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I Can’t Wait To Develop Patience, But

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And they let the angels out at twilight, the dark twins of bats, and their troubled undersides. Never were the bats so disturbed. Never until now has true evil been so see-through, and clear.

Epistemology (Revised 2019)

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RE: The big stuff: We don’t know RE: The small stuff: Half of what you believe is true but you will never know which half

Sex Change Operation

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Her condition was giving her the blues ‘Cause her gender, was slightly confused.

Bruegel days, nights by Bosch

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no matter where we sit or how we stare— / all parades now march away to one day.

Woman Outside Funeral Home Lighting Up

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If you ever find yourself outside a funeral home lighting up contemplating the future of the unknown, contemplate this Maybe the cigarette’s wet on your lip and you are wondering why Or in the middle of the night you are lying awake and try sa

An Idiot is Never Worth Your Time or More Mythomania for Your Buck An Idiot is Never Worth Your Time or More Mythomania for

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"It's a true saying then, that 'it's never worth while speakingto an idiot,'" answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantlyat Myshkin." - Dostoevsky "Why are you telling everyone that you are going to Tchermashnya, so that you think you're going to Moscow, when you…

Shorondra Reynolds

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When Shorondra Reynolds was a baby we lived in a Baltimore brownstone on the edge of Pigtown. Just me and my mother, when there were no single mothers, just Adele’s mother or Mary’s mama, or Kiki’s madear and their like. It was a time when a five year-old

One Night Stand Before Finals

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There was one girl from Ireland, with her thick Irish brogue, who came into my bedroom early on the morning before my final exam for my Master’s degree in the writing program at U.C Irvine. She knew I was so nervous about taking the exam that I hadn’t sle

Cortizone

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so i slather cortizone on the bite marks of my experiences

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

pop music till yer brains bulge blue!

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every color of sound turned to green / human beasts’ treadmill tastes must be trained: / we may yet starve to death, but we’ll die de-brained!

Stone Soup

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When I asked her about her husband, she laughed.

Enemies Are Taken Care Of?

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You took me to this great salad bar once, down in Chicago, on a special date. It must have been for my birthday (how old was I!) I remember that salad bar. It was the only salad bar I’ve ever seen that had caviar. I loved that black caviar. They put it up

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.

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

Five Million Yen: Chapter 27

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Gabe had told the stewardess that he wanted to talk to Ben. Her name was Claudia and she knew whom he was talking about. That foxy musician Ben, thought Gabe, he probably boned her on some previous flight.

Yesterday

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played-out

Off of the Train His Mother He Threw a Kiss

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Off of the train, endlessly rocking, He threw his mother a kiss.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

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One of his big failings was getting pissed off about things behaving badly but not troubling to immediately fix them. He was working on being more prompt.

on Fox River

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We are on Fox River and I am in the dark water swimming naked beside Rick DeMille with my white skin glowing as we come up behind you and Sharon in your dad’s ski boat sitting silent in the water, and I can hear Sharon whimpering, “Oh, Jesus! Jesus!” as

The Death of Digger

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At the house one night we were all sitting around at one of those infernal communal meetings that go on into the night full of pot smoke and red wine, when the door was nudged open and a stray dog wandered into the living room. It was a strange coyote-l

Wisdom Is Death

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for Edward Victory is death. Rock stardom is death. Life is murderous.Love's still beaded much longer and stronger than any row of round headed lovers. You can't stop death from turning to face you, but itsnot exactly expecting your poem's referral either. In…

When You Love Someone

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you set the world in motion. When you lovesomeone you reset everything to glow. When you love someone you forgive the world. Everything is possible. When you love someone it is time to go on home. When you love someone you're reborn as someone else…

In the City of K.

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I had never been to the city of K. before, having just flown in on business the other night, and so imagine my surprise at seeing my parents, waiting at a bus stop just a few blocks from my hotel.

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…

Monstrous Thing

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It's only just a poem. The good that's in us is us. There's a monstrous thing trying to get out and ruin things. To unbalance everything standing on tiptoe. To end the dance. To grab the moment and burn it down flat to the ground. They are…

They Come and Go

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Days come and go. Faster through the years. Falling like Christmas tree needles, the longer the tree stands. The days will eventually end. Only one day a year is special. Even when we say we are too old to notice them, we do. We know they are there. Even when we…

Chicken Sexers Set to Go For Gold in London

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Green Ridge, Missouri features a horseshoe pit on the town square and not one but two full-time village idiots.

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

Thanksgiving

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Unless we see it, probe it, Name it, star by star, and feel This awful, tenuous gratitude.