Something Going Down, Like a Branch Snapped by Wind

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This is 57% of middle America, I'm convinced: doomed.

raging bull guy

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I’d made that shot a thou­sand men­tal times, and when it counted, I missed. It hap­pens.