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Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge" (Webster/Mulligan)

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The chorus is a melancholy enlightenment; this is all I have, he thinks, the only transcendence I’ll get out of this day. I should seize it while I can.

Saturday, 1AM

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Tonight, as I ate stale fries in the car, / after getting back home, / my seatbelt still around me, / struggling to keep me in place,

Cleft-Split Rock

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Walking here with you on these narrow strands

The Birth of Intuition

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My wife’s got dangerously good Peripheral vision She can see things so far to the side That I’m almost certain she can see things behind her And I’m sure she can see things that happened yesterday But the thing that scares me the most She

Feminist Gift-Shopping is Man's Work

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“Hey Jimmy,” we’d shout at the bartender, whose real name was Bill, but who acquired his nomme de biere with the fixtures when he bought the joint. “What?” he’d reply in monosyllables in order to keep his overhead down. “What does a woman want?”

Punchlines of a cosmic joke

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Creating a world in which no one believes . . . killing a world in which no one could believe.

Patterns

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He stood with his cardboard sign and watched the faceless occupants, watched for a car window to lower; there were few.

Short Lobsters

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"They measured the lobsters and they were short. But like I said, not by much. If they had any sense they’d leave the poor guy alone and go after the big fish.”

The Great Pandemic Poem 2020

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First you had to have been there Because the air cleared up When the world stopped driving And the plants bloomed Bigger and brighter than we had ever Ever dreamed The sky was just a brilliant, pure Blue Like when God was born Now fo

Nightbound

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Intimacy is safer in the dark.

Guidance Counselors Fight Boring Image by Ghost-Riding Their Whips

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“I was talking to kid who hadn’t applied to college, and I asked him why,” Branson says. “He rolled his eyes and said ‘Why go to college if I’m gonna end up a tool like you?’"

Battle of the Bulging British Bridesmaids

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A survey by “You & Your Wedding” magazine has determined that one in five British brides now requires her bridesmaids to sign contracts regulating their behavior and appearance.

The Red-Blooded Boys' Guide to Fashion Week

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When I was growing up–I know that begs the question–if I wasn’t gigging frogs or shooting marbles I used to wile away my idle hours by hanging out at my dad’s women’s clothing store.

Inspector of the Dawn

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It is a strange world, dawn. You may find yourself alone with your God, the old, and the young. Very likely a bird. An old one out hobbling past on a cane, a small dog trotting from bush to bush, sniffing a pile of leaves, jumping back, st

Beautiful

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Adam, bronze and lithe, runs laps on the beach

The Old Man of the Mountain

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I care little for innocence. I prefer the breath of dragons to the silhouettes of apes.

prayers for meatwagons

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prayers for meatwagons prayers from meatwagons too: / things can happen in intersections aspeed / with two ambulances from separate streets.

the girl next door to Andy's

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Then there was this short little girl, Jo Ann, who had a daughter and was divorced, who lived next door to Andy. She told me right after we did it one night that she had always wanted to have sex with me when she was growing up, as a teenager, I mean. A

All of a Sudden

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Look at this contradictory neon night.

Functionary

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The work of translation is a braid of light.

Blessed

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The first thing Noah did, more or less, was plant a vineyard.

I'm Not Emilio Estevez

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Here was the situation, as I recounted it to myself: somehow, I was trapped in some unearthly dimension where Baltimore, actor Emilio Estevez, and myself had somehow collided in a big cartoon scrum complete with onomatopoeias and clouds of dust.

Upfaked Out of My Love Shoes

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A dirty-blonde woman in a little black dress, her face a picture of chagrin/ Was similarly looking around as if lost, other’s heads ending at her chin.

Sense and Sensibility Too

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http://fictionique.com/?p=15975

Past Forward

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Shivers of desire, bristles of knowing

The Pulse-Soldier

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The Pulse-Soldier: Part I Dr. Zog Kadare waddled in off the patio, daintily lay down his umbrella, acknowledged his wife with a grunt, kicked off his sandals with a deft movement of the heel, without troubling to unbind them, removed a sealed envelope from his rear…

Sisyphus takes the day off

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what-ta-hell, fuck this/he snorts brushing/ the dust from his shoulders

Extraterrestrial Bingo

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Let me tell you about extraterrestrial bingo: it's loud. They put the speakers over my head. And the microphone keeps moving. Most of the organisms here are old. And from another planet. I see a lot of tentacles. A lot of auras and bugeyes. Everyone seems to know the…

What Isn't Mine Suffices

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Leaves fall. Snow falls. Both fall beyond my notice

The Boy Who Tamed Wild Things

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The boy had a gift, we understood; he could speak the language of the animals, and so soon there was a skunk that he would walk on a leash.