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The Buddhist

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She is not centered, but she finds her way.

Dark Cave, No Candle

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Writing books is like raising children. You do your best, nurture them, discipline them, coddle them, feed them, patch up their injuries, sing to them, try to sell them, but no matter what you do, they are what they are.

These Dreams We Are Having

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It is just a little break from the colicky baby who has finally fallen asleep. Just a little break, maybe a half hour. And the faulty heater, that wolf at the door, knows that and will take his chance. The two of you are lying on your backs, both of yo

Prairie Flowers

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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.

Cause of Death

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“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.

When Deer Attack

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Carla woke up from her hospital bed screaming. "Somebody please help me. Please save me. I am begging you."

Diagnosis

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I am studying the way/ dust bunnies emerge, grow/ and apparently reproduce.

Everything Foreign

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In college, I made friends with my Jewish roommate. Her name was Leah and she was from Brooklyn. When she asked me home with her for Thanksgiving, she mentioned we could go to synagogue together. I asked if there would be other black people there. "No," Leah…

our ragged wits, ragged minds

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Our ragged wits, ragged minds, after acting out all, imitating all honey-like tunes, air song, excellence of song, true flower of the world. So the sun has some of its honey wintered away, to bring it into contact with such a human voice as yours.

John of God, Painted by Murillo

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NO ONE CAN BE A BASTARD FOREVER

Monsters and Me

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Godzilla, Mothra, Kong, Rodan. Most people know these Giant Monsters through the movies. What the majority of the population doesn't understand is, that these are monsters are real. Like the myths of ancient times, these movies are just a way that our

Rags to Riches to Rags, 1

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1 Al Capone was ruling the backstreets and alleyways of Chicago during Prohibition, and we lived in a little house right next door to a speak-easy. I could peak through our curtains and see right into the bar next door when cops came in to get pai

The House on El Nino Diablo Court, Part 2

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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.

A Day in the Life of Mike

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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,…

You Have No Idea

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“I want you to face the toys!”

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Coda

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—Man, what a tearjerker way to end an interview, said Ben.

She mentioned prayer in the Øilslick.xxx ZipperPoems

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We transplant helix° splices and shoot back to meet our former selves, zip the scrolls, and save the world. Then you said spin so I twisted my jumper over and over in endless folds like lips, like vaginas, like seacreatures

A Man

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He was lit up faintly.Standing in a room of golden proportions (which is not saying a lot), he was one stood man (which is). The only lamp, a seemingly old neon, hanging short from its chains, shone darkly above none. None but a five-feeted glass plane, upon which glossy…

Three Questions on Distance Running

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Do you see the hot coals of doing? The way time sizzles or wilts…eat those coals.

bucket of keys

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I imaged him at his mother's house, eating chicken and tabouli with her at her round marble table, leaning back and laughing, then reading my “love you” and excusing himself to cry in the bathroom.

Edward Ogle the fourth

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Charted stars by the dozens / with a side of frizzle onions / dawn showers us with glitter.

My Brother's Bedroom

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they say the sense of smell is the strongest sense connected to memory, but not for me

Event Particle

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She is a manifold of temporal flows.

Politics

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These days, you seem to disappear like bread tasted and devoured

Who Set Off the Liberal Detectors?

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I sense that I may have won a few hearts and minds with my stirring peroration. "Can I get anybody a Republican Party beer koozie to take home?"

Lucky in Love

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Clasped his hands behind his head to give a moment’s thought to love and how it had never quite clarified in his mind to run pure and sweet.

Alfamadog

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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…

Hey, Boys, Bandits!

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I remember one time that summer I was with you (1964) going to a bar in maybe it was Melrose Park, or Northlake, or somewhere along Roosevelt Road closer to Chicago, not as far as Cicero though. I went there with a crazy gear-head named Roger Hudson, wh

Refugees

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Somebody left CNN on all night long until the news cycle flipped, crashed and burned in its own ruins

the leisure to walk about sweetly

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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.