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On Our Way

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  They met on a bus. The bus got lost. He had corn chips. She had a tuna sandwich. They shared. “This is good,” he said. “Did you make this?” …

LAST CALL: A Memoir

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We see o­nly the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material . . . when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of things…

The Master of Sleep

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The Master of Sleep had lived alone for many years, so when his daughters first moved into his house he welcomed them, seemingly glad for their company...

Trader Joe's, on a Sunday

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When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.

Me. You. Love.

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In my own case, before Ellen, of course there was someone else. She—well, she was someone who I felt as if I’d always known and always would. And I think she felt the same about me.

The King Provides

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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar

Siam

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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…

Mostly I Want to be Walking

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by myself next to just one wide-eyed moment of wild blued out ocean. You know the one I mean. I don't want to have to speak to you, or even- alone- to myself. I'd like to be left inside the poem it makes me feel without having to get up and pee every…

Red Left Hand

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"I see a child's bicycle swarmed by bees. A stolen oil painting of a helicopter...no, no, that ain't it. Wait. A high school basketball coach will hang himself from a bridge you often think about. This man, now, he's a Navajo Indian.

January 1, 2012

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I couldn’t begin to give an account of the latest days.

Summer Flip Flops

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Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy.

How the Species Began Again, I

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Tina saw a tear escape from beneath the frame of the man’s broken glasses. It followed the contour of his cheek until it quivered along his jaw line.

(5) Forgiveness

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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”

Warning: Literary Fiction: The One-Dollar Minister

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It was Warren who introduced me to this bouncer fellow named John O’Toole. Warren met O’Toole and his wife, Angelina, through the dark prison poet Eugene Forcer. Forcer and O’Toole were the best of friends until a riff erupted between them one drunken n

The Fallow Heart

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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.

Where Time is Water

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Dog time is water. Incidents bob near the surface, fall into whirlpools, sink or drift with the flow.

Coast to Coast

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No one knows that, while the ex-Area 51 guy delivered his rant, Art Bell left the booth for a Diet Coke.

Dig

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Every morning, the children dig holes for their parents. This is both necessary and beneficial: the kids need to dig and the parents have to be buried.

Pieces

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I was a whole man once.

Liebe Grüße

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Left, I see parkland and cyclists and sun. Right: picnic blankets, naked men and lunchtime assignations.

Ways in Which Looks Deceive

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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.

Hattie Hanratty Does the Previously Unthinkable

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"Hattie? What are you doing?" Bosley asked, the quaver in his voice an indication of an impending erection.

No Dirt In Common

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I feel a strange loneliness for her...I think I will go to the beach, and forgive it for its sharp sand and lack of trees.

We Talk in a Roundabout Way

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You are a boy with a birthday bike smiling like our son, standing in a photograph surrounded by other sons, who turn rocks over and over, who keep snakes in plastic bread bags, who find the bones of something wild in the woods. You smile that way still.

The Deli Worker

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This is the story of my friend, Gil

Arcana Magi Cross - c.4

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Ai did not know what to do, nor say. She did not want Manami to suffer anymore than she already has.

A Debt No Honest Man Can Pay

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I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

Lule of Raw

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A discussion at the homeless colony under the expressway overpass crossing the river:

Turtles Don't Have Hair

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“You’ll have to do better than that,” Skip says. My husband laughs. He has a high girlish chuckle when he’s truly delighted. He can sing really high like a girl, too. “All right,” I say. I leave my headband