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More L.A. Stories from the Land of One Night Stands, #3

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and lie down naked in my bed on her back, with her hands frozen at her sides like a deflowered virgin in the Gauguin painting “The Loss of Virginity,” almost breastless, and wait for me to lick her sopping until she almost came, but she could never quite

The Serendipitous Nature of Being

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To do the proper set up for the story, it was taking me some time, but each bit was important to the outcome, and while he likened me to Higgens on the old Magnum P.I. series, I just laughed at his slowly closing eyes and folded arm, caught in a half cur

The portrait

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Gestures we would like to make in the solitude of a café terrace ... Early in the morning ... She's sitting there, seems shivering. Grey dress, red scarf. Her eyes move. I try to meet them - small, vague black clouds which pass, without resting, by mine. She drinks her…

Bulldozer

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First the room is blank white and then she is placed there and one by one everything is penciled in. Her, in a loose and flowery dress that conceals her feet; a black and white cat, who wraps her tail around her legs and looks up, head moving trying to interpret;…

After coming back from nowhere,

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you notice some of what you need― a pressure of something you've intended, somewhere without a place,

Sugar Cookie Season

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take out the yellowed recipes/ left by mothers and grandmothers—// perhaps the great aunt who never married—

air hugs

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but all I can give them now are air hugs

Life of a Dead Bird

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I have the idea but cannot find the words

Girls

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Every boy on the boardwalk stared when she and Rosa walked by, everyone of them had their sweet wet dream about the Dominguez sisters.

Silent Minority

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She smoothed her hair with a hand that should have been the turning pages of a cheap dime-store novel. I watched her from under my eyebrows but kept my head fixed downward, pretending to pay attention to the 6 ½ narrow stiletto heeled black alligator pumps. Not easy to do,…

FIREWORKS

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It's eight fifteen in the morning, my favorite time to call, and a guy named Ernie DeCampo answers the door in his work pants and a t-shirt. “Good morning, Mr.De Campo,” I say. “Do you have any fireworks in your home?” …

A Way of Place

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There are people walking, not knowing where they are, a way to peace is just that-- a place to go.

Natural Histories II

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n truth, they are not red/ but chestnut./ But “Chestnut Wasp” lacks menace

Ice Box

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To become an objection as cool as an ice box. To wither the crops. To hold a baby in your hands. Never mind, the arms. We shoot photographs of you. I still believe in black bile. I still think I'm holy. This rhyme is non-violent. Snap.

The Albatross

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Gigantically heaping past the dawn, White rider, swinging circles into light, Do you cross the spar-lengths of meridians, O albatross, conspirant of the thought The sea dreams of its relic mastery? Rainbowed reliquary of…

The January Oak

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tiny banners, browned/ and wrinkled by time,

Reflector

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I circled about six times - mesmerized by the sign that said you needed socks. Just passing through it said - As I made my third pass I thought - well, aren't we all.You looked cold. Fragile. And younger than the wrinkles that engulfed your hands, neck…

Wilting Magnolia

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White sneakers cry, dripping from the power lines.

Quit Complaining, Willya!

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"You think life is supposed to be easy? Whoever told you that? My life is anything but easy; still you don't hear me whining all over the place. And, trust me, I could teach you a thing or two about suffering.

Mrs. Smedley's Art Class

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THERE ARE TWO PARTS. FROM PART ONE: (Later the police escort the students out, directing them to keep their hands in the air, as they file out into the parking lot. They wrap Mrs. Smedley in a blanket as she stares out blankly in shock. "How is Linda? Is

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ambiguity of lightning

Little Red Riding Hood, The Woodcutter, Grandma, and The Big Bad Wolf: Their Ongoing True Story

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Grim though it be Little Red Riding Hood and The Woodcutter, with his hewing axe, eviscerate and skin the Big Bad Wolf, thus rescuing sickly Grandma. Grandma’s a bit worse for the wear after her couple of hours in Big Bad’s overstuffed stomach. But she cl

Otherwise Chaos

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“It’s okay” Her psychic from Santa Fe Said on the speaker phone: "live and love and create otherwise chaos"

The Big Faith

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She didn’t want anybody to hear her heaving and crying. She frantically pulled as much toilet paper as possible and stuffed it into her mouth so her sobs would be silenced. Then she slid against the wall next to the toilet and landed on the concrete floor

Falling Rocks in Equal Doses

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Not sure I remember what's important, but I remember you. That's the whole problem I think. You're a drain where all my words wind up going down. All of them get lost inside of you. Eventually. And I'm left with nothing to say. Because all my words are…

The Passing of Odd Fellows ---- Tales From the IV

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The appointed day came without much fanfare. The day was gloomy, but it would do. They climbed to the roof of the house to a small landing where Smiley placed the tiny piano stool smack dab in the middle. As soon as Ethan sat down Smiley rotated the chair

two of five

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Across the street from third street music school there is a church wherein I saw a man, a magician, strap himself into a strait jacket in front of the organ under jesus's crucifixion, in front of a church full of screaming kids and their parents and…

Living on Non-Skid Row

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Here’s the local group of grumpy gray-haired men Chewing over politics as if it’s important As if their endless discussing of it, Waving their hands in the air, gesturing, Is going to change the world How do these guys stop from having heart a

Four More Haikus

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Death is like a warmcup of hot cocoa, steamingup into nothing. The sun rise will bringprison bars of light through thebedroom blinds again. Sorry about thefirst three hours of your deathI thought you were drunk. Across the park thestrange dog looks…

Thwart

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Daily, at 3:47 PM, below his office window, a child in an orange windbreaker sits in the last car of the T, in the rear seat, face pressed against glass.