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My Composite Girlfriend

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Her dad regaled me with stories of his up-from-the-bootstraps climb out of poverty on the hard-scrabble, rough-and-tumble Lower East Side of New York, where he founded the leading supplier of hyphens to writers of purple prose.

Past Brutalities

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Seven micros

Facing Budget Cuts, Schools Hire Samurai Crossing Guards

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“Out-of-work samurai have a choice,” says Bobby Ito. “They can terrorize local peasants at county fairs, or underbid low-skilled workers for menial jobs.”

Forgiveness

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Inside a restroom stall, Herbert Casey Jr. took a soggy roll of cash from his boot and placed a quarter of the wet bills into his wallet. He divided the rest into the three empty pockets of his blue jeans.

Caleb

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CALEBHe'd get up every day,don his clothes and tendto rote ablutions. He tried not to think too much.Because he knew what that would bring --the tethers he lost; failed causes,the last lover, who knew some things.Instead, he kept his eyes straight ahead,marked time,…

Gather Round

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When they first brought me home, I was their pride and joy. Then, one day, they put me in this wooden box.

There Were Giants Upon the Earth in Those Times and the Wickedness of Men

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A pair of snakes contemplates gulping a pair of frogs.

lunch

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strange daysi'm having lunch with the babyand we're talking about people-watchingand old souls and coffee and twizzlersit's a weird conversation but she's my babyso something about some apple not falling far from the treewould best fit in herebut anywayi feel like i'm…

Test

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We’re safe as houses/ and unmoved. We grow/ accustomed to the sound

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.

The Love She Can't Find Pt. 1

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She's a woman who travels often. Maybe for work. Maybe for mischief. She's a "free spirit" trapped by her desire for love. But she numbs it with the warmth of a new man's touch. She leaves herself reminders that often fail her or remain inconsistent. She wants to…

dresses on a rat

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I heard about you in advance. You were not going into a party looking for dresses on a rat. Nor shades of blue rubber, nor symbols of hot purity. I knew what you were after, so I put myself in front of you. You could not mistake me for anything other th

Slightly Broken Sonnet

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It's late it's early love youfuck me the difference isin the garage boxes sitbehind me in the trunklike passengers beside melike pedestrians in frontof me I choose our directionwhat stays what comes whatis what and how did I end upin the garage in the first placein the…

Foster's Landing

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my stomach is empty, but it is my eyes that are hungry

Can You Imagine?

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“Can you imagine what we could have accomplished, if we would have just gotten all the fuckin out of the way?” says Doug Stanhope, one of my favorite comedians, and one of the most brilliant, harsh straight to point utterances, I've heard from anyoneWe…

The Pheasant

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Times they were a blazing, the Pheasant met God in Piccadilly meadows

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…

gravelortian part 10

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We have been down here before

gravelortian part 21

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Happy is a look we are trying to wear better

Moulin de la Galette. Renoir

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Light seen as sunlight through a Japanese shade Red through many of their mouths, and often their hair but also spots of a duller red on the back of this gentleman's coat and the back of his head The woman stares at him without smiling from thre

Mountain godfather

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“Look them straight in the eye, keep your mouth shut unless spoken to, and make no sudden moves.”

The Merry Go Round

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I felt that love could not be paid for or else could never be paid for enough.

I'll Show You God

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...the room was filled with a brightness and a breeze, making you think you were up in the clouds.

Gears

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I would like to land youLike a paper airplane,Take you home to mom. I like your mom &, sheWants to sleep in the sameBed as me. Call it odd. I give you a head nodin the museum, we speakin code. Call it news.I have the blues. Nobodydoes it like you do, to me,for us, in…

Strange Land

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I was still18 years old when the plane landed in South Korea. It was 10AM, Friday. Stepping off the jet way, it could have been any airport in America. But it wasn't. As soon as we got in the airport we were hustled to Customs. Filled out a bunch of forms. Asked…

Holiday

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My guy was Croatian. I sought an Italian.

A Tinder Ghost

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Do you know if you were actually speaking to me there?

Navigating Iota

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I never thought that I would be here

I've got to

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Growing into a new mold, watching our friendships fall into deep deep holes.

The Imbecilic Utterances (or Why is every man's burden the heaviest?)

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"Come into my face." said Duras famously as she neared death. This is very beautiful. If one takes Duras to speak of something akin to the 'face' as given us by Levinas, and we may display this face here as something like an Husserlian universal…