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care & danger

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When Roger was small his two favorite toys were a tiny, squat doll called Care and a rubber millipede.

An Orange

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I offer you an orangeYou say you'd prefer an appleI offer you an orangeYou say, noI want an appleYou say you had a bad experienceWith eating an orangeHmm, I sayYes, but what does it matter?You say you are not eating the orangeUnder no circumstances will you everEat an…

Anticipation

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before your full lips touch mine.

The Mermaid's Revenge

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Lapping salt beads from/ my crackling, ecstatic lips.

Scared Of Paradise

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It was if you memorized my ever detail but not the why. And perhaps that is what love is. Was that love? I lie in bed waiting for the man who came after you to join me. I hear his heavy footsteps and know he wants to go to Hawaii too, when our bud

Mentors & Manatees

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The loss of my first mentor came as a harsh blow. Roaming the forest with my dog Rosie just wasn’t the same. Her heart was in the right place, but when it came to armed combat, Rosie just didn’t have the goods.

Winter Queen

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Love is

XAM, PARAGRAPH, May 22, 1998, Houston, Texas

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I wrote this paragraph (the first in a series of 14 paragraphs) shortly after Frank Sinatra had died and during my last visit to my boyfriend, M. He had not seen me write something in years.

Two

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i am two / one part me / another part them

Old Soul

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She’s an old soul who was scattered to the winds like a thousand butterflies and a moth She has no center and flits from event to event and can’t miss out on a thing, because crikey, what if she missed something important? And the m

When I'm Sixty-Four (Semantic Satiation)

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Every day is exactly the same.

It's not heavenly light, b!*&#.

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He stopped believing in God when he learned how balls worked. Spermatocytes turned into spermatids and spermatids turned into spermatozoa, the transition taking place in tiny loop de loops called the seminiferous tubules which contain at least three…

diversion

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x

As Luck Would Have It

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For fifteen years Wendy waited for Harry to leave his wife. From time to time, there’d been ultimatums, break-ups too, but they never stuck. Now Wendy’s luck was about to change. It was Tuesday, Wendy and Harry’s standing night to be together. His wif

the cold envies whom?

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cold plunges its lethal chill spade/into the dirt before cold takes the earth/to ossify it stiff with ice/the semblance of cold the semblance of death/said only to be felt this side of the grave.

at night, she comes

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My head was swimming with nicotine, the coldness of the first snow, and unfinished love thoughts.

The Night Mayweather Took It

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It is not really about boxing.

SoliTaire

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She couldn’t help but wonder what 93 year-old Sohrabjee looked for in the torn, dusty lithograph of Marilyn in Persia one of the orderlies had stuck to the wall of the corridor outside Jasmine Wing decades ago.

Serial

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He beats the girl, stabs her 22 times, rapes her, then uses his fingertips to push her orbital sockets into the back of her head before killing her. At trial, he laughs about whether or not there…

Great Rift Valley

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she shivered in the ceasefire like a virginal nude brought to life.

(The Larger Structure) is the Poem

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. . . with reference to the Compass of Discourse

lent (valentine's day challenge )

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the names / she carried (within)

Leave Off Doves

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Midway through the fall semester, an unremarkable girl in Professor Woody's Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words.

What I Did For Pho

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Once upon a time there was a Vietnamese restaurant. And then there were two, and four, and eight...

The Six-Second Rule

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The Six-Second Rule They come to the new world, but bring the old world with them – the six-second rule. When their bagel drops face down on the café floor, apparently it’s the old world six-second rule that applies, instead of our own

To Live It Again

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She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.

When I Am Dead, Let Someone Tell Him Of My Suffering

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Susie watched the record, her mouth agape just slightly, the spinning vinyl unveiling the powerful sound of a voice she'd wanted to hear her whole life.

Assiduity Three

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Everybody needs a flaw or two. It builds character.

Letter to Garrison Keillor

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Hilda Raz lost a daughter. Her son gained a persona, backed by biological components. I was impressed by his male-pattern baldness. A biological genius. And yet, I was reduced and in the elevator mentioned crying about it.

George Santos' Dream

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he dreams of limp victims stepping out of the waves/ water draining from skin and hair