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Four Thousand Dollars from Baghdad

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“This is the most dangerous road in the world and you want to drive down it. You crazy,” he said.

Coat and Shoes

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Walking in to work from an unfamiliar direction, I saw her, on a street I had never been down before. I was coming from his place, for the first time, after the first time. The first time, but not the first date. That's not me. I'm not one to... not one who... He worked…

Protein Transfer

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Ham If you have never cooked a ham steak, you need not be afraid. The ham is often cut so thin that to over or undercook it is nearly impossible. The exterior reflects the centre better than any other meat; you will know when to stop.

Wintering at Montauk

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Montauk was the solution. He had no job, no money. He could stay for the winter at the summer place. It would be a lark. He had come home to Great Neck after losing the last job and they were making broad hints at him to move…

Mothering in Real Time

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"If Hillary can forgive Bill, why can't you forgive Dad?" my seven-year-old son wails one night as I put him to bed.

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter One - by Christopher Chik

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That’s how I’d met him really: drinking games. We’d both been at the local watering hole, challenging the other patrons to drunken games of chance and making a clean sweep of it. A few guys figured themselves for alpha dogs had Teqs cornered after he’d ta

Ghost writing

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'This dude’s whole life must be in this book. It’s like, a man diary.' The thought makes her laugh.

The 49 Days

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Where was she exactly? There is, of course, no answer to this question. But that didn't stop me from asking it. Constantly. Obsessively.

Dream of Burying My Grandmother Who Has No Grave

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We buried her upright, in the stance of warriors.

Role

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The pieces of bread dipped us humans in cheese, the cheese made by cows from our milk.

Voltaire Drinks Thirty Cups of Coffee

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Voltaire drinks his coffee standing up in front of the microwave and he likes to hold one hand on his chest where his heart is while he drinks. He likes to feel his heartbeat quicken and then he imagines that he is a machine or something mechanical.

Bread

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Zach lifts his glass. “Look at us! We eat like kings. Kings!”

The Undertakers of the Dead by Unseen Hands(Young Poet at the Bus Stop with Some new Vinyl in his Hand)

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"The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.'--Nadine Gordimer Other things do matter just as much of course. Of course they do. Hey I'm still kind of alive inside this poem here. At least I'd like to think so, so yes another…

Magritte

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Arriving at the pier I see a sailboat in dead wind. "That is pathos," Magritte says, pointing to a barnacle.

Y.

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We are the generation who tattoo our stories on our bodies, who pierce what appears impenetrable; we fly our scars like pennants.

Captions

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This is my house. You park in the back. * This is a picture of flowers and hands.

Requirement

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She sits at home, on the floor of the kitchen, bathing her stuffed animals in molasses to match the ones on the news.

Slices of Matisse

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still the water's insurrection continues, transforming the room into a silent crucible whose pure liquid melts our voices and surges above our heads.

Z Machine

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I'm afraid to find out what my spirit animal is

The Penguin Flight

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Even though I made the phone call, it was really Steven who put me on that plane. I wanted to fly out at dawn. "Let's wait till after breakfast," he said. "Change to a later flight." By that time everything was sold out except a few seats on Doomed Flight…

My Voyeur Life

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It's the way an earnest five-year-old boy pronounces every single letter as he whispers. Something about octopuses, something else about peas.

War Nurses and Lost Fathers - For Memorial Day

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I have been mother to a hundred soldiers, holding their hands barely knowing their names

Things I Should Have Done - #2

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I do not trust Shay anymore.

The Toy Store

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Figures are a strip tease.

Hobo Junction

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“How much is stuff worth? Stuff man! Bling! Cargo! STUFF! What's it worth to you? It ain't worth a shit, man! Clean clothes! Comfortable shoes! A ride! Those things are important! But they’re only stuff.

Halloween

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"For God's sake," my mother said. "There could be anthrax in the candy." My mother worried about me going out on Halloween.

The Uninvited Guest

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The first time I see her, she is slouched in a tire swing, pushing off with one foot and dragging the other beneath a dying pecan tree that probably hasn't made a nut in 20 years.

2010; What I Wanted

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You can't always get what you want, and fortunately, that's sometimes a good thing.

5” X 6” In A Sturdy Frame

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The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.

It Stops

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We made our escape on grimy streets under skies filled with crows, flapping like litter in the wind.