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eclipse

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the moon is coming back now the shadow hovering and shiftingthe clouds a passing shroud I didn't know if I would be patient enough but now the sliver of light is increasing filling in / filling out the circle I am surprised by how much relief I feel there…

Dear Earth, On the Occasion of Your 40th Earth Day Birthday

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Everyone is tromping around in work boots like an army of happy gardeners. The park is smiling from all this attention, from the sound of kids who think work is play. It's not even sunny but we don't mind. I know you don't. Grey days are just as good. They've…

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.7 - c.4

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Azure lowered her head, nearly burying it in the window, watching the helicopter land.

Neat

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His audio archive of Bay Area musicians extends along two walls, twenty-five by fifteen feet, in drawers of C.D.s hundreds deep. Where will it go, I asked, permanently.

Three haikoos

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Spring Squirrel Spring is here now A dead squirrel in the road Regrettably not Seasonal Surprise Inside warm spring rain Coiled up like Jack in the Box Resides a snow storm Bad Vibrations telephone shouting an…

Tender Mercies

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After he was wounded in Iraq, Wilson Jenkins came home to Monroe. He had suffered two wounds. The first was a waxy-looking scar on his left leg. A twisting crevice of flesh, it started inches above the ankle and ended on his outer hip. In the field hosp

True Stories About False Dancers

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The world is a mighty funny place. It spins wildly and we are held down by its strong ghostly gravity. We're still able to communicate with one another over morning coffee and delicious cake donuts dipped in chocolate. Some of us used to keep…

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…

She’s Dead

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Hank: Yeah, the way her head was bashed in, it looks like someone really had it in for her. Did you call the coroner? Bill: Yeah. Boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to do the stuff those coroner and medical examiner guys do. It seems like

Leaving Home

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it is heavier than it looks with edges smoothed by the passage of time

Samurai Kitteh

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She did not know the passage of time, for she was just a bedraggled little kitty, but she stayed behind the lattice for many rising and settings of the Sun.

Autumn

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I have never known how gold this time of year, With its palladium arcade, was, of the trees That do not sense the pleasure of their silence; Trees are egalitarian, they do not speak But concourse among themselves, consent to join us At this moment breathing…

Heavyweight

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That afternoon, after I'd swallowed that weight. Felt like a sinker, one of those weights that fishermen attach to their line to make sure the line goes down far enough. Go down far enough there, and I'll find it. That's what I was on about, that I had…

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…

Tinkler Man

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As the light changed and exhaustion set in, Suzy and Molly batted back and forth one more knock knock joke to avoid going home.

The Second Confession

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Most people come to dislike me because of the things I say.

You Require Sharpness of Image and Therefore of Words

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I wrote a poem and asked a professor to read it. / He said: IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE / like a mad man on meth, foam running down / his mouth crowded with sharp, shimmering teeth.

Neural Tones

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--"Look at us," she murmurs. "Tristan and Isolde without the adultery." --"Well, you can't have everything." --"No? I heard otherwise."

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 …

Wonkie Eye

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The bad optical, crossed or dead or lazy or stray

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.…

forgiveness

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she sees that no one has considered her needsshe feels left out, and so she strikes outon the offensive, nostrils flaringpoints her finger and makes her caseshe has been wronged, justified in her angershe will not back downthe accused one is hurtstrikes back with her own…

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?

Carmen Scarpino, Pioneering Wise Guy, Dead at 78

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Breasts were developed after World War II, the result of improved nutrition and the additional muscle mass that “Rosie the Riveter”-types acquired through manual labor in jobs that males abandoned to join the war effort.

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…

Boswell Meets The Subterrans

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He bounds like a lunar explorer into the Edinburgh Castle, the goofy porcelain busts glaring at him with contempt.

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…

the fine hair on your belly

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On the beaches in the summer the fine hair rose up from under the material of your bikini and swirled around your deep navel, almost invisible to the naked eye, but not to the mind, which imagines everything funneling down into the center of your being,

Ghost Story

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They come to wipe themselves from my memory, but that, of course, is impossible. In this place, we are bound together, the long line of men who have killed me, and I.

33 and a 1/3

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I've been in Tucson two days, and so far most of my conversations with my father have taken place while I crane my neck and squint into the sun. I scream up, he screams down. He needs to fix the leaky roof before the rainy season, he says.