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Honey Nut Cheerios and Chocolate Milk

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Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …

Reburial at sea

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“Sloshes to sloshes. Drip to drip,” I said, then ceremoniously flushed the toilet bowl, our heads bowed in reverence as Molly and I gave Swimmy its last rites. Swimmy, named by Molly whose overstatement of the obvious is endearing in a three-year-old, was…

Decoy

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No one saw him arrive at the half-moon garden just south of Delancey, no one saw him hang his cage from one of the drainage pipes, but by the time the rest of us got there, the bamboo frame was already covered with silky, golden cloth that reflected the e

We Should All Have One Great Love

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My dumb body that does not speak still cried out your name last night. Did you hear it, maybe in your sleep?

A Man More Like Your Mother

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Does he pack you a lunch when you're running late for work? Even when you're not running late? Does he insist on regular medical check-ups, for which he'll pay because you don't have insurance? Will he disapprove of your objectionable behavior, and not turn the…

The Sun's Curtains

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It must be nice not to have to worry About certain things because those things are not yet In your circle, or in your circus, of life. I don't begrudge you for being almost grown in A much different, sweeter place and time. I'm thrilled By…

Wireless

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It seems that back in 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm came to this town

Climate Change

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Every year I have a birthday, and every year another of my friends succumbs to cancer or suicide. That's a shitty gift. That is devoutly not to be wished.

Reduced

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There I was at the OPEN HOUSE. It was easy, three doors down. The sign on the lawn said, PRICE REDUCED. The real estate lady said, “Back again? Thinking of buying”? I laughed. There were several couples there. People have…

another ode

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the strength in you i envy/ leaves me naked, sweating in the dust/ while you possess what ethic i pretend to have/ in the face of those who expect from me/ so much more.

Freakuccino

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The bus was almost empty, just me and an Asian girl who'd cleaned up some since I'd seen her. She was wearing a too-big T-shirt that said Freakuccino and writing in a notebook. If she remembered me she didn't say so I didn't either. Everybody sheds some…

What the Other is Thinking

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Six months passed and the lovers decided speaking was no longer a necessary component in their relationship. They did this over breakfast, delicately spooning pink triangles of grapefruit into their mouths. Not a word spoken.

One Story Above the Boy in an Old Car

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Near dusk today a car backfired on the street beneath my office window

Leningrad's Sister City And Her Cuban Sandwiches

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It began not so innocently with voyeuristic tendencies. the sound of concrete and confetti in the night.

When I Met the Mountain Man

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I am young. This is years before I start to hide my accent.

We Are Not Alone

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The bank bought out the miles of land behind our property.

After Reading Signs in a Club with a Dress Code

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I like violence / because they refused to pay at attention to me / as a child.

Small Boat Row Told Through a Roughed Out Dungeon Window

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The princess knew exactly where to find the annoying gurgling frog of her childhood, but she wasn't wearing the right shoes to step onto lily pads with, so she decided there and then to take a stolen boat out onto that soft mission, all by herself instead. It was a…

Storms at the Door

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My Mother always said that a storm was death knocking.

It's really not the same

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It wasn't the same as taking a course with Ginsberg. Everyone knew Ginsberg. Nick Cave, too, everyone knew him. Waiting lists were full months in advance for those classes, everyone sent in resumes and writing samples, praying, begging to be included. Lish was just an…

Dead Batteries

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She woke before the sun was up to brew a pot of coffee. His eyes blinked open as he lay in bed smiling, smelling the fresh coffee mixed with marijuana smoke. He walked to the living room and sat next to her on the couch. He rested his head against her shoulder.…

Blue Crabs

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The perfect murder, and it’s not even murder.

Arcana Magi Zero - c.2

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It was so dark below, there was only flashlights weaving about and headlights pointing in one direction.

Airline Passengers! Is There A Right To Recline?

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It's called the Knee Defender. But I prefer to think of it as the Schmuck Identifier.

13 cyborg poets

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1. Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal designed to be audible only to himself.2. T S El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying order appears.3. C0ler1dge suffered…

Assiduity Thirteen

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My relationship with Uzma exists on several levels, from basic to abstract, from animal magnetism to spiritual journey.

Rescued From A Dream

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There were six people on the bridge, myself included, and we were making our way across when something exploded—it was more a rifle shot than explosion, actually—and it cut like a razor through the delicate fabric of the moment.

A meditation on mint tins

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And I am reminded of river eyes: The summer we slumbered, Like mummies in the sand

ExsanguiNations

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leaches fatten-up

Bare Ruined Palace

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Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key