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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

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

4 Scars

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Within 3 seconds the replicant Abraham Lincoln now knew everything there was to know in this world. The errant input function had created a memory leak that lead into the network. First local systems, local networks, to city, state, government, then world

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

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…

from: A Body Divided

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When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it brought out the charity of the who

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.

anura

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still to early to dodge leaping bodies on misty roads at night

Almond

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Almonds of childhood – fending off needless tears and chocolate impulses, almonds of my teens, slivered and toasted industrially baked settling in on egg washed croissant…mashed into the kitchen sink of the catch-all bear claw, then the taste and shiv

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

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 42

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If I start getting rambunctious, put me in a cab.

Jukebox Genesis

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Once something starts, there is no telling where it will go.

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…

the furrows running with milk light

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I remember the first time you made love to me. It appears I was one of the lucky ones … it wasn’t in a car, it wasn’t in your Dad’s boat, underwater, or any other weird place you've written about. It was actually in your bedroom … in a bed! And how

Main Street

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You know when you see the flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror that you're not being pulled over because of a busted taillight or carelessly doing fifty in a thirty-five mile an hour school zone; your crime is being a Black man behind the wheel. It happens often…

Don't You Think

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a war forever seems so sadly stupid, pretty petty on our perky part in the ongoing play, a terrible loosed thing to have to always keep holding up our hostage hands to-- at least when being compared to…

Firecracker to the Dome

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pulling my bones apart, fingers are supernatural beings

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.

Tonschmerz

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Deists try to prove the existence of God. I do not doubt God nor evidence of the existence of Jesus nor Jesus' miracles. I merely wish there were more people like him

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....

and now for the news ...

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nope. no excerpt for you.

Splitting

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Crunching gravel beneath my feet, the sound of approaching death.

Custard and Blancmange

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Who here of us has not yet caught Advanced to leaden fife, The answer to our waiting What, That answered, “Such is life?” I saw a jelly man go past, Who wobbled in his strife And cried, “No stiffness that won't last …

How We Handle Our Midnights

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He fingered her lighter off the table during a party hoping she would come over and talk. She was just on the other side of the coffee table but the stereo was so loud, belly or dee lite or some other early 90's dance…

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…

Bucket

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There was a bucket of shit . . .

Buena Vista Street

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Nostalgia is when memories turn into Gods of knowing who you were.

Little Ditty Down

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I got caught writing poems at the paint factory several times before they fired me I got caught in the middle of one of my best lines but can’t remember what I meant to say anymore, but I know, just know it was something real good,

Hair

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I had a temperature of 105 degrees. I lost all my hair.

“Because a man has read a book does not mean he is a wise man”

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That night in the stable the three wise men were the only ones who had read books. All the rest became victims of circumstance. Characters amazing in their own right. To be written and talked about for centuries. Totally…