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"Make a wish," she whispered.

Sophie's Choice

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Sophie is a cat. I tell you this upfront so as not to get you all wound up about moral angst, Nazi's or a mother's love.

The Trials

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In reenactments of the pressing to death of Giles Corey, Walter’s friends stacked pillows onto his chest while he defied his inquisitors.

Like Trial and (Also) like Error

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We sat all in a muffledlittle line up, on theconcrete lips of tomorrow'ssleepy chin, like all the world's good little children should, as the paradelimped itself slowly by, slapping itself against the young day'sexcitement like a damaged flattire, trying its…

The Shop Girl

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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

Cavafy's Double Helix

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The store was closing for good, and so I purchased a book of poems by Cavafy, that poet of ruins and tombstones, and fragments from disintegration.

The Point Of It All

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He understood that people no longer read or thought deeply about things but continued to write anyway. He understood that Einstein's theory of relativity was proved correct during the world's longest eclipse of May 29, 1919 when photos of the Hyades star cluster…

All the Pretty Boys

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Somewhere along the line he had also become a junkie, so he had a plastic bottle filled with methadone. I took a swig of that as we decided to jump in a cab and go to a dance club. It was a total shit-hole...

The Anniversary

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.... The sun tears through the windshield as if it were an six-foot wide magnifying glass and for a moment it feels to them both as if they are in a manipulated universe of fire and ice, storm and heaven, as it does when the skies crack and spread open a

Hot Dish

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Millie was a good woman, Bobby said. A good Christian woman. Well, I said, you can’t hold that against her.

Grand Fury

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At some point, Spiro thinks, everyone must look like a sniper.

I Don't Blame You

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for going forthe river and being blinded by its millionsof invisible fish, all sparklinglike pink enchanteddreams made of rosequartz and shaped like glassroses, who would? I fell for an illusionaftermy own fashion,but I could alwaysadmit mymistakes and catcha laugh out…

That Godot Guy Again - a True-Life Story

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This is what happened today.

Two poems by Raquel Chalfi in translation

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On the Shore, Tel Aviv, Winter 1974 From the Songs of Crazy Dolores

Clean

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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

Remarkable Depths of Semantic Ambiguity

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Thank you for submitting your epic poem I, I, I for consideration. While we are encouraged that you have relented from the ruthless self-endictment you affected so unconvincingly in your previous entry, Why Am I...

Fall Of The Twin Towers

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Sitting at an outside table at the Bassett Café on West Broadway, I remember, in the background always the Twin Towers behind me in the photographs from that time And the sparrows in New York, bolder than anywhere working over the scrap

Snow in the Sandias

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If there was a God he was deaf in both ears, blind in both eyes and dumb.

Trouble

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Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.

The Beatle Suite:7 Beatle Inspired Poems

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I took 7 Beatle Song Titles and Made 7 Darryl Poems Out of Them"Some musicians heal ethnic groups. Some musicians heal nations. The Beatles healed an entire planet."--Joe Queenan"There was adventure,knowingness,love,and abundant charm.From any angle,they are the…

Post-Mortem

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She threw the wine glass on the floor.

ANNIES CHASE

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Annie remembers clearly the smell of that classroom, the look and taste of it. Thirty little cruel girls, as cruel as only girls can be, sitting in rows of five.

Stealth

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A boy stalks three deer across an open field.

Bumper Repair: $129.95

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They ask about WWII and he claims no kills...

The Day After Falling in Love

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The day after falling in love, I became unmoored from everything familiar.

In the Flesh

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“Why is it so warm? Do you feel that? I think it’s...pulsing.”

My baby

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The nightmares started in the seventh month. I have always been a deep sleeper and one of the things that comes with that facility is an inability to extricate oneself from nightmares.

The Bear (April Fool's Day Challenge)

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Poor Daniel gets the ultimate trick played on him by nature when he encounters a bear for this April Fool's Day Challenge story.

Ghost

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It would wander the hallways after the 3:45 bell, after the last class, after the students had all disappeared with the homework they'd never finish, the papers they'd forget to write, after Nate the janitor pushed his broom through the endless doorways,

beepbeepbeep

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Howard needed to finish this time. As his marriage slid further down the sinkhole toward divorce, it was important to him that his affair be successful.