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Will Your Relationship Survive the Holidays?

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For eight years I have been living with a man named Darren Fletcher, who I will refer to as “Bud” to preserve his anonymity.

Candle Smoke Wishes

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“The minute I stopped wondering about the meaning of life is when I finally started enjoying life.”

When Will the Poetic Violence End?

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Some corners of the world seem to be consigned to an eternal hell of never-ending strife. The Middle East; Northern Ireland; the faculty lounge at Oxford University.

Sea Bubbles

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"I don't know why you say good-bye, I say hello."--The Beatles Things fall from the clouds. Things fall from thefloor. Maybe through, maybe all the way.Everyone argues for their homeland.Someday I'd like to hold your hand. I'mstill dreaming. I hope it continuesto rain…

Summer

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Précis Summer. Far from beautiful Prague, with its buzzing nightlife and pulsating, noisy crowds; away from the stamp, sway and spin, the odour of bodies, beer and cheap perfume; from the opulence and grandiose beauty, we sleep…

Now Lay in It

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The phone rang again at midnight. Maury sat straight up in bed, a reflex from his days in the barracks. Linda, his wife, was already sitting up. In the hint of moonlight, she dabbed her nose with a wadded tissue and made helpless little noises. Maury…

Action she feels as folly, I respond

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Once a friend asked me to write about rape in an email, so I wrote that it is a weapon of war that would not work here because partners do not give in to it; in fact, they would say it is infidelity in relationships.

Downloaded Cheats

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You are my intergalactic princess / The most beautiful in twelve systems

My Mistress

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the ex now alien

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.

Tender Mercies

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After he was wounded in Iraq, Wilson Jenkins came home to Monroe. He had suffered two wounds. The first was a waxy-looking scar on his left leg. A twisting crevice of flesh, it started inches above the ankle and ended on his outer hip. In the field hosp

DENSITY

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There were more of us before, laying in a puddle cuddling on the floor with heads tucked into the crooks of arms where light scattered their crowns in the morning and no machine exists for me to use trying to find that morning again. Carl could go off the side of the…

Stump the Nuns!

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“It's a combination of ‘Survivor' and ‘College Bowl' says Sister Mary Agnesita, the show's host. “We take four very strict nuns and match them up with boys who were cut-ups in their grade school classes."

Love Poem

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I need to be not sure

Arcade

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My father owned a penny arcade. I worked for him every summer all during my youth. My job was to hand green tickets to customers who achieved a certain score on Skee-Ball or shuffleboard. The coupons could be redeemed for merchandise which we had on display on…

Against Poetry

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If you had a choice, be a poet or not, I’d suggest prose for the lines that you jot.

Joint Custody – The Second Coming

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A little boy sits at the table. He hears a knock at the door.“Mo-om!” the boy calls out. “Door!”His mother comes from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her clothing.“Jesus!” she says. “Would it kill you to answer the…

Zen Yoga Mind Over Body Food Prep Hair Net

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See the hair Know the hair Remove the hair

Poetic Emmy's #1

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I’d like to thank no one. But especially my first love in life For putting me through hell With all her lies and eternal sweetness Toward all her many leading men While maintaining she was virgin Until she met me. What was the point? Ah, y

Gentility

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The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…

Lake Erie on a Monday Night

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As if I should have expected better of it.

Coffee Alone

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And pity us, this generation of sighing:

Desire

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Dark morning sleet whitecrusts the world once more, shrouds remains of January thaw:

In Memoriam

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One by one, cars filed into the cemetery, pelted by the summer rain under a gun-metal sky. The procession moved slowly, a series of brake lights and headlights, too close together, too far apart; there were sedans and SUVs, mini-vans and pick-up trucks, shiny new vehicles…

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…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 28

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On Monday, Michiko returned from Cleveland in a foul mood. She called Frank’s studio at three in the afternoon.

a grey green enamel vase in the rain

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we hover black as carrion birds with a glut empty need seems to me she's fell as thee and knows exactly where we posture anxiously spitting falsehoods on cue twittering like snipes cause there's nothing left to do she might have spent her whole life just

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.

AUTUMN LEAVES UNDERFOOT

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Goodbye comes in stages. At first you recognize that you will “miss” someone when they are gone. Then you have to accept the fact that they are leaving. And finally accept the fact that they are gone; and not particularly in that order. If only it

Bands, Again?

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Monkey Business Low Ceiling Wagging Tongues Guest Sweet Murphy’s Law Kinda Hot Stopit! Freedom Ring Lumpy Oatmeal Better Not Butter Up Grumpy Umpire