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Stanley

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For some employees the job was simply a job, another day towards another paycheque towards another Friday night spent at the bar wondering just exactly when life decided to start with the kidney punches.

Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

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Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

Nascent Talk with the Gypsy

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She was having a laugh, but I didn't know what about. We were sitting in a big house that was on the top of a large incline. All these books were scattered around, and the walls and the kitchen, the doors and the quarter round and every other thing, was old and…

Take You Me for a Sponge, My Lord?

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Who does that besides Kafka, Arreola, and Steven Wright?

RONNIE AND RACHEL

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Silent defenders of penumbra one

Beside the Swing Set

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Julie had a thousand freckles the color of mud.

Bukowski in Hollywood and the Collating Party at his Apartment

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They called him Hank. We piled in a car and drove up from Irvine to his little bungalow apartment on DeLongpre near Hollywood Blvd. for a collating party for this Mag he started with Neely called “Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.” No shit, that wa

Cleopatra Goes Shopping

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Cleopatra fills her cart with food and cosmetics until it is overflowing. She proceeds out of the store. The clerks stop running products over their scanners and gaze in incredulity, and confusion.

Night Letters from the Underground

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As ghosts, they became lovers. Rodion would strum the Underwood keys like a balalaika. Lizaveta would sing.

Wilbur

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This girl who looks about ten years old and her Pomeranian puppy are staring at my left arm and my right hand keeps filling out the form and I know I shouldn't but I say what she's been begging me to for the last half hour: It wasn't Wilbur. It was a woman. A girl,…

icing on the cake

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The sexuality comes over us in waves. We need to hold things, someone. The women, the men, side by side, our features blending together. We notice the small curved lines at the corners of the mouth. We notice everything. And the animal is still inside m

Dave's Note

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Dave Sharpe silently pulled his desk chair out of its nook that was conveniently placed underneath his desk. He took a deep breath as he slowly took his place in the seat and nudged it into a perfect…

The Light Of the Face

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We all have our place But it’s always there, isn’t it Streaming throughout our lives The light of the face Where most of the soul comes to rest We see it best when the hard wind blows Cause in the course of events The wind will know our

Trope City

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If the pen travels over a sheet of paper, it is not long before a metaphor appears. A fast, beautiful metaphor like friendship, or deformity. Think of the pen as a penis and the ink as semen. I just sit and laugh. Time impregnates an opportunity and a lon

Like the Goats

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First sonnet

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Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

Where Has All the Laughter Gone?

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The despair that comes and goes is here again I saw a woman who was holding herself As she walked past, as if a fire were about to Lunge out of her parts She was in such great need of being held The despair that comes and goes is here again

I Love a Man Who Whistles

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“Hey! You can’t be whistling on Greyhound,” the bus driver said, looking up in the rearview mirror.

Have You Ever

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Have you ever Felt As if you were Alone In the world?

Kraken

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A likeness borne in silk, rich contours of canvas giving life to the seascape.

Calm and Level

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The funeral grounds look level and calm. We leave the urban world behind for an instant. The other world has claimed someone. But we are in limbo. It is a terrible thing when a connection or breakthrough moment is not achieved or granted by the universe. …

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

Sonnet VIII, On A Lover's Birthday

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A short sonnet for my sweetheart's birthday.

Event Particle (10)

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my tiny white world, the cube in the closet in the back above the shelving in a secret compartment cut into the wall

Banger in the Hanger

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song

Ode to a Shopping Mall

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In 1609 Ben Jonson was hired to write a work in celebration of the opening of a new shopping mall.

The Joint is Out of Time: A Journal of the Plague Year, Day 108

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History in the unmaking.

unstoppable fire

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First of all, you should know an unstoppable fire made my panties roar for you. Maybe you will come to understand what effect you had on my life, my whole life, I mean. You should know the effect you had on people. Me, and Sharon too, both. And I’m sure

The End of History

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Well, I walked in on you, then you walked out on me And that was when it happened – the end of history And that should have been sufficient But I think you know it wasn’t I remember it was you who told me Dreams are only efficient when illusio

Injuries Few in Annual "Running of the Cats"

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"We improvised to show our Spanish compadres that we meant them no disrespect, and the running of the cats was born."