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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…

hands

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He cleaned off the pump with a steel brush. Then he took it out to the pressure washer. Out there was where a lady that looked like a witch used to move around and sit on the fences like a crow. The air was humid, and the men were dressed in heavy blue coveralls.…

marsha and the white rabbit

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a white rabbit with a dirty monocle and a straw hat regarded marsha from the grass at the edge of the mud.

Room # 23

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She stood for a moment to think about what happened inside. She had just killed her husband of twenty three years.

Love-sad

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Then there she is, and she makes me love-sad; it's a vehement, absolute, hard love-sad no one else needs to understand, though they can see; it's an emotion so concrete it's felt from the chest, not from a tenuous concept called heart.

Refugio Beach

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We can’t see anything except for glimpses of the other’s eyes, hands, mouths when we move.

Of Roses and Hyacinths

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The blooms are practical/ and cannot see themselves

It's My Birthday

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and the President didn't call.

The Master of the Air

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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.

Destiny Knocking - 2

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. . . why did it take so long?

Give Me Back My Albert Hall

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“Now, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” is a hit of the eighties.”

Having

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I guess it was, you know, a daze thing: He, lightly drunk, turning red in parts of his head, in his cheeks mostly, and his chest, to which my eyes were drawn because of his v-neck douchebag shirt; and I, sleepy beyond belief, sustained like a zombie only

The Room of Doors

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"Which way ought we to go from here," he asked. She smiled again, "that all depends on where we want to get to." He nodded but didn't laugh so she sighed and strolled around the room, tuning and looking and considering her options.

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…

The Witch in the Canyon

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There's a witch in Laurel Canyon.She made Wes a promise.Her bungalow smelled like Parliaments. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive oil. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive, and a freshly opened pack of Red Vines. Wes could have curled up into a ball and fallen asleep on her…

OUR NEXT BREAK

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You welcome the new girl by putting a message on her back. I breathe harder until she pops or until you ask me what I’ve seen or until you see my hand turn into a fist.

two hendecasyllabic verse notes for Mr. S.

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mind heart soul will blood sweat tears muscle, and bone,/and then always something else—not more, just else . . .

Elephant's Miracle

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"Already he is running and flying to the center of the world" - Mircea Eliade, about what a shaman is up to, under his mask.

Bardo

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In the quiet dark, fathers reappear.

Shaken not stirred

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The warmth of the sun

We're The Atwoods

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I remember a time when Calvin, my husband, was like Winnie the Pooh and I was a jar of fine Provençal honey. No amount of my sweetness could satisfy his craving for me. He would spread me on his toast with butter at breakfast and mix me with peanut butter

Fourth Time’s a Charm

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We wait for a server to bring our coconut cream pie. His favorite. I hate coconut.

Lapidary

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You burnish what is left until it shines and call it your own.

Climate Change

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Every year I have a birthday, and every year another of my friends succumbs to cancer or suicide. That's a shitty gift. That is devoutly not to be wished.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 35

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They sat eating and looking at each other. To Ben, Claudia was certainly a handsome woman and a good bed partner, but he was getting more and more suspicious of her motives.

Leda, After the Swan

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I do not jerk up to sirens birds doorbell shouts hello hello through the letterbox hello

Deviance

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I tried to enlighten them. For my trouble, they tried to have me deprogrammed. I condemned their narrowness of mind; they pitied me my naiveté. I ridiculed their religious bourgeois complacency, but they really didn’t know what I was talking about.

Juicy | In the Umbra

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He licks his lips and mouths the air, salivating, unashamed of his propensity for the round, pink grapefruit, the almost egg-shaped oranges, the firm, juicy tangerines.

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

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I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. / We were never happy. I realize that now.

The Madness of Mass Dance

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Outbreaks of mass communal dancing—sometimes referred to as “choreomania”—occurred in Europe with some frequency in Europe between the 14th and the 18th centuries.