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The Tall Man’s Secret

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I turn the corner and come face to face with Ed, who's stark naked at the kitchen sink. He chugs a glass of hot tap water from a measuring cup and belches loudly. “Good morning,” he says, as he pisses in the sink. “I drink 6 cups of hot tap…

2+2=4

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that's all you'll find.

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…

WE TURNED THE SAFETY OFF

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It’s not like I could tell anyone. I hum a song my mother sang to me as a child. A dressed-up soprano to calm the tail I’ve grown.

In Dubai III

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The boy in the elevator with round glasses, / who carried a newly-purchased broom, / was tall and burdened with clothes

Fernando

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“It's not him,” Kelly says. “I think it might be,” says her Mom. The three of us are sitting on the long sofa facing the wall which is one …

Our Date Was Better In Reverse

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I felt my words reach out and try to grab him by the heart. They missed.

President Liz

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I fancy myself a spy. Unofficial official of the H. O. A. Super secret free agent agent of the Glenwood Homeowner's Association. Even the board is unaware of the work I do in their name, without the faintest utterance of their name. Only the highest of the high, the…

Our Valentine's Day Special (From The Law Offices of Paul Steven Stone)

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This year, instead of giving roses or candy for Valentine's Day, why not give something your spouse will never forget. A brand new divorce!

Roanne Smiled

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With some of these guys it was like propping a kid on a training-wheel bike, then steering the kid down the street til he figured out what to do next. Tricks would come into the bar. Roanne had a smile for all but the dregs…

Thanksgiving Carnage

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The game is set, thirty pound gobbler at the center; brined, browned, and buttered to perfection. The players take their places around the table: Reagan’s_Disciple and BraBurner38 sit at the head seats, eyeballing each other over a fizzing bottle of dom

Bean Bag Chair

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Up to the loft we went, shedding clothes all the way. No one is home, but the place smells like the fresh cookies my mom had made before she left. It's dark and my lips hit his…

The Bad Bed, 2011

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Im in bed. Bed. I look at the word bed written on the screen. Bed. It looks like bad but not quite. Bed-Bad. Bad-Bed. I have a bad bed. Lets say my bed is bad. It is a bed to the extent that it is bad. It is not good, it is bad. It is a bad bed.

black

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my soul is black and it's deep like heartbreak and heavy as stone and as thick as ink and it is pressing on top of me like last nights one night stand like dead weight so that I can't lift my arms or spread my legs it feels like I am walking through mud but it's…

The Search for Pastina Continues

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To assist you in recalling some of Episode One of - "A Poem by Jasmine Coriander-Semolina": My head lifted up slowly as I looked up through a gaussian blur of fragrant incense smoke and saw she was crying. She whispered that her daughter, Pastina, was last…

5th and Washington

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“This horrible street. I hate this neighborhood,” she cursed.

The Garage Sale

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She excelled at plowing forward. He excelled at staying in one place. Eventually the distances got too great and she put an ocean between them.

Nothing to Worry About

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The boss has a serious problem--he's too nice for his own good.

An Eventful Inconclusive Evening

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. . . I just didn’t think to call the mortician from the phone outside the grocer’s store, how gauche that would have sounded to any passers-by, a call to a mortuary from outside a grocer’s store!

Down South

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We drank beer and played loose pool, attracted two fun girls, one Jamaican, the other dirty blonde, both of whom seemed interested in only one of the four of us.

Carmen Rental

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But in 1991 Carmen developed a heroin habit and was forced to sell her powder blue, convertible Mercedes 500SL...

August, now and after

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I'll see her this fall, a redhead in camo

The Chair

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His thoughts drifted to when he was a kid, to the monthly trip to the barber.

The instruments

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TromboneA trombone blusters his waythrough the bright restaurant,demanding to see the chef.He's furious;the prawns have given himsplitnotes.ViolinsFour violins wait for a bus in the rain.The pervading atmosphere of melancholymakes their plaintive scrapings redundant.AxeThe…

The Grand Inn

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I saw blood. The walls of the bar were completely covered in red shag carpeting. Had I been thrown back in time to the Seventies? It felt as if I had entered Hell itself. No, this was not Hell. This was the Aryan-Brotherhood's version of the movie Shaft. I…

ROMANCE

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In the neon light and barroom shadows,

the spirit of the dead watching. Gauguin

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Listening too much to the night, with its whistles, bright lights of luminescent bursts like leaves on fire, or the raised ear of a cow in the purple mist, or the curled tail of a pig foraging in the night.

Clockwork and Sex Appeal

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And her life runs like clockwork. And the kids wouldn’t get to school without her, and the paychecks wouldn’t arrive and the taxes wouldn’t get paid. And she listens to religion and country and God telling her how to run her life, what to do and when. B

The United Church of Cigarettes

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Most keep their eyes closed. Some look up at the cloud covering the kneeling ecclesiastical trash perched high. Others look around, overly warm.

Letter Home

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The pen point sits motionless on the paper...