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the waitress

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she smiled

Gentry Major

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“Paroxysms, well, what in the hell’s a paroxysm?” “I think the better question is what kind of name is Gentry, Gentry?” “Yes, that’s a better question. Do you really want to know? I was named after my grandfather, Ol’ Gentry Jones Filips III. They

Shovel

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each vertebra is a golden cavalier, brave in upright vigilance; stoic heroes.

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

Beowulf in Hell

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They strung him up, stowed on the balcony, and beat him with sticks, and beat him with rocks, and bent his muscles, …

The Managers

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The Managers are always to be found in twos or threes, lumbering greyly.——If you pass the Managers in a corridor it's a good idea to say hello. They will probably return your greeting, as best they can.——The Managers conduct meetings. They sit at the…

EFFORT

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From outside it looked abandoned. We lived at the top of a dead end hill. The grass was high and brown, the bricks in the driveway were crooked, caved in. The winter was mild; rotten crabapples, half-frozen, lined the end of the road. This was my house.

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

Why The Body Can't Fly A Morality Play

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Everyman: I quit, remember? I’m in a twelve step program now. Alcohol: Oh sweetie, that’s too bad, we had some great times together.

Joseph

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There is a dead factory. It sits on the tip of a small piece of land which extends into a forgotten lake, like a giant dirty-inked thumb pressed against a faded blue sheet of paper.

The House of Cézanne

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Is there anything more emphatic than an ovary?

It happened

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She became a murderer in all the stages of her life she could not seem to succeed

Sailor & I

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We were born here. At the top of the stairs underneath a painting of basset hounds playing croquet. And a hallway closet filled with lost someones. And the police, three times a week, singing nursery rhymes while walking up to our door.

Bees in the Eaves

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We write in darkness. We love in alleys. We breathe into beige paper bags. Anything to mollify the confusion. Anything to simplify the math.

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.

world's a mess

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until i french kiss every atmosphere my mouth ready to explode like roman candles sparking my fingers sparking off the tips of my sparking fingers

Novelas (interstice from Black Swans)

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Insterstice: Novelas Four Sonnets Since …

The Passing of a Hero

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"...and time came hurtling behind him, gripped his shoulder/ jumped clean over him like a buck goat/ the world aged but he did not/ he spent his afternoons in an old car with fake leather seats/ drank cold beer under the olive trees/ or lay in a hammock/

Vestiges

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Even the fruit from the nearby orchard (which I, in part, nourish) batters my stone to rot.

The Colored Paper that Folded Itself Into a Singing Cricket

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Sometimes the beauty you make wants you to say, aaahhh, and let it go. There are a lot of things floating around, so it's no wonder that some things get sadly lost, like minds,like people, like feelings. It doesn't make anything spin any less. That's what…

Five Million Yen: Chapter 26

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Ben gagged after shot-gunning the scotch. He hiccupped and it came back up through his nose. He grabbed a napkin and caught most of a shot and a half of Whyte & MacKay as it poured out his nose.

Chapel of a Latter Day Agoraphobic

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The thrum and the thrust// have beaten conviviality out of me.

Inner Demons

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Every soul has a shadow.Last night, I saw mine. I saw greed,with his sticky, gnarled fingers,seizing the tablecloth of a grand feast,indifferent(or conveniently oblivious)to his starving loved ones. I saw ingratitude,with her proud, scornful …

I Waited Too Long to Remember

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We're in a sedate forest next to a boisterous beach. The sky is sea green above the trees and forest green above Sinepuxent Bay. Chaste squirrels are keeping a lookout for bad-boy gulls. Kids on circus bikes ride out of the woods into their bathing suits. The…

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…

What was your first Combat Mobile Team experience?

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My first Combat Mobile experience was as the only Specialist in an ATC ("air traffic control") assignment. The rest of the squad were simple grunts lead by the massive Sergeant James T. Adams, Regular Army, the ghost of the Central Highlands. Sgt. Adams m

At the Balcony

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I was setting up a mattress and a lamp in the balcony of my house because a boy, G., told me he was coming to fuck me.

Coming Home

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

War ; a fragment

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Lela, my grandmother.

Working Animal

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There is an air of sulfur about you. I cannot tell if / it emanantes from you, or it is the stink of your clothes / from having been in hell for so long.