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Ants

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Her husband wouldn’t let her call an exterminator. That doesn't work, he said. The real reason he said no was that he was cheap.

The Last Birthday Party

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The boy giggled, splashing his father and howling at the cold.

The Goodbye Meets the Hello at the Station

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"You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them out flat."--Renoir "Dreaming is free."--Blondie "I can't vouch for my ability to avoid dullness..the odd position in which poets find themselves explains their often-sentimental identification with the…

Pretty Face

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The two girls who were my best friends had not minded that I didn't draw it in. It was Obie, as we called him for short, who commanded me to inhale at thirteen. "You're dead," Obie said, as soon as I did it. I fell backward in the tall, yellow grass.

Poppies

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I was born upside down, the umbilical cord looped twice around my neck. My mother claimed she was so busy working the swing shift at the hospital that she didn’t even know she was pregnant at first. But I found this hard to believe. Of course she knew. My

Break Time in the Army Corps of Engineers Mascot Lounge

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The Army Corps of Engineers spent $92,000 in federal stimulus money on costumes for mascots such as Bobber the Water Safety Dog.

3 Haikus for Dutch Kickboxer Gilbert Yvel

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silent black badass unstoppable foot of God now the sweetest sleep

What I find

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is every word is a small step takenaway from you that arcs back to me likea mamba's mouth. I'm not going aroundin place so much as running in circles. You can see my devilry here. You arethe truth here and that makes me the lie. You'renew morning. I'm much, much more…

Van Gogh's Peach Tree

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There is a boy. The boy is standing in front of a munificent peach tree in all the splendor and atrophy of his afternoon existing. Shadows? Yes. There are midday shadows, hiding and seeking, long and greyish to offset the bright reds and violets and orang

When Alone

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She'd sit out on the back deck and dig into the skin around her toenails with a paring knife until it bled. He'd listen to a single aria of Opera's Greatest Hits, number 10, until the cusp of some feeling, either despair or rage, would build and fade. Then he'd start…

Flirtbooking

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76 nutswinging likes

Dead Man Sleeping

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Joyce Addleberg hated sleeping alone, so when her husband died in his sleep one night, it was only natural that she kept him around.

almost a still life

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(a sidewalk poem)

The Krafft-Ebing Poems

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his dreams are filled / with aprons

Heels.

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Why am I attracted to this girl? She’s beautiful. Only five foot four, but still looks skyscraper tall thanks to those skinny greyhound legs of hers. She told me she used to dance, then giggled and said she hadn’t since she was five years old.

fork

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xxxxxx

Vigil

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You have arrived at the river, numb with the murmur of the city and the sleeplessness of anger, boredom, and too many people loving too many people too much. The heat in this night, not the moon as in ancient poems, is blazing; the moon is pink like the…

XAM: Paragraph Series

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Grief is to have given freely too unfreely. Grief is to have given one year too many. Wicked is to have wanted it to be given away that way. Wicked is to Sam as duty is to Mother. Sam’s wife is to his friend’s wife as one Mercedes to another.

Arcana Magi - c.19: Opportunity Arising

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Kyo held her hand gently and stared at the bracelet as Brie explained everything that happened. It was painful to hear.

Papa

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Fridays always said it was time for golf,which left me wide, wide like the space between your teeth,on the stoop til you'd let me share your palm with your nine iron.I was a utility. Your gap toothed divot tool or a headcover that had your smile.Sometimes you'd gawk back,…

Godfrey part 1 : Godfrey's penis

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"Bit of a shrinkage situation."

Notes on a Failed Town

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Very few photos of the bear remain.

Let Us Pretend

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"Perhaps a divorce?" she continues, thinking of his thin, long hands and how they almost, not quite, but almost, made their usual pattern on her body, remembering having queried many men on what their most erotic sexual encounter was and found that the an

Charlotte's Nexus

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She sent painless electrical impulses through his neurons, and consequently, he lost the pathways that lead to memories of his experiments, memories he had reveled in during his most profound moments of desolation.

Movement

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Everyone is botching everything, even the rescue team. They can't get to me. I am surrounded by people who don't know a fatal wound when they see one. I am so determined to live that I become bossy.

55 words #4

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I drink with my thinking problem intact.

Working Without a Net

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The next day, John's kneecaps looked like Tennessee Pride Real Country Sausage. The bandage on his head kept coming loose, having to be tucked in, and he was suffering the Stone Mountain of hangovers.

No One Is Listening

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Bum on a Parisian stoop begging with his big Jackson Pollack bare head in the rain The water running in streaks all over his brain reminding him of a painting he once thought of Man standing outside a bar talking to his own reflection

Arcana Magi - c.12: Danica Leandros, Sentinel of Seiryuu

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Of course, there was one love Danica had in her heart that stood above all those luxuries, magic.

A Body Divided, 2

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I came down with polio on September 15, 1953, a mild, smoky day drawing close to autumn outside of Chicago — which also happened to be the exact date of my parents' twenty-first wedding anniversary. Only six months later the Salk vaccine was already b