2011 7 3
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Ancient erections loom aloft
ringed by decades
centuries for some
in gnarled scabs of pine.
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201121
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This stage of Junior’s young life was static, moving very little off-center since his graduation from high school five years ago. Treading water both professionally and emotionally never worried him. Not until after what transpired that night when Pr
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201121
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The dump smelled of the chaos of creation, of rusting metal and burned glass, chemicals and rancid rainwater, wet cardboard and rotting wood, paint slaking off clapboards and drums.
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2011146
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"Are you all right?" I ask. He blinks. He sits up. I help him stand. He looks sorrowfully at his coffee cup, which is on the floor.
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201100
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She did not know what it would feel like, how it would happen … but she knew it would be done. She knew that it would be magical, like nothing she could see or hear through the cornfields or around the markets.
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201166
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Watch her now as she tries to not smoke. Considers, reconsiders. Checks her nylon bag for her phone charger, and lights a cigarette anyway, which she immediately extinguishes in the kitchen sink.
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2011128
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Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod /
out of season /
we were rigged for haddock, /
it was dressed for the weather
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201132
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Six months ago, Gary hired a goateed designer to "defoliate" the office, trucking out all the ficus trees and spanish moss to make room for curved sheets of fiberglass and, as he called it, "negative space." Now, her voice echoes off the concrete floors.
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20103514
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We were destined by chemistry and plastic figurines to give it a go.
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2010149
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for the rush of longing
and brush with flight
that is her imagination
will surely lift her above the traffic
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201021
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If the photographs made sounds, they would rumble like static from an impending thunderstorm, pressed between the pages of a yellowing dictionary. Compressed sound, searching for the proper words.
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20101913
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old men with crispy sunburnt ears
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2009107
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He shows me how lift the windshield wipers up, clean under them, put them down and I follow him around, watch him slap the sham over the van, pull it away, slap again. I do the same, stop every few minutes like Daddy does, hold it out, twist, wring the sh
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2009157
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A retired feminist literary agent named Jackie and her boyfriend, Jock, were on board. Jock was kind as one might expect of a man traveling with a feminist, and Jackie was happy yet stern. She mentored me one day over lunch.
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20092318
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Five girls wobble into the train car. Their blistered feet protrude from the bedazzled straps of their sandals. Conductor: “Girls in the back with the open containers, you can't have those on the train.” A heavy-set girl in a belted yellow mini-dress…
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200892
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It's not that you want to be silkworm all your life. That's what I'm telling my on-again-off-again girlfriend aboard the plane. Her name is Phoebe as in that song about a girl who lived in her own world within the shell of another. Phoebe, I'm saying, to bridge distances…
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2008199
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that day is my barking up and leaves falling down story, but in their elephant slowness it seemed no more than the regular run of the sun slightly disappearing here, and then maybe reappearing there, like a lost color, way over the horizon, or the…
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2008115
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You aren’t easy to explain, you Americans.
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200853
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You’ve gathered in church to wait for Jesus. Unarguable signs have let you know this is the day. This is the day of the second coming. This is Judgment Day.
It was a no-brainer to wait at the church.
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2008117
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Your specific request that I never submit to you again; ever, is cause for puzzlement, yet strangely motivating.
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20071715
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Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
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2007198
|
It lies in rusting riot
of shadowed days.
Flying high its emblem wings,
forever stalled.
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200700
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Alysia slowed down for a moment. She clutched her head again. She looked up and found herself at a playground. There was a familiarity in the air.
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20071410
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Just a little shop girl in for the summer. Working on a typewriter. Barely knowing where the keys were. That was her. She was terrible at it. He was in a suit. He looked short, and thin, but something about him was captivating. He was in his own way hands
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200776
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"You know what a hobo is, my young friend? Or a tramp? Or a bum? Well, I'll tell ya, 'cuz you'll meet all of 'em in yer life and it's a good thing to know since they are each one of 'em different and the difference is this. Bums sit around and loaf. T
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200621
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The barista with the fake rainbow nails and amazing cleft. . . .
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200681
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She is thinking about her baby, the one she loved for exactly one month before she lost her forever. Now, all the love for her baby is coiled in the pit of her stomach and it has fangs and venom, and it is leaking into her blood, her bones.
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200600
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They tell me I’m crazy. I say I’m just keeping up.
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20061614
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There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…
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200632
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Knowing this is too long for here I won't be crushed or enraged if no one has the time to read it. Also, it's not fiction.
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