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Smiles are for Suckers

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I walked her home. She lived eight blocks in the opposite direction of me, but it made her smile —I made her smile.

Bitter Orange

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A poison bouquet of Merlot and brown floor muck bloomed in Seth’s nose. It’s one thing to sniff a freshly decanted red and another thing to shower in it.

Three Ways of the Saw

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I’m at the kitchen sink washing down pills when they bump up my driveway in a blue Toyota pick up, its bed eaten through with rust so bad I can see past the holes in the body to the frame.

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…

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…

Why They Cried: Ted

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Ted did not understand turn-of-the-century costume dramas, and because he didn’t understand them, he often referred to them as "chick flicks" or "English crap." Even when the principals were not British. Even when the principals were Winona Ryder.

The Open Perch (Valentine's Day Challenge)

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… in truth I am not waiting, but also flying in my soul to meet her, a journey that has taken me across the span of my own lifetime and the gulf of that same mysteriously mapped universe.

Getting Put On

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There are times when I run out of places to sleep. I thought my whole life that god gave up on me. The newspaper bin is where I go when I'm desperate. In the center of town there's a large bin for recycling newspapers behind…

The Wreck of Me

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“You’re a hard habit to break,” I said. My tongue was flaring. Flirting with nurses was my father’s thing.

Whites in Hot Water

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To his astonishment, he discovered Maggie curled up inside the Maytag dryer, head down, shoulders hunched over.

Oh, Myth...

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Philip Ahearn woke up in an empty field. Last night had been one hell of a party - he almost hooked up with Rosamund - and, at the time, it seemed wiser to crash outside than to drive and really crash. But he wasn't a kid anymore and sleeping on the…

The '08 Campaign And the Crash

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Here's the '08 presidential campaign in a nutshell: The Dems couldn't dredge up a white guy that even the dead in Chicago would vote for, so they went with Obama. Meanwhile, the GOP couldn't dig Reagan up try as they might,…

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.

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,…

The Other Side

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The Last Birthday Party

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

Godfrey part 1 : Godfrey's penis

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"Bit of a shrinkage situation."

fork

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xxxxxx

Tremor

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I ask because she's the animal person, not me. She understands animal behavior.

From the Kitchen of my Childhood

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An ice block heart rushed home to the beat of its melt.

Orbit

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And it seemed that, just a little more—and the solution would be found, and then a new, beautiful life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that the most complicated and difficult part was just beginning.

Behind the (Beekeeper's) Veil

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While I tried to work calmly, internally it was a non-Zen zone. I was experiencing a major adrenalin rush.

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.

Harry, Giselle and Joyce

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Harry Reed does not want to die in this room, in front of Giselle, who has been his wife for exactly six months, who has slept beside him for twelve months.

Po-cash

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“Black is up, red is down,” I said, knowing he turned to pleasant memories of lawbreaking when he felt discouraged. I asked him to meet me for coffee. He said he hadn’t bought a coffee in a year.

Emoji Problems

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Our problems started with a few back and forth texts of emojis late one night. The next evening, a Friday, typically my poker night with the guys, my girlfriend came to the door.“You brought over pizza, how nice,” I said. “And, oh, gosh, look at that, a…

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

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.

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

almost a still life

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(a sidewalk poem)