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Open Face

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All the time I'm eating I can't help but think of the many different tuna melts I have ordered in diners and coffee shops and how each of them disappointed me...

Lassitude

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It's morning, and the cold black hull of branches sets my resting pier, Amid this drizzle, underneath the poignant pain of birches, wrecked By floods of midyear grieving; wraithlike, Dawn's been becked To paint in shafts of faded rose that shades the fen…

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.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 13

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Tuesday morning while Frank was in Dr. Jawarski’s office, Michiko was sitting in the waiting room of a gynecologist’s office.

Red and Blue Lines of the German Painter, Otto Dix

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They can’t help Seeing a child even there In the crude brushstrokes. They say it is me.

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."

The Script Sucks But the Special Effects Are Killer

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Victor didn't want to be alone, so he phoned Sophie.

Tariff Happy

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Expose those for whom freedom is greed.

The Condescending Skies of June

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I have become a prisoner of my own fractured mind/ A paranoid weirdo behind the horizontal bars of window shades

Happy Christmas to my quantum mechanic-

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

Rubber Chains

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He turned metal chains to rubber with the force of his mind. He prepared tacos for the paperboy.

A Slick Story

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After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…

Playing for Keeps

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I woke like an animal / breeding thoughts like flies

Tumultuous Cracker

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The whole scene smells like paranoia.

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…

Cheese

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When exactly does cheese go bad? it simply does not, I say.

The Phone Call and The Green Murk Crisis

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hangs inverted and begins a swirling motion,

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Coda

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

Poem before Video Store

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Last night was full of little fists

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

The Cowboy of My Heart

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I. The cowboy of my heart rides high in the saddle. Behind him, the long tail of his speeding palomino, golden — like the hair to the girls I was later to want so desperately — stands straight out from his sweating, muscular haunches. It's time.…

Why Men Compete

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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway:

The Incident

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There are some I don’t recognize. My gaze lingers for a second. It’s bad business this.

Men's Hair circa 2000

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When Beez and I were visiting D.C., Beez saw MDW after many years and said, almost so that MDW could hear him if he wished, “His hair looks like Beethoven’s.”

Where is Home?

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We are both 53 and this is the first time I’ve gotten past a third date with anyone from Match. Seth is different. I’m not sure why. My therapist said, “Well, maybe you’ll be good for each other. You both have to accept that you are recovering, or in reco

Yogurt

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Later, you've hit that four shot espresso limit; you've snarfed down that too rich mushroom korma… gone before you tasted it.

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…

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

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Eva stepped out of the hut she and Javier shared and slogged through the mud toward the coop to fetch fresh eggs for Javier's breakfast. None existed. Javier became angry when he didn't get his eggs. Eva slowed her pace as she neared the door. She knew wh

Times Remembered

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Delightful days spent at the beach. Children building castles; as parents watched waves glistening under the afternoon sunlight. Sanderlings running with beaks down, hoping for a tasty morsel through the ebb and flow of tides. As time went by, briefcases,…

A Losing Hand

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A group of us from work are playing cards at a friend's house, so when my brother Jimmy calls, I take my phone into the other room. I already know what it's about, really the only reason he ever calls these days.“Look, I hate to ask,” he begins, the way he…