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The Judge's Wife Part 9

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Suddenly something clicked.

Park Bench

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Then daylight's lovely lantern/ Dressed in yellow white/ cleanness/ Danced a ballet towards/ Her majesty’s park bench/ She did! She sat on you!

Something Like the Promise of a Better Life

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Unhappiness is a necessary boon

I Want to Leave You With My Passwords

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I mean let's be real.

The Meat Lady

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After all our morals And ethics of distrust Have been ripped out And discussed There’s still the Meat Lady At the end of the day Standing around in the midst of the crowd Handing out her meat In little morsels on a toothpick Af

20th Century Anna

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Why can't you mimic your mythical counterpart? Anna Karenina? Have you never considered the tall dark stranger? The boot to the face, the fangs on the neck? Vronsky is Russian Gentry, a veritable prince and he swept that Anna off her feet in two sec

Sleeping Beauty Left on Plane

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Sleeping Beauty was left sleeping on a plane They tried to wake her but couldn’t so they locked her in for the night When she got up in the middle of the night she was completely disoriented and staggered up the aisle to the bathroom t

1975: What I Wanted

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I wanted my sister to not be in that box. I wanted my parents to laugh again. I wanted my friends to actually be my friends and not call me hurtful names behind my back. I wanted my awful cousin to have never come into my room in the middle of the night. I…

The Ghosts of History

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In this lab, where I work 40 hours a week, live the ghosts of questions asked.

Laughing, Crying

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It was Brad, for short; or so he would say. But really his name was Bradford, and he was a writer. He had almost always lived in New York. He was only half-white. His mother had run away with a black man in the sixties. Her father had told her to never come back to…

The Red Suitcase: (Conclusion)

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—You must be joking, he laughed.

Further Conversation with the Author

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“After your death is confirmed,” I assured him, “a hardcover first edition of your books, will sell for millions at auction in New York.

An Orphan of Fire

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I break your flesh and make music on the harp of your bones.

Leg and Leg and Another Leg

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The robot may be grabbing onto something so big I'm mistaking it for the countryside, or the sunset. I could just be one cog in an infinite chain of leg-attachment, stretching from the cosmos to the sub-atomic.

Quantum Quandary

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I love the notion of uncertainty-/ which seems inherent/ at the level of particles-

A List of Ways I Have Failed to Express My Love for You

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The gaudy belt buckle I got you, which would have been well-received except that you hate gaudy belt buckles.The custom t-shirt I made for you using iron-on felt letters that generously enhanced the shape of your breasts in a way unfit for public display.The wedding…

Abortion Mill

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She arranged to have an abortion at a doctor Greene’s office, who practiced out of a converted house on Solano Avenue on the north side of Berkeley. I took her there the day of the procedure. You couldn’t go to a regular hospital to have this kind of thi

The Good Sounds of Squeamish Language

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Accuracy is a prediction

All I Know About Grandfather

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There were days in my youth when, through no fault of their own, my parents could not drive me the seven mile trip to my elementary school. When I got older they bought me a bike and that proved duly adequate as conveyance. But when I was six years in age

The Yellow Room

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...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

I Made You . . . (April Fool's Day Challenge)

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You cheat with a stripper--joke I told to your wife. I didn't know that she couldn't take a goof.

Nemesis

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Kids said the boiler room was haunted. I don’t know if it was true then but it sure is now.

Cost

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I rifled through the bedside table until I found dirty magazines

Kidz Love Klezmer

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The clarinet and the accordion are brothers, I see. Big, fat men with curly, klezmer hair.

Dog Meat

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The squad comes upon two of the long-snouted dogs gnawing at the bloated carcass of a third.

A Catalogue of Ways to Die at Sea

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Quimby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, lads, there must be a thousan’ ways to die at sea! I’ve made th’ Atlantic passage a good many time; lemme recount some manners of death I’ve witnessed with mine own eyes.”

The Class of '61

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My head is nailed to yesterday.

ouroboros

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if it were a child/ it would be in first grade this year

Thunder at Midnight

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I’ve had it to here you see.

Shrine

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My tongue is clicking. I want to act out. I want an unprofessional bargain.