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The Party and the Body

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The Party and the Body The party at my mother's ended Saturday night deep into Sunday's morning. I tried to remember the exact circumstances of the end but although they wouldn't come it didn't worry me. I knew I would remember at a certain point. It…

robin

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(v 1: I picked up a robin yesterday. It was red and puffed and in the middle of the road in front of the car on the way to the grocery store. I put on the brakes and turned on the flashing red light to signal my stop. I picked the bird up and moved it to the side of the…

Schadenfreude

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It's 50/50 that you'll ever pad your knee enough to ever kneel on it. Your back hurts, the Orthapedist labels it arthritis. I think that means we're getting old, so I crawl up the tower of your body as I'm a little younger, more sprightly. You're a

Lapses

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The body does what a body must

Because the night

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I glance back over my shoulder as you fumble with the keys. Repeatedly. You swear a little under your breath. You finally locate the proper one and the large door swings open. I hold it as you run over to the alarm keypad. You punch in the code written on a…

Playground

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The Keds-stubbed grass, toy trucks without wheels, and Band-aids threaded in the sand… Most parenting is vigilance. Seconds ahead of its own sound, a passenger jet spears the heights not far above the treetops, …

A Hundred Feet

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Why I roamed these flats, choir-Like floors of a century forgivenAnd wedded in an XXL gownIs beyond us. Give me something extra, please. This Town rides in like a school bus.

The Couple Who Loved Murder

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I’ll give you a pair of grey cement pumps then into the river, your body I’ll dump.

When the Sky Was Blue

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Michael shifted impatiently as his mom steadied the gyrocycle above the parking space. A rather blank, empty smile came over her face, and Michael understood. The Proctors were everywhere and where they weren’t, there was always a Neighbor who would be h

He's So Pretty I'd Dump My Boyfriend For Him

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I remember when we first met, telling my friends, He’s so pretty I’d dump my boyfriend for him. I remember driving all around Elmhurst looking for parking. We sat in the car eating figs and popcorn. We tried to throw the fig pits or stumps, or wh

Ordering Chinese

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And I'm usually soft-spoken.

Music and Books

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You're all I've got to keep me company, but it's a very fine company. So familiar, and warm as any cold digital fireplace. I can tell you've got more in your story, but it doesn't make you happy. I really do not feel well today. Fun I wanted to…

Past Brutalities

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Seven micros

A State of Affairs

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We could act the anthropologist.

Falling

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She lets the book drop through her fingers to the floor and stares straight ahead watching the red lights streak by in the darkness. The train rocks her away from the seat and back; she rolls her spine along the plastic to absorb the motion, taking it away from…

He Invented Carbon Dating for Seniors, and Couch Potato Chips

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I saw an older writer in a slouched-down Fedora, gray beard and long scraggly gray ponytail, who had empty chairs pulled up all around him, at the Loser Café, maybe for his imaginary friends, or maybe those who were already gone.

Barbed Wire

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The end of love is a rusty barbed-wire fence.

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.

Wonder as the Sum of All My Ignorance

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Questions unanswered proliferate/ across the April sky, blue// with wisps of cirrus white.

Someday

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and as in real life, occasionally sneezed on.

birdbrain

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feathered flightless freak of nature

Orientations within the Zwischenwelt

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Licking bowl and spoon taste and foretaste follow.

Opportunity Cost

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What else could I be doing right now,Besides lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling,Looking for patterns in the colors and lines on the tiles?Looking for you,Immobilized,Succumbed to the siren song you sing.Lured to slavery,Yet you are free,Wild,Unable to be…

break

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i just seem to be stuck is all

Brand

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Nobody buying...

karmic youth

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We were so easy, so willing to be drained, that to start making those puffed-up stories about us now, our courage, etc. would be purely misleading. Put a bottle, or glass of wine in our hand, and our panties flew off, and gladly we would have followed y

The Way it Ought to Be

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a rug burn tragedy.

strapped to the mast

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The light streaming out of the background of things, in the absence of memory. That’s what I’m talking about. Prepare to let out all your light from night until dawn, if you want to be in the middle of life. I never wanted to stay at the edges. It didn’

The Year of the Horse

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“She's the year of the horse,” Metri said as he peeled his dirty head from the bed, his hair was as matted as a racoon tale. It was as wild as a wild animal and smelled like body odor with a hint of blood. He slid his scabbed hands up to his chest as if to…

AND I WILL REMAIN AS CAUTIOUS AS EVER

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We’re on the phone dead battery & I want this to last forever. The last thing I want to do is make decisions.