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Gabrielle in Arrears

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You should be calling 911

The Way Back Home

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

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?

The Invisible Corpse Candle

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Her eyes stared wide with panic, her teeth chattered intermittently with impressive intensity, and with her ineffectual stabs at the air she completed the portrait of distracted mania.

Bring Me His Head

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Just bring me his head, that cerebral kiln of hot, ruddy verbiage and cadence.

Blowing Up While Fading Out

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It calmed the guilt in my heart while kids reveled, laughed, and "made time" with the neighborhood girls on that final night of freedom. No one would talk to those girls again.

Zig Zag

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Jerry tries to be funny saying, I think Charlie Brown should kick Lucy in the head when she pulls the ball away; either that or they start making out. Ewww, but they're both eight years old, Sandra says biting her lip, tying off her smile. Jerry won't focus on her…

The Yellow Butterfly

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Let whoever may read this know: I am an evil man, and I have done evil things.

The Undertaker's Son

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You would never see me the same again. You'd always be peaking at me from behind your mother's apron.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

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Rothko explored horizons,/ blurring figure and ground/ by omitting the figure.

Regarding Bill Yarrow’s Assertion that Herrick Was a Voyeur (Poor Julia: Violated, but Immortal)

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the observation, at the end, more/ important than the being there—

Peripheral Anthropomorphism and the Fall of Troy

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For Hector it was animals. Rats, dogs, fish, and quite often horses – sometimes even lions. But for Achilles, it was always dead bodies.

Neighbors

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“Hear that?” asks my wife Amy. Books in hand, we relax on our flagstone patio. A shaft of late-day sun borrows through the maples' leafy canopy and deposits a dazzling, sunlit pool on Amy's lap. …

Curtains

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She wants her mother back and all I can give her is this—over and over. She doesn't want my mouth, wants no kissing anywhere even. Just this. Like this—quiet and rough. Quiet because her stepfather is napping in the bedroom next to…

Picking

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You hear the thrum of blowflies first...

How I Spent My Summer Vacation... When I Wasn't Drinking

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This is what my summer has come to: me, out of a job, aimlessly driving around the city looking for places to write, places to read, places to occupy my time.

Out of the Loop

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Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.

What the Father Said

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At night, instead of sleep, there were new and secret pleasures. Half-awake lessons in dexterity, in the limber material of human life.

Good For The Ducks

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It's dawn. It's quiet on the pond in the Public Garden. The light is calm, the pollution is mild, and everything is still,except for the occasional cruising taxi. It's the beginning of spring-- tulips out, leaves…

Squirrel Boy, You Are My Toy

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unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.

CONFUSION

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She asks if I would like to join them.

The Death App

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The phone owner pre-writes his or her dying words! The app stores them and releases them at the moment of his death!

My Affair With Tiger

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Face it girls, you want to claw my eyes out, don’t you? Or whack me across my 36 DD’s with a golf club, am I right? Well don’t blame me if I’m young, gorgeous, full-breasted and obviously the cat’s meow.

Found Poem

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The waters rose / on the earth

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.5

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Azure became silent. She never thought of her death before, nor thought about actually fighting creatures and saving people’s lives.

Rook

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What can I say about my brother, Stroman. We are twins and we hate each other. He is an honest, brave man with scruples. He is full of bullshit. He thinks I am morally twisted. He probably has a point there, but I don’t see what that has got to do with

Don't Wash, Don't Tell

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Butch the Labradoodle sets some necessary boundaries.

Lucky Strike

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I like the smoke going in but I like it even more when it's coming out

Papa's Parrot

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He wasn’t there for the beginning or the end. In the beginning, he was still a wild thing. Nothing more than a voice in the chorus of the Dark Continent, back when it was a thing of terrible beauty and attracted people like the old man; people who breathe

The Beat of Sorrow

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See a girl like Lily sitting offstage in a wooden chair in a fourth-rate club somewhere, crying, holding on so hard to so little, and as it breaks your heart to watch; forgive me. Understand me. You can’t rescue us. We all deserve more.