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The Summer Of My Beautiful Idiocy

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In the summer of '68 my father persuaded me to go visit my grandparents on their farm in North Dakota. I had long hair and dressed like a French symbolist outlaw. Took the train to Minot, spent the night in a hotel (watching Your Cheatin' Heart, movie about Hank…

Illumination,with grace

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Jerry peered out into the dark landscape with no fear left.

Arcana Magi Pure Vol.7 - c.3

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After the Cooking Club and Sayako formerly introduced themselves, they all stood before the sisters, listening to their story. Ren took a puff of his pipe as Ayane pressed her hand over her chest and Sayako took short breaths as her heart raced.

Skippy Goes Sailing

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I coughed a little. Some bloody fluid sloshed in the rubber tube coming from my chest. Outside my door some doctor was ranting. He was looking for the patient in the room across from mine. “She's in X-ray,” the nurse told him. “It's Friday,” he…

Wonder Woman Talks (On Rope) to the Foremost Job Candidates

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"Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow".. --D. H. Lawrence It's not about the lasso. That's so easily dangerous,…

Already There

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Best not look. But the children would.

The Turkey and the Tall Tree

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The bench was set by the waterMarbleAnd dedicated to a man etched his name,the year he was born,and the year he died. She had been suffering from a dark narcolepsythat reflected off the cloudsa lightening bolt energylike a screwturn screw and wrench.Door…

Alcoholic Reverie

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My grandfather’s soul And his infinite high-pitched laughter Intervene And the alcohol that Brought him closer to heaven But that wreaked havoc Among his family And my father Washes down the gullies of the Future

Breaking Up, Chicago Style, On Hardwood Floors

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We shut the door of her new apartment while Andy went back down to the car for one last load. Terry went into the bathroom and pissed blue. Blue, for God’s sake! Some pills she was taking. But she came back into the living room completely naked and pulled

Carriages Wait In Long Rows

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She who is not a widow had once listened to the river repeat its story.

questions, alas

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If in one instant of follie I plea to you What am I? would you then not ask yourselfwhat are We?Would you think maybe We are oneand I would ask to you my loveCan One, then, be transformed into Two? What is left of one after the sum?Can two be touched or…

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…

Pebbles

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On weekdays the two walked,The man in front and the boy always behind,Away from the borrowed house and the kachina dolls inside.Neither of them said anything.The boy thought of things that just wouldn't come out,and the dirt road was always just wet enough thatThe man's…

The Bar at the Folies-Bergere: a Manet Painting

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The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare. It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale And Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl. Two roses in a small clear glass of water. A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway

From the Plague Year 2020 Part 2

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So today was basically mellow. The blue jays argued over who would bathe first in my fountain. When a squirrel showed up, the birds left, but the doves took their place. Our local woodpecker, apparently recovered from a day long headbanging session, returned to the…

Bleached Mutiny

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The geese are smart

The Prison

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He sat uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair and his eyes glanced quickly from one face to the next. The room was small, contained only one window and felt as if it was encroaching on him. It was hard for him to discern what exactly was in the room unless he focused his…

A Tribute To “Tornado At The Club,” From Evan S. Connell’s MRS. BRIDGE

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I’d been listening to the radio. Tornado watch! Heading this way! 75 miles per hour! I don’t like to alarm the guests; a false alarm to these people could cost my job, but so could ignoring real danger.

News from a Distant Relative

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(Suddenly, too lazy to pull even one title from his shelves, he thought: if it's now the “Dao De Jing”, shouldn't it also now be the “I Jing”? Alas, he was no translator.)

Willie

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It must have been twenty years before I first heard Willie Nelson’s voice without the accompaniment of my mother’s crying. She liked to listen to country music on the radio while she cleaned dishes, ironed shirts, watered plants, and whatever else the hou

Shakespeare's dead, and so is Homer

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I remember one time I was downtown when this little old lady came up to me at a café, looked in my face, and said, “You know what?” I was surprised she was even speaking to me, a young blonde girl sitting alone at a restaurant, with the shadows play

You Do Not Exult Over the Held-Out Heart

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You can’t know everything you want to know, about anyone. (Especially about me!) You can’t even know everything you want to know about Sharon, and I probably know more than you do. In fact, I’m sure I do. For instance, did you know about that guy

They

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They had been part of the world for as long as he knew, but they were still an enigma to Timothy. They had an origin but he did not know what it was or what they were. They were both the source and the outcome. They generated and spread the information.

Mike's Confession in the Basement to Being Allergic to Balls

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He arched an eyebrow.  He was "thinking" — a tricky thing to do, when you never read, even the newspaper.

pockets

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That place was on a summit and hardly anything grew there and it wasn't for lack of turning over the earth or tending the loam and it wasn't either for lack of sun because the violent storms had felled anything that could block the light years and even decades before. On…

Remembering a Life

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“Yes. You should probably bring her in.” This was what the receptionist from the Metropolitan Veterinary Hospital told me. My dog, Goldie, had a bloody nose and was breathing heavily.

Redux

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Is that who we are as a nation, or was that day an aberration?

they in that eternal room

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And while they sat and while we danced for them, they in that eternal room of theirs, illumined by late sunlight, or moonlight, (or the lamp in your bedroom,) our skin moistened with oils, glistening… each of us shining as we turned, emitting littl

Stop Short

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SoCo, Burnette's, Grey Goose, Bacardi. The good stuff. We drank Bill’s stuff because his parents were lawyers and loved to drink too. We just drank when everyone was asleep. Sometimes we’d invite our friends, or girls—but mostly it was just us. You could

Amma

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God love him, she used to say. you never noticed it much at the time because it is just something like a habit. a benevolent habit. around through the years and decades she went like that. God love him, she used to say, if she saw someone resting peacefully, of if…