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A Brief History of Water

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amphibians returning to the scene of the crime

The Pit and Philip Guston

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Above the chasm of life burn two fires at either side of the framed painting that stands on the pink and red plain. And inside the painting itself an orange rain falls, accumulating in a sea of red. Rocks can’t stand their small shadows anymore

Get More Protein From Your Music

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“Kids,” I say, commiserating with my partner Bink. “You can’t live with ‘em, but you can live without ‘em.”

Fried Architecture

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In the morning that same girl I’d seen gave me a tangerine...

Head Eloquence

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You know I'm living in the past...

The Passing of Great Dreams

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I think someone’s Got their foot On my foot Not holding me down But maybe helping to ground me It’s almost like they’re Tapping the top of my foot Now and then While listening to some kind of Internal music Tell me What part

I Heard You Like the Back Seat Too, Honey: Song

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They met at a bar They didn’t get far They went to her car Then back to the bar He played guitar She was a rock star They met at a bar They didn’t get far Well, I heard you liked the back seat too, Honey I heard that you liked to h

The Soup You're Served

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He said hopping trains don't get you out the pot, it only gets you to the other side. But whatever soup you're swimming in, you'll still be swimming in it.

Not today, you crab!

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My single sculling boat was not made to take the impact of a pickup.

Christmas Eve

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It was Christmas Eve. Time for the ghost to visit. Just one ghost in this story. The ghost of a Christmas past. Just one Christmas for just one ghost.He looked out the window. Under the distant streetlight the snow was falling. He turned on his porch light. …

Woods

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

The Lies You Tell Yourself

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I am skinniest in the morning. My belly forgets the previous day’s sins, and I wake up looking taut like a model. Then it starts.

Housewives and Ladders

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In the upstairs bedroom, the faucet runs wide open, overflowing the garden tub, shoving water to the white tile floor where she lays in a pool of blood. A white package of forty watt bulbs rests beside her sink. A three step ladder lays on its side. The…

Epicure

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Edwin was the last thing I bought. With his uneven eyes and curious leg stumps, he was a must-have. When I showed Edwin to my housemates he was hugged many times, and praised as though he was real. Knowing my housemates, Edwin may have saved some lives…

Mistaken

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Buzz.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 4

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“So, vot you think?” Vladimir asked us. “You want to come see these paintings? This is once in lifetime chance. Not many left who know about these. And I know where they are.” All the while he kept looking around to make sure nobody was eavesdroppin

Rise, Awake and Sing

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Rise, Awake and Sing“Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise; awake and sing, you who lie in the dust”(Isaiah 26:19)A medieval town where nothing stands straight,where Kafka sat, slept, ate. Where timereads backwards on a Hebrew clock and a Golemwaits in…

I Think You Know That

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you've swallowed a whale bone and not a whole chicken. It's not about being surrounded by very nice stuff. We always thought there was much, much more than haunted walls inside cold castles. People connect the dots like collecting stamps. Things get…

No Exit: Fantasy Football Edition

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Tony's is just a hole in the wall since most people get their sandwiches to go. There's a skinny counter, which was last wiped down during the second Clinton administration, and three tiny tables crammed into a corner.

clouded

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a current forecast

86.

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It was late and Manhattan wasn't going to wait for us to wake up. We stumbled off the train — a few puffs of smoke left in our lungs and perfectly disheveled hair that made us look like we were comfortable with our anxiety.Steps weren't getting any easier…

Poem for January 1st, Feast of Christ's Circumcision

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Who has the child’s foreskin The mohel has removed? Who took the bleeding piece of flesh His human nature proved?

Let's Do It In the Mud

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Then I got another letter, but this time it was from my friend Andy, warning me that he’d seen Miller riding around with Lynda, driving her grandparent’s Dodge with Lynda sitting right up against his side, and his arm was around her. I saw red. I went

Shots Below the Brow

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

Kitchen Consciousness

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she's bent over and reaching into the oven to pour fat over a chicken. I just want to tug those pants down and thrust.

Missing Bananas

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He's no fruit lover.

Why Is This Woman Smiling?

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I was at the doctor’s office They had a poster of the Mona Lisa and the caption underneath it read: “Why is this woman smiling?” Well, it wasn’t because she was over 50 and had yearly mammograms It was because she was 20 something

Supermarket Blues

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Man on aisle nine looking for the answer to cancer Will the partially clothed couple on aisle four please put the rest of their clothing back on If you are finished doing whatever it was you were doing? Man on aisle five trying to imagine Whil

The lyre bird

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When silence makes his way next to me on the narrow path, I let his arm brush mine, and I stop singing with the birds. So, in the vast forest filled with songs and rustling, silence and I follow our path to the edge. Two tranquil strollers, meditating on the ancient voices…

A Most Uncertain Fiction

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It is equally likely that just as the rate of melt continues, the rate of melt will also continue to accelerate.