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The Bedbugs

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Cockroaches in bed was the last straw. Alicia was sure she’d swallowed one in the middle of the night . . .

MUNDO MUERTE

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Meagan rides the subway with perfect lips and deep thoughts, looking moody out the smudged window like an actress in a Sofia Coppola film.

Upon Learning the Fetus Has Fingernails

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Upon learning the fetus has fingernails, Missy texts her boyfriend: It has nails! He won’t reply because he’s just left for war, but she does it just the same.

The Arms of the Forest

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Watch me sleep. Say I'm lovely, marbled-white. Pretend my forest is other to me. Pretend I am what you have made me. The sugar-almond starlet. Your virgin. Your treasure to break into. Believe me unconscious. It is you who are the dreamer. Look how those thorny…

Missing Bananas

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He's no fruit lover.

Man

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There’s not enough time because we come back to the things we never learn and forget them.

The She-Wolf of Leningrad

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The heavyset blind woman came into the art opening without a dog or a cane.

The Judge's Wife Part 5

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—Jesus, that bastard has everyone in his pocket.

Surge Of Green

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Already past the harbinger of yellow crocus

God Works Out of A Home Office

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with binoculars neighbor reads screen text:

Desert

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On a trail, Richard and I came upon a saguaro cactus that had dried in the shape of a human figure. Its arms were lifted and its back was stooped. I said, “It looks like my mother.”

This Will Hurt

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He says the medic held a needle/said, “This will hurt,”/and pierced his lung

Credenza

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Now the house is empty of romance except a potted flowering plant from my mother for Valentine's Day. No man has set foot in my museum since I moved here. One man has set foot. The owner's brother to see about the gasket under the toilet. The Comcast installers, twice. The…

Preliminary

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After court, the three of us skipped third period, walked down to the river and huddled under the 6th Street Bridge.

Peppercorns

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Fertile bodies eye/ the space you occupy,/ impatient for disappearance.

Pitcher

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the shape only adhering

Do Not Spank the Truth

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Do not spank the truth Whatever else you do You do not ever Spank the truth If you let the truth be spanked You will be diminished And it will never let you Be finished, instead When you are dead You will dangle in the land Between

Lint Trick

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Those socks? Nope. I'd look like the joker in the commercial, the creep with the pollen issues and the triangular smile. What a genius. It's the part off-screen I can't forget, the part they left on the editing reel. She's crumbling the crackers into her soup, that dry…

The Blankey

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All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. All was confusion in the Lubrecht house. Baby Lubrecht had discovered that his favorite blankey, thought by him to have been lost, was in fact being used by his older sister, Lilly Lubrecht.…

Goatee

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"I'm in a wrestling movie!" you shouted.

Bookstore Reading, Telegraph Ave, Berkeley

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There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 5

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When the cab dropped Frank at his address at seven that evening, he noticed the lights were on in Michiko’s apartment.

Even in the Same Room

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as you are, there's a big floating arm that separates both of us from each other. Widening, like a river, it touches us together often, but still keeps us drifting apart. The banks of your new life have different weeds and flowers…

John Ruskin doing a Swan Dive

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She used her right breast. Lifted it to her chin, aimed at the can, and shoved it down as hard as she could.

The Dream Shop

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From nine at night until five in the morningthe mannequins staff the Dream Shop.Customers sleepwalk in and murmur their enquiries.Some of the patrons are very demanding.They queue outside before opening…

An Observant Man

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How much more attuned he was when surrounded by forest, consigning meaning to each tiny sound.

Important Questions

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I listen to my psychotherapy patients complain about their lives all day. Bitterly, hopelessly. I listen for little openings that offer possibilities for changing perspective and feeling weller. But my five minutes between each session, whether it includes a bathroom or…

Aesthetic Strategy

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it acquires a fine translucence

The Forefinger of Lenin

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Who puts Vaseline on the forefinger of Lenin? I want to know

Goody Two-Shoes

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She locked herself in the bathroom on our wedding night. That was my first clue that I had made a mistake.