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Government Contract

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So what happensTo the VFWIn a global economyAnd the monumentsErected in reverenceAfter the boysWho became menCame back homeTo be fathersThen grandfathersGreat-grandfathersAnd start to fall awayAs the days creep byThat petty paceOf politics as usualFamily DiasporasAnd maybe…

Liberty of Cooking

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My dish was slut ("all done" in Swedish). It tasted good though aroused no draft, of mutton, for example. My grandparents' bed held flat. I filed alone, in realist kitchen, reading Froeding, standing, striding, continent as gym.

we used to drop her off along the way

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We do it all the time...

Coming Home

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How many years has he dreamed he would be home again?

twitter quitter

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you can reach me at hashtag this!

Survival

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When nothing's coming in All I have are fragments Cloudy memories Uncompleted projects Disappointments loom large and threaten to define me I am only as good as what I produce And now I feel empty So how do I shine How do I find the spark that…

Milky Way of Impossibility

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Can we meet in the desert, I will stand with a cactus flower clenched between my teeth and balance en pointe. I will tame snakes and find your serpent tongue with my eyes closed. I will usher in the clouds, when it grows hot, and, should you becom

The Key

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"No idea yet, why it was so important, what could it possibly mean to her? Was it someone who she knew, a distant relative, a character for her novel, something was just so strangely haunting about it that she could see it even when she did not have it in

Stan Smith

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Ah we just sat on the flat roof of the school and looked out at what was beyond because sometimes there is nothin' to do but sit on a flat roof of a school and look out at what is beyond. Going up there I had told him to be careful with the bag because if he didn't take…

Five Million Yen: Chapter 32

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Wait a minute, said Ben. What do we really know?

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.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 5

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Vladimir walked down the little path next to the creek with us. I stopped along the way and picked off a sliver of some of the bedrock that was sticking out alongside the narrow path, to take home with me as a souvenir of my family castle, just to be ab

The Shirt Library

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I hate buying shirts. There's no point. You need a shirt, you go to the library.

Mural, Mosaic, and Satori

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He thought of natural violence that had to do with the wind and the Atlantic Ocean. He thought of the Gulf Stream, that important title, that someone had shown him on a map and explained about in detail.

A Pleasant Fiction

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We pull up under the port cochère (which I am NOT allowed to call ‘the car tent’, even though I built it) just as the front door opens. Jackson, our eldest, saunters out with a dish rag over his bare shoulder like he owns the place.

Gomalco, Inc.

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“You've got to be kidding me. A robot?”, said Marge as she rotated in the chair at her desk. She removed the leaf of paper from the typewriter and set in down on the desk. She looked up at Parkins who was leaning against the wall nursing a cold cup of…

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

The Maple Leaf Club

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One of his operas was confiscated when he couldn’t pay a hotel bill. He ended up in a mental home, demented from syphilis.

Strawberry Daiquiris

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A hot summer night walks into a bar and orders a drink.

Year End Closeout: Buy One, Get Seven Free.

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It’s not that cold but the cold that is/ penetrates layered cloth and soft skin/ to chill the blood in its capillaries

Fundamentals

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You can have two threes, or three twos. I hear the beat both ways. It goes back and forth in my head, like magic, transforming from one to the other and back again. And I am learning the basics of music theory, and painting geometric shapes with primary colors. I am…

4:09 and American Music

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If you knew everything, you would not be able to sit on tropical balconies at 4:09 A.M., discovering a book and then the world for the first time If you were part of the spiritual set, and could astral travel far and wide, but neglected to open the door…

it was after a revolution, or a war, or some disaster

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I had this dream. We were living together, and we were in bed asleep when strange, enormous cats began crowding around our windows and meowing. They made awful scratching and scraping noises at the windows, trying to come in. But I couldn’t wake you up.

postscript

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the sand is hot to walk upon so you must run if caught there w/out footwear. it is like a painter has colored the sea and made parts of it dark blue yet other areas green. little birds jump around the fine grain world and that is when you wonder where they came…

Tollund Man, one/breakfast, zero

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how enthralled might you be, or how much appalled,/plucked from a fresh dream that had just grown serene?

Interior: Classroom

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No girl hits hard enough.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 6

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Frank met Angelique Brody on the street in front of his building.

Passion

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From words to meaning― how complicated it is.

Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem Here?

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I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill, and … Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem here? Thank you. Sheesh! As I was saying, I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill. And I meet someone who names all his fish after people he doesn’t l

His house

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His house incubates memories. As he sleeps, they hatch.His house is neither here nor there. It occupies a space between watchfulness and insomnia. Grey birds nest on its roof.His house is a refuge from everything except himself. The floor, walls, roof are fat with him.…