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The Cold Bank Ravens

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In punch drunk waiting rooms... On election routes

Betsy

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Lester walked back into the house. He was hungry but didn’t know what he wanted to eat. Really, he couldn’t remember how to fix anything he wanted. He walked over to turn on the television, but couldn’t find the on/off button. Surely the damn thing had an

Remember?

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We'd been talking about the baby, about what we would do, when the women began fighting after the wedding held in the church next to our apartment. Their fierce and piercing arguments crawled up the walls to the second story window we sat next to. We'd looked outside…

The Catch

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His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu

flash

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okay fine, on the count of three

A Ship of Bones

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Make paddles of his hands Use his skull to bail Rig his thigh bones for a mast And his skin to make a sail

The Shredded Carcass of a Small, Helpless Animal

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It gets eaten.

At the Jr. Algonquin Roundtable

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“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

Begonia {part nine}

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Miles away Coriander was stepping through the forest with a light but determined step. He was exhausted, but the terrors he imagined every time he pictured his beloved in the claws of a dragon were too intense to allow for sleep.

The Edge

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You're riding on the edge The edge of life and death Popping pills Shooting thrills Snorting coke and meth Running fast from it all Heading for a fall Needle in your arm What do you care Who does it harm Looks change at will With each and every pill …

Pavane

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The shadows hang fast on the downs this day: And I hang like the darkness, over heath and down; Since the air there is clearer than the clouds, men say, And I'm lost in the country, I shall turn to town. If the heather is restless, then the fete is …

The Birds

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It had been over three months since he’d left his home and started to walk. He’d kept a journal to begin with, but his book soon ran out of batteries. It was that sort of thing that had irked Neil at the start, but now he’d just let it slide down his back

No Collar

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Eating my teeth off pulling the silk from my lips and swallowing each kerchief wholejust trying to find the priest who has his heart set on a motorcycle

Swan Song of the Pareto Optimalists

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I nearly burst out laughing when I heard myself telling him in my accented English that she’d confided in me that she was preparing to sacrifice herself as part of an elaborate snuff film produced by a band of psychotic artists hell-bent on making up for

Gee, If Only We'd Known!

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As soon as those planes hit the buildings on September 11, it was pretty much all systems go for Cheney's long-planned Iraqi invasion. But first he had to shitcan an aide who showed him in detail how Iraq would eventually…

Greetings From Karma City!

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A friend of mine died and went to heaven. At least I thought he went to heaven. I mean Freddie wasn’t such a bad guy and if he had any faults they were mild peculiarities. Like his girl watching. He was a champion girl watcher. Even in this a

The Umbrella

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Like 37 Hiroshima Bombs

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Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

Coated FOGRA39

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try to keep him from eating the children

Smackdown

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you escape by finding the bubbles

Breaking News

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We are our own pathogens.

In the Air Tonight

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But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru

3 Poems and a Seething Pen

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it’s more about how all those words look around each other. he’s more interested in the shape of things, than the reality....

Cold

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Winter will be cold this year, you tell her. You read that. She says she is with child with her new husband. You tell her she's forty-five, it is selfish. The baby. It's fine. You demand to be at her tests. Evan may let you, she says. He's a doll. She would never use that…

My best

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I don't have time

Excelsior - A Poem in 9 Parts (post 2 of 5)

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II. ByCoalport Your hair streams minarets across a bridge, The…

Joe and the Spiderman

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Once upon a time I sat in summer chairs beside cool vine walls. This was in a borough east of the major city, where families gathered in seasonal joy, by blooms fragrant, to worship the summer and its might. There is nothing diminutive about the world when one is…

Interlude in Trader Joe's Parking Lot

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I'm pulled in by the music like a rogue wave and he has no idea I'm drowning...

'With All Due Respect . . . '

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Our deepest, most heartfelt apologies about the recent MySpace Bulletin, which mentioned your name and recent film and quoted you in jest. Your fifteen-page retalitory riposte was received by this office this morning, via fax sent by your assistant.

The Madwoman Who Called on My Wedding Day

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She’d reached me after running through the directory, alphabetically. Apparently no one in the a’s or b’s or c’s before me would talk to her.