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Status Update

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I can't tell a cigarette from a cheese sandwich as I stare vacantly into the synthetic sunshine of my laptop. Jump up a few lines to add a comma to show the possession of clocks they do belong to people after all. I sip my coffee from a novelty mug, ho

This Is Not Your Poetry

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Your begging hands are hacking me up again like garden claws that know not the difference between a delicate solar powered flower and a tightening choke of killing weeds.It's not like it's even mine to keep-- like a legal document I'd…

Some Indian

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We had been drinking.

In December, 1998, we dropped more bombs on Iraq

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This is between the two wars, so it surprises you when TV screens light up with this in the hotel breakfast room. You are in Delhi, you were supposed to fly home last night but fog canceled everything.

Little Max

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“It’s not a bad preschool. You kinda get used to it. You ever been to one before?” Little Max asked the new boy, Sam. Sam shook his head no.

At the back of the crowd

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They were all celebrating something, but she couldn’t see what it was.

Parable of the Parabola

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I held the steam and scrubbed it. How do you do that? asked Willy. How do you scrub steam? It is so, you know, diaphanous. I said to Willy, because Willy was a good man and listened with both ears, we adapt to the heart's convulsions. I send my grammar to a…

Yet More Band Names For Sale or Rent

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Random Access Hundred Dollar Bill Burning Question The Black Truffles Open John Queasy Sister Tortoise and the Hair Duck Tail and the Wrap Stiff Resistance Knee Jerk Reaction Tough Cookie Bar Code and the Illusion Erosion Eroti

Mo Bands

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Beeswax Just Kill Me Beam Me Up Deep-Fried Twinkie End of Lust Hootchie and the Eye Patch Boy Crazy Instant Success Sleeping Geezers Cyber Shoes

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 49

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Francesco entered the gallery, and he immediately went to work.

Renoir: Le Moulin de la Galette

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Crowded into the heart are impressions past These are not recognized in the available light of the present. So they sit in the dappled shade drinking, the clear glass partially filled with various and red liquid. Hat tilted back. Black top hat S

Topsy Was a Flip Flopper

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Topsy was a flip flopper ... Topsy was a crazy complainer.

Intensive Seminar Helps Cat Poets Sharpen Their Claws

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With a notch in his ear from an honor-mad fight And a tail that is shorter than at last sunlight.

Bob the Builder

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The concrete guy’s truck is parked in front of your house. There’s nothing for him to be doing there except your wife.

The Bedlam of Essence

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When the house was sold the new owners walked in on what they believed was a former life stopped cold. There on the table remained a half-filled teacup and a well-read magazine lying open from years gone by. A Royal Doulton dish set lay half packed on the

SEIZE

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“You're right by the mall, the cultural district, and just a few minutes from downtown,” the realtor smiled. “And it's on a bus line?” the wife asked. “Yes it…

Attempted Innocence

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When they first met at the bar, right away he was sweet on her. He drove an old oil-burning Buick or Olds, going down the road like a smudge pot. He never kept food in his car, where it would get hot and spoiled. He only picked nice fresh

Owen's Song

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"I hate people"

BOLT-TOGETHER

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I will watch your teeth measure the highway all the way home.

GUNS

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I'm gonna buy a gun.

Ritual

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Experience is veracious and honest; action, the only moral Dimension that matters, that is undeniable and pure.

Violent Limb Part 1

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Before the new arm, I used to sit outside the players' facility and wonder, in between the throbs of pain pulsing sickly through my temples, how much longer I could be a hockey player.

A Journey (on Foot) Through Hostile Lands

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Love comes and goes as it pleases. Plant lives matter you know. Isn't it so obvious? I'm sure you've noticed or felt like you've been here before. Maybe forever. Just ask any hand-held camera or open book. Well. How many times can we…

Handiwork

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People speak of wordsmiths, as if they hammer text into shape; smelting down clunky prose, recasting from white-hot ink.

the oracle withers, because it is so late

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I remember some of the tight-fitting garments you wore, your looks seeping through them. The light blonde hairs at your neck and at your middle. Were we really expected to keep our hands off each other? It is foolish to think so. I know what I was think

Roza

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Very upsetting morning. I've fallen madly in love with the cat upstairs named Roza. She's one of the sweetest cats I've ever met. Her owner is a retired Romanian woman about my own age named Ingrid. Roza has one bad eye and one good eye. The bad eye looks like a…

Closed Letter to Management

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don’t ask me to set my goals./ I have none except safe air to breathe,/ a reliable roof,/ something aromatic in the oven.

Sulfur and Wishes

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Some mornings he would wake up with his hand in the curve of her side. But her scent would awaken him further to his reality. This was not his wife. No, the women he vowed to protect was asleep in the arms of another.Lost to adultery, his dreams fell to…

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…

Sugarexplosion

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At school, Joe knew the answers to the questions. He used to jump up onto his desk and wave his arm before Mrs. Gestapo told him he would have to stop or he would go to the principal’s office, where the other kids said that the principal made you pull d