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The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 44

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The butterscotch on that painting makes me want to lick the canvas.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 11

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Ben was stuck between sweet essences and rancid Talmudic funk. It was going to be a long trip.

Ennui

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I've done the math, it didn't count. All the days and years of endless boredom. Of waiting for the next best thing, trapped inside your mind like a lifetime prison sentence. Maybe one day we'll be free, maybe one day we won't feel so oppressed. But when does that day…

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

Filaments

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It's always dark when Cal and I arrive. We park under the bright sodium lamps, closest to the doors. The lights will probably be off by the time we return, unless the sensors miscue in the uncertain light of early morning. When that happens, the lights…

Instructions Found in an Empty Can of Coffee

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If you find a lone, sad honeybee, buy a Habitrail cage and make it your new pet.

Dear Sir

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[Lights up on CLAUDE. He's holding a letter, standing.]CLAUDE: Dear sir, We regret to inform you That your (that place with cream walls and dog hair…

Sauna

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The arid paramour, your breath is hot, dry, cedar. I sweat you corpus fluids and salt and the unnamably impure.

Snap

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An eternity in a crashing moment.

Deity

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On this day, a blinding sky holds ribbed reams of clouds, staccato against staggering blue.

Hold My Hand

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Billy Joel wants to hold my hand.

Hashtagstory No. 1

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#whateverhappenedto #beforesex #whateverhappenedto #duringsex #whateverhappenedto #aftersex #nevertrust[written in August 2009]

Abby

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The music is too loud in here and it's hurting my ears. I know some of the words to the songs because my older sister listens to the same stuff when she's in her bedroom and is playing her iPod and my dad yells at her to turn that crap down. I like my dad. He calls me…

The Fat Geisha Sings The Ballad of the Bamboo Shoot

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Come gather round and listen to me You senior VPs from AIG As full of yourselves As you are of wealth So engorged are you with raging greed The warnings you neither see nor heed. Come gather round and listen to me Sing of the Minister of the Third Degree. …

Braque

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“What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” said Pablo moving from canvas to canvas. He was stunned.

THERE IS NOTHING MORE HONEST THAN PAIN

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My parrot Poe freezes when a crow soars outside the window the same way I do when you approach my door. You come knocking late at night. What do you want this time? I yell. To come in you say, please. Go the fuck away, I respond but you keep…

You've Got that Wrong Kind of Brain

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He and Nick got a long very well, and would speak about things for hours until the morning came; and Betsy would supply them with food and coffee, and clever sayings all the while Johnny watched it all over. Tonight though, they had watched La Rafle, and

Experimental Poetry

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Sometimes the dirt just stays dirt

With Respect to a Fellow Poet

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We do not all love each other for the sake of our shared art, apparently.

Quantum Quandary

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I love the notion of uncertainty-/ which seems inherent/ at the level of particles-

The Rat, His Treadwheel

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The rat had been informed, assured, cajoled in order to gain his assent—duly lied to, in other words, by the researchers with not one tear of remorse, with no smudge or smear of conscience . . .

Struggle for Life

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7.53Another morning ritual. Trying to fill the loose ends of time in the early morning is a task.7.54I've done about everything, too early to work and too late to go back to sleep. 7.55Trying to avoid the nausea of life at all cost. My mind is a snakepit, filled with…

The Cat Pulls No Sudden Punches

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and springs its ready-made claws into action and takes a soppy chance that things will probably go its feline way today. But you, my friend, must you always throw the testing switch to high voltage on me? Yeah I get that the history teachers…

sunflower 15

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“plain before my eyes” said he eyes swathed in bandages covering sight oozing yellow fluid is this life thought i

Anniversary

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He honestly could care less.  We should converse, you and I, he says. All right, she says.  She lays down the baster in her drawn out way, heel to toe on the countertop, one step in a…

My Own Gun

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“What's a slut?”

Lazy River Blues, or Stuck Between a Couple of Exposed Roots and an Endlessly Restless Shore

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Our Sun bites down on the eager yet pouting lips of the softly puffy looking moon, but a jealous & runny cloud interferes with this story line just long enough for a little bit of fun: a young dancing tree washes her gold and…

red lights alone

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before five/glancing down Academy Street/sloping west to where the tracks crossed/twisted tangled metal on wheels.

Reading Without an ISBN

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The goal is to perform along with Jason Lee Norman--who is touring with his book of very short stories called Americas--a selection from my own collection called Country Without a Name. The symmetry excites me.

Lake Erie on a Monday Night

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As if I should have expected better of it.