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Life After Les Miz

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There are many ways to cope effectively with your life after a Les Miserables run, and everyone is different, but here are some things that have helped others work through the process.

A Drowning

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This is the record of a drowning.

Stroke One, Stroke Two, Stroke Three

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On Monday, May 7, 2018, at the age of 67, I had a stroke.

A Little Man on a Rainy Corner

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He is sitting in the infinite rain and the water is making him some infinite silhouette

Uncanny Valley, Goodbye

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When not enough is left to utterThe syllables it takes to say,Goodbye--Disassembled and developed,Laid upon the ground,Like the girded gridlockOn your smog befitted brow...Goodbye.And what if I said, hello?What if I said, good day?Would it change your sunken bodyAnd repair…

Bare Ruined Palace

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Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key

Regina Road

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I took a left, it's less safe

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.

Vacation

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The week before she left for Costa Rica with her new lover she called me. Often, she did this. We talked for hours. What should I pack on my trip? she asked. Setting out with him …

Assiduity Twenty Five

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" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "

Salt/Sweet

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Salted sea of summer fingers- sand and salted skinmelt in me; vanilla ice cream lick- your lips; salty kiss saliva- sweet salt of semen run down my chin languid-salty sweat of you.

Pathology

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PATHOLOGY How awful it is to dissect a marriage! It lays naked on the therapist's steely table. He makes his first incision into the bloated stomach of our malnourished union. He polishes his glasses and peers, cuts the thin taut skin of our…

Blanket of Ivory

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Diane couldn’t shake her compunction. Though eight and a half months had passed, nothing felt right anymore. Their conversation played out in her dreams, and stilled her during everyday errands.

What You Get

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In moving crowds I plan to break you.

Smells Like Burning

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Stanley had a crush on Sarah. They were in Ms. Goldman's freshman chemistry class together fifth period. That day they were working on homework at Sarah's house while her parents were gone. Stanley was in heaven.“Break time!” Sarah woke Stanley from daydreaming,…

In the Seoul Metro

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I’ve seen your tired souls riding under the city lost in the drowsiness of morning calm commutes.

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…

Holy Adam and Saint Jason

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“Where is my mom?” I think. I shouldn't have to be here alone. I am twenty two years old, strung-out on methamphetamine and sitting in a courtroom. It is the third day of the murder trial. My son was the victim. He was only two and his…

Cabinet

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In the morning I listen through an ear-trumpet

Cleaning The Dead

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"Don't pull too hard," warned Father. "You might sever it from the body, spraying blood into your eyes."

Third Shift

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Some great, doubtless precious; some hollow, likely empty; some only shards, but you never know...

sunburn

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I used to compare her to a sunburnthe first of the summerit is always the worst oneexposed skinalmost hot to the touchturning warm and pinkthen raw and redit is a transition that is effortlessbut still you can feel it happeninga lot like loveyou can feel it all around…

The 83rd Meridian West

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The priest went into the place in those parts, the priest an old pear or grape gotten ripe and then moreso, but never actually expiring . He was hunched and it looked like he was broken at some integral part, but nobody could tell for sure where. One time, a bat…

Boise Poetry Slam

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The boy buckled in and told his mom, “No mommy, I can do it myself”

Born Lucky

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He's gonna find he wasn't born lucky after all, his propaganda has got up on the wrong side of the bed and sidled onto the couch.

Advice To A Young Poet

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Touch these words with your mind. They will create an elephant with an unidentifiable itch.

Happy Christmas to my quantum mechanic-

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this elegant silver wrench/ which from the opposite side/ becomes a golden Phillips-head

How did you get your second Silver Star

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No one told us that the LZ was already hot and the last Combat Mobile Team had already been shot down and killed. No, no one told us that. So when we came in below about 500 feet I began to hear that "pitit" sound of AK-47 rounds going right through the f

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.

On the Way To

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Robbie’s wrists itched hard, the cord was sunk in so tight his hands were bordering now on blue, now purple. Too late to matter.