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What's Cool about Getting Old

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My skin tells a story of pain and labor. It’s better than a tattoo and cheaper.

Move and Pause

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On a Saturday I flew from murky air. My wings grown weak, I stole away from plundered nest, casual stings, and skillful barbs. In family's fold, I perch.

Anthropometamorphism

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I have known a head become / a callus, matriculate, stop / shaving, move to Vegas

SOME NIGHTS

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Some nights you really feel it.

A Most Uncertain Fiction

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It is equally likely that just as the rate of melt continues, the rate of melt will also continue to accelerate.

My No. 1

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I remember meeting you many years later.

The Ex-Boyfriend Checks in on Saturday Night by Cell Phone

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(originally appeared in Lit Up)http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com/poetry/rusty-barnes/Remind me never to call youagain after you get home late,for the familiar fear of the deadbolt noise,the shifty creak of your linoleum floor,the way you throw your jacket overthe sofa and…

The thing is

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It was not that he was boring – it’s just that he needed a lot of encouragement. When he came, he whispered to himself, ‘ohgodohgodohgod’ - like it was something to be ashamed of, to be sorry for. I wanted to hold him close against me but I also n

55 words #7

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Let's make a monetary enticement for writers who can revel in the magnitude of this tragedy...

The Front Window at Starbucks, NYC

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His eyes drift over the body of every woman who enters Starbucks, even though he’s old enough to be their father or grandfather, still his eyes are aware of every shape passing by, refusing to let go, and die. Maybe they’re speaking Polish or

Escape

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Can’t you do anything right?

Light, Now

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It's 100 degrees in your tower/and that braid you're so proud of/is one hot ladder to nowhere.

Suspended Heart

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The suspended heart became an oracle of sorts. Hung from a string, immersed in the kind of glass container in which tulips grow, it was located between Bath and Body Works and Kleinfelter's Jewelers at the north entrance of the mall. Someone had lost it,

Sunday Morning Series- 3: Theo Logic

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Observe the withered/ head atop the pole.

Stone Soup

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When I asked her about her husband, she laughed.

Remarkable Depths of Semantic Ambiguity

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Thank you for submitting your epic poem I, I, I for consideration. While we are encouraged that you have relented from the ruthless self-endictment you affected so unconvincingly in your previous entry, Why Am I...

Prayer for a Flash Fictioneer

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Molly was a fanatical Flash Fictioneer, devoted to her miniature art form, the bonsai of literature, the tiny tales popularly known as flash fiction. She filled an entire blog with daily entries of the stuff. She came to flash…

The Wonders of Wonder

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There it was, square in the middle of someone’s lawn: a slice of white bread, like a shirtless Englishman stretched out in the sun.

The Goldberg Variations

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Sorry Glenn Gould, I said, but our princess is in another castle. After that, Glenn and I went to an all night diner and ate scrambled eggs.

Vacation

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I imagine you in the States, pushing stacks of work papers and our memories to the side, sense your enjoyment that you won’t see the worry of your behavior reflected in my eyes again. That you can buy and bang and be whomever you want,

I'll be Home for Christmas - 2

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Warning: contains sexually suggestive comments.

Duluth Harbor

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"And yet she always went on writing, even when nobody cared if she did or not: if she stopped, she told an imaginary prosecutor in her diary, 'I will not have earned death.' "

Elsewhere

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when the surface of a photograph gets like this that it has gone blind

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

T.S. Eliot On His Deathbed

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I guess at the end you’re only looking forward. Or upward actually, since you can only lie there on your back looking upward, straight ahead toward infinity, your mouth in a grimace, with the ghostly pink lips peeled back from the teeth.

Past Forward

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Shivers of desire, bristles of knowing

By Saturday, We'd Be Singing

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My uncle lived part-time in prison, in a cell with a blanket, pillow, and towel. The remainder of his days he lived in a small house on Prospect Street.

Her Dream Princes

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They live a simple life..two solitudes by lamplight.

Air Conditioning Bill

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The last night, I shivered in bed until three a.m., the blankets wouldn’t work, or the socks, or my tears, but I reassured my heart that my next love would be warmer. 
He was. 
And our air conditioning bill was so high we could’t afford it.

Grunion Fishing

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As spilled on a sandy Corona del Mar beach/both in moonlight and starlight so lovely/and strangely sad as if receding still