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Voice of the Past

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You are about to experience a voice from the past. Here we go ... jet back to about 1964. I remember you with the same beard (just a different color!) and slightly longer hair. I remember drinking lots of beer and wine in your basement with Shel

How to Save a Shell from a Mountain

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"Love is just a word I've heard when things are being said"--James.TaylorThat thing that is empty now is me. I never thought I'd disappear, so crazily far from being myself. The love key has been thrown away, dropped without much fanfare. I carried…

Saturdays with Satan: Desperately Seeking Evil

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“Grow some fucking balls, Satan!”Did I just say that? To the prince of darkness?Yes. Yes, I did. Let me back up.*It was around 10:30 Saturday morning when the phone rang. I recognized the caller id.“Hi, Satan,” I said as I picked it…

Six Hours

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My cell phone shakes; it’s my father’s voice calling my name - so far away - with long distance crackle and panic on the line.

Clockwhipped

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I now felt prepared to waltz under a K bullet that hits a stucco brick above the tropical hibiscus.

The Parallel World of the Tango

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I dreamed I might one day become the numero uno tango singer in Boston.

Maybe Just One More Then

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You don't deserve this poem and I don't deserve to write it. Whatever time we have left is way better spent sitting in a sunny garden with a good interesting book and with a beautiful golden delicious apple to bite into. But…

Castle and Bell

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The bells are ringing once again. They are three sets of bells, but I can tell them apart. It's cold up here, and I never thought I would end up in such a high fortress surrounded by the grey and dark and the moat and the flora and fauna foreign and slightly brutish.…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 51

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Francesco tried to fix Oriana's face in his mind as he blindly walked to the taxi queue.

On Reading Yeats' "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory"

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Two logs to make a fire burn, one real, one fake, for we have learned that's all an evening fire takes.

Soil.

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As individual as a shadow and the opposite of ‘stone faced’, Sidney Elvin “Ike” Liebowitz, with a clean-shaven face, well kempt hair and sideburns a quarter of an inch off of his ears, walks down a dirty and dimly lit street pondering sneakers.

Gone

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She exists behind closed doors. An open field, on the edge of a moor. Her stare belies her hardened heart. Her soul in fragments. She has lost faith.Never happy. Never understanding. Never accepting her sadness. She walks every evening at sunset. She remembers her…

Lapses

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The body does what a body must

He Loved Her (In Honor of Father's Day)

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A man strolled by with perfect posture and a masterful comb-over. Bud gave me that 'get him' expression; sitting there with his own low side part. We razzed him about it all the time, but he still looked pretty-damn-good for seventy-five.

The Cook

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“She said I hurt her and my father, the both of them.” Rose patted her round belly, carried high and in front, likely a boy. “I can see that.”

Hitler's Younger Brother, the Mohel

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And now for a word from Hitler’s Younger Brother, the Mohel Well, half brother really He was always such an embarrassment to the Hitler family Always climbing the infinite tree of hope Against the permanent limb of gravity No gratitude or all

Avoid Anything With an Ism

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Communism Capitalism Gism or Gysm, either way Avoid anything with an Ism Catholicism Botulism Socialism Skepticism If its got an Ism in it Avoid it, okay? (Advice for our newborn daughter) Avoidalism is okay Though So you c

Tuna Casserole

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I remember when I pulled in the way the car door sounded When it yawned open. I think it may need some oil. In the dress you just bought, With one golden flip flop dangling from Your big toe -- The other under the bench, you told me. "We'll be having a …

Ordering Chinese

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And I'm usually soft-spoken.

The United States Of Ammunition

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I check the NPR news app. The story about the shooting in Pittsburg has already been pushed off the homepage. There is an article about yellow fever in the 14th century, a potential ceasefire in Yemen, players protesting the national anthem, a plane crash

The Winds of Time

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Purple fades. Orange into a deeper blue...The deepest blue ever known.

Hot Weather

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I would like to invite the public to an open-air, environmental art piece called Hot Weather. The exhibition will take place this summer. It will not begin until the temperature reaches 90 degrees. This demonstration is available free of charge

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

Lessons in Insomnia

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It’ll all make sense when you're sitting on an éclair chaise longue by the morning pool of coffee.

birdbrain

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feathered flightless freak of nature

He'd Risen Up

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“Where did this come from?” Greenblatt snapped as he pulled a pamphlet from his coat pocket with the words “Jews for Jesus” on it.

Still Single

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“Yes, Mother, of course I’m still single. No, I haven’t joined the Army. No, I’m not moving back home.”

With Torture Banned, US Tries High School Awards Night

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“He’s a tough nut,” says CIA officer Marlon McGrath. “He says he’ll die a martyr rather than crack before we get to the Booster Club award for outstanding female athlete.”

Mom #2

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We’d sometimes find my mother asleep in her chair outside her trailer at the nudist camp when we drove up. She loved her garden there, even with the rabbits eating her young tomato plants. She used to coax the bluebirds down to the railing of her trailer

Quixote Bronson, Savior of Neglected Suburban Housewives

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Saturday night in the suburbs west of Boston. As Pancho Sanza and I drift wearily from one upscale restaurant to another, we see an endless parade of husbands whose indifference to their wives borders on cruelty.