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Silent Now, Against the Wash of Time

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Let us both stand steep, alone, this night; the tide Lies, hastening to us: and, far away, I hear the sea gulls sweep, through the divide That shapes drear skies, between dead lights of day. What worth was love? Man severs all he is, To make one…

The Monster's Other Face

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The yellowed and peeling posters of men and women with grotesque disfigurements under the slogan, “Know Your Criminals!” that peered down at him from the walls were a familiar sight. Everyone knew that people with faces like that were as monstrous as they looked…

The Flying Orvaginateusse

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The orvanginateusse scrambled from the grounds with such speed and grace that I could only admire it from a distance

Wednesday

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“Goodnight,” he said before leaving the room and shutting his bedroom door behind him. She stood in the kitchen alone now, a shot of vodka poured into a shot glass, and a bottle of coke ready to swig afterwards. This didn't make her an alcoholic…

nightwatch

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Breaking the cat's cradled cord she examines her fingernails. She notices a crack in the paintwork, sighs to herself. Makes a mental note to cover it over. Cover it over, paint over the cracks. There's been a lot of that recently, hasn't there?

Bucket

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There was a bucket of shit . . .

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.

Motivation

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Motivation always needs to come from somewhere. For some all it takes is a sunny day, a smile from a stranger or a simple pat on the back. Others demand a fire lit, a carrot dangled or a whip cracked. Yet here the sun had set, the fire extinguished and th

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

no one answered

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I knocked on all the windows, on all the doors. No one answered. The television was glowing. I went around behind your house and saw it through the curtains, blowing in. (I knew you were hurting.) Knocked and tried the sliding glass door, the flimsy scr

Anaphylaxis

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I remembered our wedding reception. I tasted the crab cake, pulled her from greeting people, said, you have to try. And she did.

Snopes

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“Did you check Snopes? I always check Snopes when I hear something stupid like that.” “I most certainly did not check Snopes. And it's not stupid. It's an established fact.” “Really? Cause once I heard about that kid from that old…

The Grey Day and the Blue Day

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The reality of the now makes tomorrow very distant.

Sugar Cookie Season

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

Henry Katz

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Henry Katz sat on his couch. He was reading a book. He guessed it was a novel, but he had to keep looking at the cover to remind himself what it was.

A Nice Girl Is Like Powder

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A nice girl is like powder, quick to anger, fresh, impudent, too quick to know what expletives fate speaks. It was a cold year for trash talk and sheer silk. And yes, the fox was smoking, who could attract or irritate a nice girl with the same look, a wom

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

the same, without wings

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and he'll be dead within a week but i'll still be ordering a large black coffee and smoking upwind

flash

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you're landscape under her flight path, brother one dash in a dotted line

A Question for the Gods

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She reached out her arms and spoke to the moon, "I ran from my fears, from loving too soon." She gazed at the heavens and cried to the stars, "I could not promise him all of my heart." She wiped away her tears and laughed at the trees, "Not a soul on this earth would…

Waste

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When the compost thaws the past oozes out into the present....

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.

Twilight Is Merely A Shade of Color

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Its edges fluttering in the dull breeze, today's town newspaper lay at my old feet, open to the obituary page.

The Storyteller

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Our fingers, arms and toes slither over one another along the smooth crevices between muscle and bone like familiar childhood paths.

Storytime with E. E. Zulkoski

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...afraid of cancer, fire, floods, famine, being audited by the IRS....the list goes on and on....

The sound of your shoes

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The smell of your chest, and the taste of your lips as they touch mine

The Anguish of Easter

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I used to be so certain about right and wrong. About choices and their consequences. About heaven and hell and how there was no room in between no space in between no point in between (take that point how you will)

The Persistence of Loss

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"I packed up the rest of his things today. Irony is the fact I'm still picking up after him, despite the fact he's been gone for two weeks."

Life of a Dead Bird

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I have the idea but cannot find the words