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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.

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 . . .

Bardo

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In the quiet dark, fathers reappear.

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.

Slivers from the edge

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Four ships anchor Far off shore Chains slip Beneath the swell.

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…

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.

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.

Of Roses and Hyacinths

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The blooms are practical/ and cannot see themselves

Horizon

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Over the electronic horizon at an invisible distance nuclear reactors melt like ice cream and release tiny black lines of radiation that wriggle in the air like worms

It's My Birthday

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and the President didn't call.

For all we know, we'll never meet again...

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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

Cat Haikus

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You have more names Than a Spanish grandee. Your lives I’m too envious to count.

Convenience

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I drove all night, but there weren’t nothing Roy Orbison about it. I’d been driving and around lunchtime I just thought I might stop by Shona’s place.

I Am the Cheap Man

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I considered my choices, then asked the question that has brought my wife so much pain over the years. "Which is cheaper?"

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