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Four Stories Held Thinly Together With Rage

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I. Happy Ending? Why Not! My wife and I got divorced and my little dog died and I decided I'd had enough of Seattle, so I hopped a boat to Belize, and soaked up the sun and gained back some weight and, by God, I got happy again. And I met this cool…

Another Dream

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“I fly in my dreams,” his mother said. “It's my privilege.”

How to Travel with your Demons (1)

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Someone's shaking powdered sugar on the tree limbs. Someone's turned out the lights. It's a beautiful morning.

Spring Fever

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It was spring. All the villagers had gone mad. Every single one had become an unreliable narrator and no one had any idea what the truth actually was. Leonard decided it was best to lock himself in the house and order clothes,…

Members of the Story

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Pinesatz is standing again. He and Marie seem unaware of time, unaware that Louane is watching them, unaware of waiting for Wendy with the car. Every glance is a hook. Every gleam is a glance. Every stanza is a room. She vies for it.

Three Small Ekphrastic Objects

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Agamemnon and Menelaus were/ complete creeps. Achilles was// a pompous piece of shit.

Van Gogh's Peach Tree

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There is a boy. The boy is standing in front of a munificent peach tree in all the splendor and atrophy of his afternoon existing. Shadows? Yes. There are midday shadows, hiding and seeking, long and greyish to offset the bright reds and violets and orang

Mr. Kunitz, Mr. Lowell, Mrs. Craig

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Although I think we can easily work it out because we are not here in the Yale graduate school, and diction is the theme of the story. Diction is a choice in language.

Clocks

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His hands are old But still function As hands

Male Pattern Invocation

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in the much more terrorizing display/ of male pattern stupidity// as seen so often on TV/ in the House and at Fox News.

Party w/Your Parents' Siblings

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Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .

Reckonings

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Even in the fading light, it looked big enough to disembowel a man.

Biography of a Splotch in a Parking Lot

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She hadn’t died. She wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t even invisible. She just wasn’t see-able.

On Global Warming

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You think I don't know, that's your whole stupid problem. You don't believe in anyone. You must enjoy living in a dark lonely universe. I don't know if you know or not about the lights that live in your own head, but I believe …

17 Things More Important to Americans than Poems, Poets and Poetics:

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Today’s new YouTube kitten;

Same Trailer, Different Park

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Suddenly everything is delaminating People are popping right off the surface of humanity I am coming loose from my previous lives

Imitation of Life

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The watermelon slices were painted wood, because they held their shape better in the heat. The photo was done night-for-day with bright spotlights to make for sharper outlines than natural light could provide. In actuality, it is all shadows.

Measures

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Blending in at a rock concert in ballet flats was harder than I thought it would be. The heavy eye makeup and lit cigarette I never brought to my lips put me somewhere between “Trying Too Hard” and “Bless Her Heart.”

Wake

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At my daughter's wake Mr. Aleford, her teacher, poked out his pointy nose, sniffing my cologne. How could I be plastered with this, at a time like this? Well, dear Sir, Two reasons. One, to hide the booze. And two, because my wife and I had made feverish love that…

Kafka, Smashed

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perhaps I am only being transported not for replacement but for repair

Virgo

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I said he was cold. I said I like cold.

Hearing the Usual Reports

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In its own defense against what is too concrete the mind allows a magical thought--

Skunks

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I tell people that we leave out food for the creatures to appease the skunk gods.

Purple Lady, Lavender Afternoon

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—Pretty tulips, said the woman.

Curves

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and the smiles light the way when the wind blows the darkness

A Fib

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We want our lives even-cut, …

The Farmer's Sons

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..

Borderline

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You slipped me the key

Freedom

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She tossed the big bird into the air. It wobbled, then flew away.

The Boys

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The Boys The Boys, they call my brothers in the neighborhood, or Those Boys. The Taylor Boys. Sometimes, Mom calls them Thing One and Thing Two, like in The Cat in the Hat. Those bad boys. Nobody has brothers like my brothers, kicked off the school bus, barred…