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Cast Off Thy Suffering

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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

Flying Tiger

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I screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked him if he had shot down any Japanese airplanes. He grinned at me. “One,” he said.

The Loss of a Child

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I watched as the light fled from your eyes, No slowly dimming lamp,

Hat Shop Girls

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My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

hair

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A strange and unexpected shift has occurred.

The Dead in Paris, Complete

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Did we get Jihadi John?/ And the highway to Mosul?// What’s the score?

Ingrid Bergman Answers the Call

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Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.

this time it really may, quite possibly, be the end of all of this ambivilence

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her heart just nodded knowingly ....yes, dear

Cupcake Footprint

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once wedding cake under pillows. now fluffy frosting on squashed defeat

NOVEL EXCERPT: Jimmy Gollihue

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Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound, a long voice from up the mountain, and the baying of the dog pulled a keening lament from his dream of the highway.

Something Strange There Is

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Maybe God couldn’t find His bifocals, and that’s why my check for ten million hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe a stray dog in heaven ate my check. Maybe God went bankrupt like everyone else. Okay, so maybe at the end of life I’ll balance my checkbook. I do

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

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"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."

The Clock Man's Trouble

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A lowing cow cracked open the darkened room like the yawn of a gravid alien.

Half a Lotus

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An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?

Poetry: Bizarro

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I think theorems and hypotheses but all that comes out is punching and smashing frustrated hate flows where I'd prefer to know love.

Hand and Thumb

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Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.

Turtle Summer

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He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.

Woman

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When you move to the music of a woman

The Field Guide: Olivetti

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When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...

Those (Beckoning) Lights

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The understanding we made was neatly wrapped up in its own blue tissue cocoon like a neatly rolled joint and dumped unceremoniously into the forgotten past like a plate of leftover digitized lies. The lid was slammed shut. Time passes too tightly. And you …

Tattooed Hands

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A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.

How to Make an Atom Bomb While Your Wife's Away

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I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle. The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?

Double Entry [WORK-IN-PROGRESS]

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"Geez," I thought, "not only is this daredevil felon fellow my EXACT height and build — his co-conspiring gal-pal must be, too!" I exhaled what felt like a gallon’s worth of air though my nose. "This is just getting too fucking weird ..."

Paris

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the boredom inherent in living in the suburbs

Acceptance is to her a phenomenon

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You were given blame for action as experience by cause and effect now. If you take apart blame and even forgiveness is too rigid. She thinks of that purpose as to give men sexual destiny.

Specimen Subterranean: A Review

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. . . the greater length of the so-called “Montebaldi Corridor” can still be walked without the least exposure to direct sunlight as long as the traveler is not active from 9 am to 3 pm local time.

When a Bowl Hits a Tree

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You would think when a bowl hits a tree the sound would be fierce, a loud clatter as stoneware explodes on birch bark dispersing shards in daffodils and grape muscari, but the noise is gentle, a thudding clink like empty bourbon bottles rattling hollow in…

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 19

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His wings were down when he got into the truck. It was a used UPS truck we’d bought from someone in Berkeley, and we painted out the letter “S,” so that it just read “UP.”

The Way Back Home

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500 miles all the way from Omaha nine hours on the back of a flatbed truck

Bitterness: Poem

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Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…