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In the Tent of Princess Citronella

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While sipping Earl Grey tea in the tent of Princess Citronella, I could hear the nightime burping of several camels outside trying to settle down. A slight breeze entered in through an opened flap and gently vibrated a piece of paper the Princess was handing me. A dog…

Zwarovski Crystals

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It was 14:24 official eBay time. Louise had spent hours looking at over 30,000 items under “Elvis Memorabilia"

Shoot

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Dear Brandon Lee: I know that you're dead and can't respond to letters, but I've always felt a connection to you.

In the Pink Distance

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in the pink distance / a boy in a corduroy shirt / sits before an upended electrical spindle / and drinks a vodka gimlet

Buzzard

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what lies, in my eyes

Next Time, Academics

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I suggested when we passed the flesh shack that we turn around and that I go in and say to the sex workers that the Russians are fetching $3.5K per hour in Manhattan and it's private, unlike there at that road-side shack.

Model Home

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In the living room of a model home, Mr. Jorgensen lived. He was a mannequin. He spent his days in display windows. He spent his commutes displaying the latest model cars.

Vanishing Vapors with Mister Van Gogh

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These clouds are what I havewith me. Their language is minebut it is drying today aswe speak. I catch the darkeningsparks, but that's not to beyour concern. I am sure youshall go on. What I wantis to deliver your song. Idoubt it is for anybody else.Clouds are good at…

Love Verse

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A gentle man, and a fierce woman, charmed one another in a shaded gazebo.

Bringing a New Poet into Your Home

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You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w

Fourth World

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Where are you going, boy who never was?

Mercury Unbound - 2

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An infested, indifferent universe . . .

COD: Extreme Hunger

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Mid-laugh, Mr. Adams caught himself. His eyes welled, flooded with guilt for chuckling at his son's funeral.

Metropolitan

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Metropolitan I. Atlantic harbinger of this our swaddled dawn: Mistaking moon's sea sweep for this the frown The sky's plain-countenanced creatures maytimes weep Upon the surface-sundown of our lawn, When gaily surfaced for…

The Blueberry Man

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It was a Thursday. That's when I found out about the blueberries. Those precious, round little wonders, now forever untouchable.I left the note on the ledge of the balcony, taped down so it wouldn't fly away.It was going to come to this, eventually. After…

Snowbound

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Shut up.You shut up.That's disgusting.You should talk.Fuck off.Fuck me.whore.Yes.More.Shut up.

If Hell...

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the sour waft of a secret

A little bit of babysitting

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Roy Williams was his real name. It had been for the last 15 years. Since retiring from the Firm he’d lived innocuously in an apartment near the Old City walls of Dubrovnik doing the occasional quick job for them. You never entirely retired from the Firm.

Session Fifteen

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"That it was my stepdad's fault."

Payton, Pelt & Hargrove: 3 (Sorta) Young Lions of the Jazz Trumpet

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It’s the middle-aged jazz musician who tends to get lost in the shuffle; no longer news, and not ready for the marble statue-treatment.

Dysplasia

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In my mind the village of 300 souls is called Nedoweska, but I confess that that's just a dreamy nickname I had for it as a boy. For various geopolitical reasons it had since become noteworthy as a historical site, though our interest was purely personal.…

Carmenère

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Lips to graceful curve, / Found a well from which / This dancing lifeblood comes / (Again and again)...

Bible Stories for Atheist Babysitters

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What the five-year-old I baby sit for wanted to do yesterday was torture his Barbies. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked.“Because we're bad guys!” said Hanina. “Can't we be good guys?”“Not today. Today we're bad…

Notebook (excerpt)

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I try as much as I can to write but only in as much as you believe―am I successful.

Blank Inside

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She remembers the days when she could have purchased every card in the store and found the words to fill them all.

Jonestown on a Global Scale

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Picture it-/ air not clogged with the shit// that makes Beijing the dark joke/ of the developed world.

Odysseus Remembered

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Years later Polyphemus still remembers the wine-soaked taste of Odysseus’s men. The barley and garlic-flavored Greeks. Their flesh a fibrous, blood-hued hummus. Their crunched bones releasing sweet marrow.

Complex

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He sees the dogs through the window, his babies, sleeping on opposite ends of the couch. His girl, lying supine, hind legs spread, grotesquely, almost comically, as far as they can without being flush with the cushion. His boy, Cosmo, face down, the power…

Getaway

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She’d picked him up at a party freshman year, calling him Danny. Until then he had always been Daniel. He’d said nothing and his name was changed.

Five Stories About Inexperienced Youth

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1. Pharmacy Randy approached the counter. It appeared that the only person in the pharmacy was the pharmacist himself, Mr. Crubby, and from the sound of the stiff white bag crumpling he was busy saving someone's life, or at least ameliorating someone's …