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Kraken

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

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

Swaying on This Articulation Until We Slow

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In Nebraska, I looked up from the flatness, to her face, then down to the page and saw this: Real people have joy.

Like the Goats

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Florence, of Irvine

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she said, point blank, “Can you help me? I need a lover, and a friend.” “I can be both,” I said. I don’t know, I just opened my mouth and out it flew. You don’t even stop to think what you might be saying at a moment like that. I mean, she knew I was s

My Book of Frozen Ponds

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We broke our hearts rather than sit in your reversible seats with the plain brown paper packages tied on our laps, we did so together. You don't want to hear about that. It gets too close to the actual murder of love. I…

Target practice

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...it didn’t take much to just toss it aside and muster up some fresh bravado.

Loretta McKinley

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After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.

Have You Ever

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

Jasika by the Mountain

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There was the small wooden structure near the base of the mountain. It had weathered many storms and its walls talked about the scars of this. In the hills to the west various cries came out from feral animals that seemed to go linger that autumn. But it had been a…

Smite the hindmost of them

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“Hello, I’m Marlene, and this is April,” says the older of two women. Both Marlene and April wear ankle length dresses. The name Hester Prynne flashes through my mind.

The Box

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It was just after lunch when they found the box.

Savages

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Dream

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…

Wait room

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It was Saturday morning."The coffee maker is not ready yet," said one of the old men. Like the present company, his form was swollen with mismatched layers of cold weather wear.It was a white room with a dozen men, three couches, and a large screen television flickering…

First sonnet

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Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

The Ghost

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I stroll out to the front lawn, and find myself against the sea of grass, painted daubs within the frame of a distilled rock. My ears attuned to the starlets warbling on the twisted branches of the lone tree, flock of wings that find subtlety and shine in the rapture…

Credits

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I fuck myself. I say never three times. There is a movie in this movie in this. I say hello. Fish are named after capitals of invisible cities. I say so. There is a movie in this movie in. I say flush for a dumpster. The sound of a sound never made. I say equations for…

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.

Liberation, 2

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It was Phil Collins on MTV, “In the Air Tonight,” that helped cement it for me. It was the beginning of the end of my marriage. Well, not exactly the true beginning of the end. You would have to go pretty far back, honestly, to find the true root of it

At the Bend in the Road

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I was at the bend in the road thinking of Robert Frost but there was no fork, there was no yellow wood, there wasn’t even a horse to ask me why or what if There was no decision to be made just a thousand tourists from Prague

New Year's Resolution

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“Hey, come on and sit down,” Jake motioned to her. It was three in the morning and after way too many gins the last thing Melisa wanted to do on New Year’s Eve was to chat with her ex-boyfriend. In fact if she had known he was goin

Parables for Rodin

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His beard is an eighteenth-century forest / in south central France

Tingles

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Your steering wheel is hot.You don't feel it though, I mean,It tingles some but it doesn't have that crawling, stinging feelingLike the way you'd feel it if they hadn't called.Not the way other people in Arizona feel it.You don't feel you or her or anything in…

The First Time. Maybe Our Second or Third

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She sat me down naked on a kitchen chair and fucked me in the dining room, hovering over me, then sitting down on top of me I was upstanding It was outstanding, raw, and exciting No children or adults around, or dogs, cats or birds, no goldf

Annoyance

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The men stir around so aimlessly

putting our bones together

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I can still see us sitting, somewhere (was it in a café?) imagining what it would be like if our mutual faces blended into the future (the waiters posing as in a Manet painting.) Putting our bones together, our broad features, Bohemia and Sweden. Yo

sing your swan song

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They had to dress normal, my other boyfriends, be beardless, hairless, everything torn away, plucked, shorn smooth, because it elicited moisture on the tongue (when I was with you.) But I grew bored as the day before I first saw you.

Instructions for Assembly

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Please be advised to have at least 2 persons to assemble this unit Although it could take close to a dozen Always include at least 2 kibitzers Another 2 or 3 standing around sipping vodka martinis Be sure to have enough olives to go around And b

God and Man at Yale

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“Well, of course I served in the CIA . . . everybody did, back then!” he says with a grin. “Two goddamn bloody well years . . . I was a regular Nayland Smith, I tell you. …