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The Emancipated One

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The town was wet from storms and the church was full while the priest gave an exegesis. The world outside did not bother with words or cleverness busy as it was with the real wisdom of its own natural cycles. During the night before, many sheets of rain arrived…

Burying the Tramp

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Heaven and hell. Hadley believed in neither. One way or another you’re a meal ticket for someone, best to be the one spending than the one being spent. The worms and insects are getting their meal ticket now, that’s for sure.

Punkin Head

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The old neighborhood, long paling in the shadow of greater Los Angeles, was reduced to two blocks in length and occupied only one side of Figueroa. It was the crumbling bastian of homes whose architecture remembered yet street-car bells clanging, watermelon farms and…

Vegan Says "Kill"

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....sucking my blood kind of draws the line.

Needle in a pocket

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Finding a soft pink blanket I prepared a place by the dirty window where he watched his world from a corner of his life.

and I am not with you, anymore

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Dancing at the pavilion leads to sex. A nectar builds up around the heart (damp curl of hair at the neck.) The heart does not know what it cannot have. It is dumb and does not know. But I, for one, hope that it never learns and becomes numb. There i

High Fives

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They pull up to the curbside and he jumps out to shake the hands in that familiar men’s grasp/shake they do when saluting each other. If that isn’t his daughter it should be, the one sitting in his car, with her door wide open.

shame

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A deserted breeze hangs and waits and talks with staggered shapes in the sky like a melancholic child, held behind and forced to face the wall as better taught and better-tempered children dig for ancient ruins just ou

A Brief History of The Real

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A little contempuous aside by the critical theorist guy, Frederick Jameson-- that it was logically absurd to call anything that human beings do, produce or effect “unnatural,”-- has brought forth the following. We are…

The Woman on the Train

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When I awoke she was there again, the woman with the blue scarf. She was standing by the compartment door, gazing out at the passing countryside, the rolling hills of France. I had seen her before, at the market buying flowers, outside a cafe hailing a taxi,…

Moment to Moment

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The memory fades so quickly, It makes me wonder if it ever really happened? Then I have to create something new from scratch to fill the space Yeah, there are patterns, and sudden movements that pass for recollections, but couldn't they as…

A Child is Born

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I came out of the Quick Stop and found her in the back seat of my ten-year-old Camry. I don’t know who she is, or why she chose my car. I do know she’s having a baby any minute now.

Ask the Language Monitor

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A woman I work with is always going on about her daughter is an expert water-skier and has a collection of antique thimbles and makes prize-winning congo bars.

In The Arms of Veronica

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Her smile was a cliff I stood on, trying to wrangle some kind of hope from the whites of her teeth. I heard the sound of the buzzer from the door on my ward. She stood there, a sickly ash tree, each limb flailing about like she was drowning in my sea of a

Five Million Yen: Chapter 25

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Ben Clarone watched Dan Arris get into the Brighton Beach Car Service car and leave the departure zone of the Pan Am Worldport terminal at JFK. Ben’s rare all wood contrabass clarinet, which his repairman, Sal Frompini, had spent the last six hours adjust

Tin Foil Hat Sold Separately

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When I finish recording this tape, I will bury it under the azaleas in my front lawn. I have left instructions for my attorney that, on the first full moon after my death, he should have Oliver Stone dig it up during the dead of night and deliver it to Ji

Virginia Aste

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This is like getting a hand full of black slugs as a gift.

Long Night, Hard Night

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It had been a long night, a hard night. The sky had been filled with blackened clouds, patters of wind snapping and whipping like a pirate's flag hung at full mast. Rain beat…

#26 Relation>Relation (A Poem)

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Something like: Answers to questions you might not yet have? [Answers we will try hard not to provide]

Wild turkey chase

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“Don’t ever call me that name, formal or informal, okay? Forget you heard it.”

GULLS, GULLS, GULLS

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"The shipyards of the soul do not exist." The Colussus has always been a colossal waste, and the riddle of Your Father's Identity confounds no one but yourself. What a riddle, what pills! He was known for…

Untitled

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the colors of the night

Agra Road

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Beyond a jade gate, a lotus pillar nods to / a braided fort.

Treasured Souls

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Oh, but we have lost-- such treasured souls, at immeasurable costs. Oh, but we do moan and cry-- such treasured souls, no tangible, useable reasons why. Oh, but we whose hearts do bleed-- such treasured souls, we…

First Man ~ 1947

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By the basement washtubs, I watched him skin a squirrel:

El Dia de los Muertos

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"The path back to the living must not be made slippery by tears." (Mexican proverb)Marigolds blaze yellow under Oaxacan sun.Their slender necks stretch above fern foliage.Stars of this late October hillside, they drapetheir riches over the edges of terra cottalike…

The Chicken Crisis

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She's sure the chicken is having an identity crisis; it's staring into the full-length mirror, watching itself, a never-ending exchange of eyeball glances between chicken flesh and silver-blasted…

Myself in Opposition to You

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The Sunday sunset slowly simmers the sea.

Brocades

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The creatures were thief-walking...

Domestic Tragedy

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We never meant to gain their confidence only to outgrow them. They were once our best friends, the ones who listened, the ones who understood or sat across from us so we could see them nod. They leaned…