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Ivan was used to explosions, but this was high in the sky. He was on his back between tall sunflowers that grew infinitely in all directions. The blast made the flowers bow their heads. Bits of debris fell from the blue sky, some shiny, trailing fire or smoke. The boy…
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119255
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Perdita's confusing profusion of parts makes it impossible to know which way up she goes.She flutters beneath the camera's shuttered stare, …
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72854
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The candles and my brain
flame
like a torch
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and coughed its grey net over the candle lit world outside. Birds of an arrow sprang into thin air and disappeared over the hills in a quick shortness of zoom-breath-- like a stiffened branch snapping . It's cold. There're …
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The cat's on the floor fussing with the plastic bag from the liquor store. There are tiny scratches and bites on my hand. The TV is fully concerned with liquor-induced violence. "These people are thirsty." I'm the same, but my needs are met. Prohibition's over. …
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“Every word was once an animal.”--Emerson This circle has been Broken. The mother has Disappeared inside the wounds Of gunfire like an Eye drop. Who knows if Any of them left, crunched Down, whole into the…
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-- Adultery I took her out to a drive-in movie and we had sex in the back seat of my car. Then went into the concession stand to get something sweet after so much sex, and everyone was in there doing the same thing, you could tell by…
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189685
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I could love them all, your people, /
Learn their differences, speak their tongues, /
When there is no one there to hold you /
But me, my arms would be wide enough /
To hold armies of your need. Do not forget.
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141865
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They acquire him in a bar that is famous for its shipwrecks.
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132865
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Q: What's the best song to sing to your doc before cataract surgery?
A: I Only Have Eyes For You
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Come, bring your sadness
to the precipice of my body,
bury it within me like a tool
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66964
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We were going shopping, and they put me in the women’s shoe department at Macy’s so I would really have something to write about, and maybe you can imagine what happened.
Well, this one woman sits down right in the chair next to me, which I thought a
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74860
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The absence sits on the window sillIt looks like the tree growing in front of itlimbs long and crookedwretched clocktime passes like torn silkShe sits at the mirror looking past thingsHer TV blasts the newsconfront the questionCovid -19 The vaccinationTrump is…
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184074
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When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and…
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“Is truth real?”—what a time for such a question to emerge! Such an elementary question, too, a pity no one was asking it two days ago.
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In my seriousness I am not making the case that none of “this” (our contemporaneity, our historical moment) “matters”.
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There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.
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12895
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I was working on my dissertation that summer, and I took a part-time job doing psychological testing in a poor public school system. The town would send me around to different elementary schools to test their most troubled children, or, rather,…
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136565
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What a nation!
First we lost our money
Now we’ve lost our funny
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(I would cite here “corpse plumbers”, but I fear being misconstrued.)
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137065
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In your mouth is the attic studio
Where your father’s brushes lie wet with water
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71374
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As Sebald says, I grew up in the shadow of war....
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None of us in the barn knew what to do about the lowing cows. Their slowly rising complaint started off as a half-hearted protest but soon gained in volume and unsettling portent.
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Women have been mean to women since Biblical times, Sarah and Hagar vying for Abraham's loyalty, to the Archie comics with best friend rivals Betty and Veronica. Usually the conflict is over a man, but it could be merely envy or a…
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Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.
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Rowan’s arm burned and throbbed like the center of a neutron star as it went critical for minutes turned inside-out like hours. Standing in a wall, then huddled underneath the couch, she danced around the rim of consciousness, ripping at the seams of her
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I’ll take my Christmas carols neat-
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52. they hate the word hate
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