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Chills On My Opposite Hip

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You gave me chills on my opposite hip whenever you touched me from behind, when we spooned under the rough woolen blanket in your basement. Whenever your essence touched my life like that. Just like when you said, “You came, that’s all.” That’s all? T

A Ruckus Needs To Be Raised, or Caused, or Raised

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Either a ruckus needs to be raised Or a ruckus needs to be caused I began chewing the locks of love Off the fences and the gates I was so outraged At the horrible academic trash If they had found me doing this They would have hauled me a

One Brief Moment

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I have sat aside and entertained the coveted feelings of what was not in my hands. Only briefly, a moment shared of hidden secrets and joy. But of and between us, I cannot say that this moment is a considerable spur-still I desire…

The lady makes a phone call.

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Of course it’s because she’s been drinking. Will she regret this? I don’t understand it but maybe it is something she has thought about for some time.

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.

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.

Basic Principles of Physical Space

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a body lost in thought stays hopelessly lost in thought for as long as the latte lasts and the coffee shop stays open and the moms don’t gather with their baby carriages and the bums don’t bum overly much and the trust funders don’t lose too

Lines in Contemplation of a Tragic Accident

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There’s Julie-she’s the cineaste– Au courant woman with a past.

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,…

Silenced

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Into the silence

The Sham Wedding

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Mary Jo told me to hire somebody to marry us in a ceremony in the living room up at the house on Fairlawn. This was to take place in two days. Her divorce was final, and she had to get married or else it was all over for her child custody. I guess I was

Woods

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We went to the woods to escape the failures that suck out your breath.

Coins

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I was reading The Transmission of Doubt by Adi Da, and since it was just shy of five hundred pages, I had become tired and needed air. It was funny because Eglington Square Mall had only one floor and was more like a mini mall than anything, with a beer store on…

Calling the Nurse

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The coffee cup was still full. Black hot steaming smoke signals climbed toward the ceiling, like blowing soot out of dirty bagpipe lungs. The mug exhaled constant and slow like the Fall, until room temperature crept from the handle around…

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

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History in the unmaking.

gravelortian part 10

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We have been down here before

Shots Below the Brow

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His self-assurance says/ he’s practiced in the art/ of self-deception

That Painted Up Whore

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Some things stay with you. I got off the bus, petted my dog, Nick and walked in our house and saw Mother at the kitchen table, crying and clearly angry. I asked her if she was sick. She works. She said that she didn't go to work today and might not go tomorrow…

LYCEUM IN RUINS

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Weeds, schist, an Artesian well: élan in a heavenly forge. Sniffling goats, a mossy cairn. A portal divides the void. There is a human hand here below the crumbling parapet. The crotch of time A bridge between…

The Lament of Last Century's Escape Artists

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Here's to the new, trying ever so hard but not too hardto have an audience with their own personal God ontheir own super duper terms, wonder kids. Aren't theybeautiful, one of a kind cells, Ladies and Gentlemen? Thepaint job alone is worth the…

I've got to

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

justice in obverse and reverse

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seriously: let defendants choose their coin, / execute their own calls, make their own coin flips― / attentive referee, no need for a court.

1 Mil = One-Tenth of a Cent

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Thankfully I don't have to share my Jim Beam with the cat.

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…

Query

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The murder of two teens late one humid night on a tiny rural Virginia island brings a dark, malignant mystery edging into the village known as Leicester Court House.

Harry

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in a complete rage he lifted his entire golf bag full of clubs over his head and threw them into the creek.

Fireflies Flew Out of the Slice of Life

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In the beginning there was salt God licked the salt and said it was Good. Then there was Light Then Chocolate The rest is just History It’s no great Mystery Oh, and Fireflies Fireflies with Due Dates Flew out of the Slice of Life S

Paper Thin

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She slipspaper thinshe ripspaper thin

The Progeny

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1I looked through the window of the drive-thru into the customers vehicle. There, encased in a ton of metal and plastic, sat a balding, rotund man in his mid-forties with flesh that resembled cookie dough sprinkled with beads of sweat. Not only did he defy physics by…

gravelortian part 19

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Uproot everything, a muddy hole when done