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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…

Alteration

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I was seeking nothing more than this: to have my suit altered.

A Journal of the Plague Year: Day 289: Valedictory for a Clown

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the end of this journal

Stories Around People

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Stories Around People An Event Facebook lived in midtown, for there the people and windows shone like water. Though it would board the bus—1 day—and ride to the sea, where people said words like sea and where the city shone in the waves…

Some People

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But those burning red numbers persist in my mind and I can't rest 'till they're gone They always come back Like the cat in that childhood song.

American Triptych

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It’s always fun and easy/ to punish the poor

How To Train Mules

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“Mules don’t like to dive, Esther.” “I said maybe, Hugh. Maybe.”

Deep June Pool

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I may be the shadow that I am, but I only ever loved you.

The Sadness of Thrift Shops

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They couldn’t have done it better if they’d waved guns around in the air.

Signs

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The monkey did not live for long. He’d lost interest in the stuffed dog pretty much right away. The farther away the shuttle, the more garbled and fanciful the sign language the monkey had been taught became.

Summertime

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I am so happy to see winter almost gone

Granny Medicine

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Antibiotic ointment didn't help. Maybe Granny medicine would.

Nothing Ever Stays Looking

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The same, some things you Can't explain, most trees Have felt it go bone dry at the roots before. I've learned to let love Go bye bye. You think they don't Want to answer your pathetic knocks, But they're…

The Writing Class

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I ask if anyone has a poem or a story they would like to read. Everybody's hand shoots up.

Burn

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No one believed me when I told them this: I took all of my novels and tossed them into the fire.

Rose Gold

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He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…

Walking On Air

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Nik Wallenda was going to walk a wire stretched from Sarasota Bay across US 41 to a condo on Gulf Stream Drive.

Sunday Cookout

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She thrust her proboscis through seven layers of dermis and began to suck, filling her belly with his Welbutrin and Xanax infused blood.

Gone to Seed

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The careful paths of larger versions gave me enough time to think, to sense their fears from pauses between footsteps, and prepare those minutes, hours, weeks before they decomposed into my whole.