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Back East

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Could even drift off to New Orleans for a slow sip of a hurricane

Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery

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Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery We breathe the damp shade, plum trees shining in a woodland where there are few wrong things I want to remember-- the steel fence of the power company blazing under an arc light is one. On this day of ripening fruit …

Wedding

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It was cold in the church. The Lutherans were freezing to death. The Catholics brought their winter coats.

(children, children)

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Her name was Carrie. And yes, it was love at first sight. Yes, she was a client, and you were supposed to keep your hands off the clients. Everyone in real estate knew that. She came into my office and took a seat in the reception area. I had a listing on Cedar…

My Daughter Belongs In a Mental Home

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Autumn

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Early morning cokeBottle. Did Katie callHeiddegger "Skippy"?Remember years backWhen we studied so hard andHa ha, just kidding.As you age, neverForget you are dying noFaster than before.

Crumbling Stones Crush Our Self Esteem

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Jimi and Janis remain fierce and beautiful

Mr. Feisty Mischievous

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His nervous cackle makes me sick - Oh, if only - Times were different - That knife - Would fit so nicely in his back

Musica

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A sizzling as skin and sinew melt, fall away. "Scream if you need to scream, child." And I scream, and her song gains strength. The warmth of her around me. It is time.

The Night She Took Her Dignity Back

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She had endured three years of abuse for those hot, fleeting moments of tenderness—just enough warmth to keep her second-guessing the bitter frost. Now the ring promised a lifetime of biting back her pain.

Weather Forecasting

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By the time the forked tongue of the flag extended flat like it was pressed between two of my thick volumes on weather forecasting, the man was still walking with his nose glued to the ground.

Bare Ruined Palace

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Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key

A Tangled Web of Likes

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Liking up with the Joneses...

Arcade

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My father owned a penny arcade. I worked for him every summer all during my youth. My job was to hand green tickets to customers who achieved a certain score on Skee-Ball or shuffleboard. The coupons could be redeemed for merchandise which we had on display on…

Halfsies

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You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 41

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Frank was about to take the first bite of a chicken salad sandwich.

13 poets in Hell

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1Paradise Lost is cast into the lake of fire. Satan tells John Milton to rewrite it in 140 characters or fewer.2Filippo Marinetti languishes in a dismal rural idyll. His hand, possessed, scrawls euphonic odes to the moon with a quill.3Henri Michaux floats through the…

aromatic

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this bleeding sun, clove studded & seedless

Casualties of War

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When Jimmy – and Frank and John and all the rest – joined up, it all seemed a big lark. Little Mary – she can’t have been more than about five years old – was dead proud her Dad was going off to fight the Germans. I doubt she really knew who the

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.

my apartment needs more culture

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the first night we visited/ i stepped on a splinter/ while walking to the car/ and half-limped back,/ hiding a wince.

the genes of Edouard Manet

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was entering into a new phase of its existence, a peculiar paradigm of the wider world where, presaged by science, economic and political ideologies were conspiring to displace the old verities of religion and aesthetics, but where…

Spirit Voices Saying Yes

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some are cameras, some are daggers, some are sauces pans, others are swords, and some will run off and others will burn a hole into the spot which they land.

Yellow Cabaret

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Hail the yellow cab the yellow one will do just fine as second condiment to the sun

On Learning a Lover Died a Suicide

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I got the news that you had died as I was eating American chop suey, watching the Celtics.

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…

Monogamy

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cummings starts to sniff, his usual routine. He feigns aloofness while raising one wolfy leg to pee on Eliot's sneakers.

The $275 Root Beer Float

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That was some root beer float. It cost us a grand total of $275. She pulls up in front of Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor and leaves the motor running while I jump out and run into the parlor. It was early evening. We HAD to have a root beer float. You

Luminous Nights, 2

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The house where my brother lived up in the hills above Hollywood, looked like any other suburban house on any normal street Anywhere USA, except that once you got inside the house — spread out at your feet was a panoramic view over a canyon that was act

Commotion with Coffee

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The retired, widowed receptionist slapped one hand to the base of her throat with a gasp . . .