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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.

After Detox

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When detox-man drives away, the windows down, the radio playing on the classic rock station (The Eagles), he thinks about moving out of town.

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

Bring Me His Head

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

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?

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

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

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.

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.

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…

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…

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.

The Yellow Butterfly

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

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—

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…

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.

Squirrel Boy, You Are My Toy

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

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. …

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!

Picking

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You hear the thrum of blowflies first...

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.

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.

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

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

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

Heart

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She drew her hands out of the chest cavity and looked at the clock. ‘Time of death,’ she said.

Clouds to the Makers

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You'll be gone. I'll be gone. I'd hate to think how it was all for nothing, that all we did was stumble into a pretty big hole of our own making. The best place for a broken heart after all is in your own sweet chest. No one else…

Shadow Man

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Words are not like bricks. The neighborhood flowers from within the rituals that enframe the drinking of a macchiato in a café. Now it hovers over the page.