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Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

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Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

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…

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.

The Demon Rum

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the Coke made his butt leak blood

Mister and Miss Marital Bliss

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The canvas bag lay crumpled and moaning in the middle of the room as Mister and Miss Marital Bliss contemplated what to do to it next. Spots of deep crimson blossomed like spring flowers all over the white sack and a large pool had gathered underneath. Rivulets of blood…

Surprise!

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We were fleeing Hurricane Katrina We stopped somewhere in Texas at a roadside diner But found a sign that said it was closed All of a sudden as we sat there in our car The shop’s owner knocked on the window And asked what he could get for us

First sonnet

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Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

The beginning of the end

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(...) I know my eyes are shut and I’m on the kitchen floor but I see her and I’m not confused. (...)

Fungi light/ Fungi Language

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I'm sitting in the dark of my own kitchen, because it is dark outside, not from night but from clouds. I guess that's where I'll start talking from. This isn't about you. I'm not sure it's even about me. It's probably about the…

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 Box

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It was just after lunch when they found the box.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 53

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—Francesco, said Zambrano, rising from his desk and putting his arm around Frank's shoulder. You and me, we're business partners. Regular capital crime buddies.

Savages

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Dream

Thanks for the Unsolicited Advice

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And what is it I’m supposed to do With all this unsolicited advice?

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

While More She Tried to Babysit Me at a Party When I Was Stoned, But There Was a 'Block' Between Us. It's Why Since For Ever an

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d anon., I've Had Trouble "Loosening Up." I've got to keep my pump primed, don't I?

Admission

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I can’t hold a job I can’t hold a hammer

A Fog Will Press Forever at Your Shoulders

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Sandy lay motionless on the ground, death giving her a look only describable as "ancestral."

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.

Like the Goats

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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

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…

Remotary Publics Bring Stamps, Seals to Those in Distress

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Remote notary publics, or "remotaries" for short, are finding themselves increasingly busy as hikers and climbers seek help by cell phone or personal digital assistants from mountain peaks and white-water rafting trips.

Have You Ever

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

Writing Poems

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We bring words together and set them up on blind dates. Watch them build a history together, get married and fight together. Make offspring syllables cradled warm in cribs of punctuation. Phonemes squeezed into existence by two parenthesis. Words…

Intentions

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As Susan drove the last stretch home, she couldn't help but press the accelerator a bit deeper than usual. Her car zipped passed the neighborhood houses, which were of mostly brick construction, with two car garages and freshly mulched islands of spring flowers.…

Testament Part 4 of 6

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We once saw giants in the clouds and in/ connected points of stars, and named/ them, gods. We placed them in their high-halled villas,/ on the mountaintop, to game and frolic

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…

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

Three Strangers

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As the patter of our passing feet fades.