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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…

The Last Will And New Testament Of Henry J. Worthmore, Jr.

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I, Henry J. Worthmore, Jr., being of sound mind and failing health in my 73rd year do hereby set down in words this final and irrefutable disposal of all my worldly goods.

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…

Sanctimonious Substrate

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If there were a time and a placefor meaningless, purposeless meandering,useless content that goes nowhere, without pretension or intent,filigree and ornament.Something to while away the hours,waiting for the dependencies of life,the requirements and the directionsof…

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

My 250 lb. Dog

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to accomodate my 250 lb. dog

Luminous Nights, 6

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We had to walk up to the fourth floor, and on those steamy hot Chicago summer nights in August, sometimes I would strip off my top before we even got in the door. I lived with my Siamese cat, whose name was Caesar.

Salesman

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A salesman, a born salesman like my brother, is always and only involved in the Moment, and it is the sale itself that is at the heart of the moment, and my brother Harris was really at the top of his form as a salesman. It can probably best be said, th

The Light Men

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How far can a person drive until the outcome of a single stoplight no longer affects all the others.

The Web

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The vibration of my cell phone on the nightstand shakes my brain awake. It always does. These are the times it bothers me most. When I am in that deep sleep. The kind of sleep you fall in, after you wake up the first time and then roll back over in the early…

Mother of the Earth

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On Terry’s eighteenth birthday (the summer of 1966, the same year you graduated from high school, and the year I broke up with Sharon) I took Terry out to Fox River on my dad's ski boat, and opened up my robe and showed her all there was to show of myse

On Fox River

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We were at Fox River and I was in the dark water, swimming naked beside Rick DeMille, with my light skin glowing as we swam up behind you and Sharon in your dad’s ski boat sitting silent in the water. And I could hear her whimpering, “Oh, Jesus!” when

Head Eloquence

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

A Worthy Caws

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It started with crows. I'd walk the switchback trail to the top of the park with its outlook of the city and if I didn't see any crows I'd whistle and they'd come swarming from everywhere. I'd give the peanuts a toss and the crows would caw their heads off and peck at…

food-cheated muscles recalling their sex

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What a world I imagined! Lacking organized armies, resting at noontime under a canopy made gentle by passing, natural creatures with large warm eyes, set afire by the influence of constant lust and destruction. Turned to marble by love. Who wouldn’t wan

D. H. Lawrence of Suburbia

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He drives an Infiniti.

A Journal of the Plague Year: Day 76: Specters of the Sixties

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" If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face--forever." 1984, George Orwell

is it a visible, or invisible thread?

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In another dream I am you and I am giving birth and the pages you have written are flying out of me one after another and appearing like speckled moths near the ceiling of your bedroom, and they have my eyes and some of them have yours. A soft singi

give me a real moment with a living god and I'll go all the way

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I remember, when I was selling real estate, how you could always tell when there'd been a divorce. One room was conspicuously left emptied of its contents, and these rooms were never swept or tidied. Instead they were left just as they were when the par

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

O'Hare International Peoplewalk Tunnel

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At step blinding speed we all alight somewhere in the world

A True Story?

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A couple, an unlikely match, came together for a brief interlude of time. It was marked, almost a kind of bar code; beginning, middle and almost end. Almost end was not "the" end because it was seemingly fated that they continue the journey through life, if not together, at…

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…

A Visitor

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A man came to my door today. He said little and invited himself in. He only stood in the doorway, a bit menacingly, if you ask me. He was dressed very darkly in a long grey coat and hat, and seemed bent on not allowing the light of day to pass through (he

ekphrastic and somatic verses

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in clotted abattoirs where Sorley saw: / no animals shorn of their skins and flesh / could spy with envy the men killing them.

As a Film Cassette Enters a Camera

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"...only images I can know,"

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

On a Sunday

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It is always midnight in my heart; / and melancholy advances from handsome men / only take place in my mind...

The Man Who Loved Purple

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If it had a surface, he painted it purple. If it didn’t have a surface, he painted it purple.

Bleached Mutiny

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The geese are smart