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Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her
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Posit butterflies/
as evidence of heavenly design.
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On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing.
“I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!”
My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93 right after she turned 92. And 92
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It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…
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Fear I’ll be stuck here without a ladder
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He thought of it as magic, but magic that he understood, the way a magician knows about the hidden compartments in his hat and trunks.
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Somebody left CNN on all night long
until the news cycle flipped, crashed
and burned
in its own ruins
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You seemed to have that leisure to walk about sweetly when I was with you, honey-singing the reward for the intensity of emotion you lunged about in. Nothing seemed like it was going to hurt or harm anyone, even while I was going nuts between the legs.
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When the teacher was out of the room Myron pretended to play with himself, saying, “down boy” and smiling to the nervous gasping and fake coughs from the other classmates and, since he's my close friend, I think he does silly stuff like this to contend with…
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I blame you for my short temper when I go off the handle when my blood runs cold and I can't think straight I can only react. When I say things I don't mean Even if I do. But I am glad for the fire you started inside of me. That time I…
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Gibson Park, underneath the grove of trees beside the soccer field. She's buried. But don't say anything yet. Her disappearance will make the news shortly, but it hasn't yet.
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I survived as a brave thought,
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As a kid he had run away from the family farm and shoveled coal back East to put himself through college. Now he was just another old man in a nursing home, desperate for a drink, his blue eyes bleary, a sticky goo filming at the corners of his lips.
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The English phrase "Nice to see you" translates into "My gall bladder is really warm today" in Berik, a language of New Guinea.
What Language Is, John McWhorter
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Inspired by "The Dunwich Horror"" by H.P. Lovecraft, this excerpt concerns the events in the life of a man who is coming to the awareness that his son has followed in his grandfather's steps and begun the process of conjuring a spirit that killed him.
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The Campus Socialists
Paul and Mary Jo lived in an apartment at the top of a long, dark flight of stairs that were so high, I remember as if it were yesterday thinking, the night she pushed him down the stairs, he would surely be dead by the time h
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He ordered a palace built, and the builders came to blows, which is why the father’s eyes have swollen shut, and the oldest son’s knuckles are bright plums.
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This is a very impromptu piece written at two in the morning based on a prompt from Meg Pokrass, who insisted the following words be used: fussyhairybloomingslipperyflutterdamppaleweedsyanking “Maxfuss” was his password, which was appropriate,…
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i’m trying to remember
don’t all the best apples happen
in September?
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Reams of saggy bunting intersect the streets.
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“What the fuck!” Duke muttered, amazed at what he was seeing in the darkened store. A thin curtain of smoke was rising from under the baseboard like an inverted waterfall. It stretched the entire length of the left wall. Holy shit, the joint's on fire! I…
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The old lady is losing her memory. She forgets people's names yet so familiar to her. A little sheepish, she takes her basket and walks to the village. Just like when her legs were young, suntanned, shapely and attractive. Along the footpath, by the shop windows, over the…
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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway:
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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
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If I should stumble into cheerfulness/
remind me of all the business models
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Charted stars by the dozens /
with a side of frizzle onions /
dawn showers us with glitter.
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It’s a compromising situation...
The would be Bride of Christ begins perspiring
before the crowd.
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring echoes through the antique church
just one more time,
a little loud.
With every added verse and every flickering vigi
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Happens at a party, this way, past frat boys
perched in branches like idiot hoot owls,
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