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Brown Paper

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“Americans like beer, right?” he asks. “It’s not acceptable for a woman to buy beer.” He proffers it in a brown paper bag.

Tonight's Special

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I didn't arrive at the Wicked Spoon every night in the same mood. Some nights I would arrive under the spell of a generous emptiness, what I like to call the euphoria of futility. Not exactly a state of bliss, but a dazed detachment in which everything is so pointlessly…

February

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a big silent western sky

Drunken Terrorists Act

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They asked each other at Court-suggested AA meetings: What can Texas do but throw us in jails already packed with low-life scum?

In the Sequence of Events

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Eroica sprawled among/ the horns and violins

Ukiyo

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It’s true enough my status as honorary male has come in handy in my profession, but I never considered matters of the flesh. I feel a surge of warmth between my thighs as if a cock is dangling there, thick and florid. The sensation is oddly exciting.

In the Jukebox Light

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At first we envied Tom and Betty’s dancing. Friday nights at The Big Club, Saturdays at Mickey’s, and none of us can remember a time we saw them in the arms of another partner.

The Silken(revised version)

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tentacles of stringy rains opens up the stage antics for this common February day to the fidgety audience at hand but it appears that they just won't be able to grab on, not this time. The familiar grumpy wind with…

Lovelies on the Beach

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He doesn’t intend to lie after this. For now, he just wants to take in the sea and the quiet.

The Killer

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It don't knock you down to the goddamned ground and push your face into the mat and dare you to get back up. Just so it can knock you down again. They don't have real dreams. Dreams that make them wake up in the middle of the night. Hurting. Wanting.

LATE NIGHT WITH MANDELBROT

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On Soapography, two actresses are discussing everyone’s personal heaven, and in another room you can hear a woman who is your dead mother combing her hair in a doctor’s smock in a dream,

Strawberry Daiquiris

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A hot summer night walks into a bar and orders a drink.

taking work home with you

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the sound of ashes/ being poured in the kitchen

Aristeia

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And no one died achieving aristeia/ in this battle. We have come/ at least some little distance.

Estate

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In the kitchen they discovered the instruments. A flute under the sink tucked behind a rusted silver pipe. An oboe on the floor in the pantry. And a violin across the ice tray in the freezer, now dark. "Not ice," sister said, holding it up by the neck.

A Bear Story

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In the spring, my father would dress for class in a bear costume and chase students around campus.

Blind Jack

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The blind can be a little bit Angry now and then Trying to be independent They don’t want or need your help Usually. They’re a little like bees You have to learn to leave them alone But I remember one day when I Guided the fingers of Bli

Urgent Care

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When Carol complained about a pain in her back, Frank didn't think much about it. Her back—especially her shoulders—hurt most of the time he'd known her, almost fifteen years, from sitting in front of a computer all day. It was an old story. “But …

Strange

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Words are looking ever so strange today like a hole in space a wind in a cloud a face superimposed over a mountain

Admit Nothing

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Traveling in half-lit fluorescence, she smiles up at me, pale and strained

Express Lane

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The Guy Behind Me only had one item. And he looked too young to fully grasp Loneliness.

Round Dance

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Cold smoke from the crater Breathes on our eyelashes; The abysmal emptiness held Its breath just once.

Weeds

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on cd I make john hiatt does not smash perfectly good guitar

Mama Blues

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the stars might be the audience or they might not be if the beat sits right next to me and hugs me nasty

Hara-kiri

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unwrapping the gauze from her wrists....

If I’m honest

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We lived in a Holiday Inn trying not to be depressed that life had turned out to be so much like Eastenders, trying not to acknowledge that the thrill we’d got out of each other was the thrill of giving in to the wrong thing. We had more sex than ever b

Calluses

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My Grandma caressed my sleeping Grandfather’s feet as we sat in his hospital room after hours.

Pieces of Lou, part 1

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Camper Stacks arrived at the offices of BURN magazine on January 14, 1989 in a state of unaccustomed joy: Lou Reed was going down.

World

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Making me hate language

You Think Too Much

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This was my father's diagnosis of my perpetual misery as an adolescent. “If I thought as much as you do, I'd go crazy.” Probably true as he was an Auschwitz survivor. To him, it was important to substitute…