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The Scrawny Dog Gospel

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Opportunity, says Webster, is a, "favorable juncture of circumstances." In my Oxford book of quotations, there are seven famous lines about opportunity. Seven – that’s it! There are twenty-seven regarding failure. Seems it's been easier for the great

Her Smile

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The white and yellow are sublime and desperately powerful, like angry screaming over tears and through laughter or hatred. Maybe the words are about crying or laughing, but the expressions are altogether impenetrable and distant. The jokes told behind the teeth and through…

Pessoa

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Pessoa, wake up, I need your help!I want to be the universe, I need to be the universe. And somehow be no-one at all. I want to expand and be everything and not be tragically held by One. But I need your help, old man, because my words are not enough to make me forget that…

Follow My Lead

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I ran down the list of reasons she might be calling. She could be bankrupt, having a mid-life crisis, or maybe had a terminal illness. Either way I was clueless, as I had absolutely no emotional bond with the woman I came out of.

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.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 45

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Ben woke in a black mood. His head was ready to explode and his throat was raw

soul, baby

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Soul? Who's got soul? That nothingness that holds us together, between the spaces, in and out of the cracks in our minds and bodies. The soul weighs something, you know. It's been proven. Some guy did a study where he weighed people before and after death, and they weighed…

Dirty Deeds

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Mustard stings the corner of his lips. He swipes it away with a finger, and looks closer at the hot dog. The piece of meat is ripped open like a sliced finger stuck in a doughy bandage

The Donkey

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Since dawn doesn't understand my words, I will give them to the donkey, finely cut for him, let them ferment some time and add a few sprigs of lucerne. The donkey grazes in the meadow down the road and always welcomes me with a grin that displays his mauve gums and his…

Slightly Damp Clothes In the Morning

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It begins with his positioning.

One Day I Will

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Gotta ask myself what I’m doing here. What keeps me tied. Caged. What is it?

carbon dating

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I became infamous, in certain circles, for what I achieved, maybe more so for what I did not. I invented a dating service for seniors called “Carbon Dating.” I wrote a book called “What Real Estate Did for Me,” which was very brief and to the point. It

Ponies

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“The moon is a monk,” you said.

Apollo (2/2 - sections 3-5)

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III. Through wheelwind crypts of mystery, through…

A Few Random Things I Learned About Bill Murray from "The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray."

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He once owned a dog named Bark. As a kid, he was kicked out of the Boy Scouts of America. His childhood nickname was “Sleepy.” When he was little, and alone, he used to sing songs to God. When he joined Second City in 1973, the troupe was…

Mud

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I told him that the beehive he had for a brain was overpopulated and that he couldn’t seem to go for one minute without desperately thinking that I was going to leave him when I’m sure I gave him no evidence to that effect at all

Men Go to Great Lengths to Woo Reclusive Poetess

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"‘Man-hater’ is such a harsh term,” she says. “I really like it.”

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7-Eleven, 2AM

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In this 7-Eleven at 2AM I can write the saddest lines. / Among these malcontents and degenerates I am Ovid

Grief Leaves the Room

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It leaves on a Saturday,suddenly, while you are raking leaves or taking out the trash.Those inevitable, boring things.You do not hear it go;it's been quiet before when it left certain rooms. It no longersleeps beside you, and you learnedlong ago that the bed was…

The Revenge of the Dead Music

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The wind is represented by Miss Abigail Weatherspoon, attorney at law. She wears a pink feather boa and is the spitting image of Janis Joplin as she appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967.

The Black Madonna

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They say I am filthy. On this high pillar I perch like a stuffed avian relic, flightless, no prey. The horizon before me is broken by scuff and foreign tongue, by atomized evil. Pleas, and there are many, are answered by the only prayer I know, the one prayer, which…

The World as Thrill and Calculation

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Professor Immanuel Danda finished his Ph.D. at 21, which, according to most of his friends and a few of his enemies, makes him a genius, though, personally, he always found himself to be a scruffy loser, if one were to believe, above all else, the mirror

Wellington Crescent/Rubber Soul/50/50

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They are kind of cool though I’ll admit…pretty types with perfect angles and poise and judicial daddies and shade tree homes, holding their books preciously against their tight bodies as if they’re into academics or something.

Stinger: a Novel

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Lipstick on the bolt, she told herself, if it's no good in the slot anymore.

Wanderer and The Temple

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the odd stone stands/taller than trees/it protrudes from the young forest/an old mecca but smooth

Oops...

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--small chin, timid mouth, frail nose, weak narrow-set eyes--

Sing for Me

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I am beginning to worry. There is something that they are not telling me. I am afraid that something bad is going to happen.

First Things Go First And End Up Being Last (the Big Enough Picture)

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I don't have to show you how to fly. I don't even know who you are still possibly trying to be in this crazy grounded world. But the words make us family. I can't help that or what you might do with that public tweet tweet…

Ain't the End of Me

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But even if the truth Never sets me free I'll know this ain't the end of me