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Mermaid

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While the other kids blew bubbles, Maddy clung to my neck. She didn't cry or scream, and she held on loosely, not with the death grip some kids have. For five Wednesday afternoons, Maddy wrapped her pudgy arms over my shoulders and rested her bottom on m

Examination of Faith (And the Big Bang)

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The marble, it's just there. I can't explain how it got there (or when), all I know is that everything is in that marble. By "everything," I mean every thing. Your breakfast? It's there.

The Burning Gulf

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None of us ever thought this would happen.

Ripped from the Headlines

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Their relationship had proved volatile. The husband had gone missing. The wife had gone dead.

The Madwoman Who Called on My Wedding Day

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She’d reached me after running through the directory, alphabetically. Apparently no one in the a’s or b’s or c’s before me would talk to her.

Before Going to a Party You Will Not Be Attending

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I planned to wear this shirt, / blue, black, and white stripes, / collar and pocket,

Snarket

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Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta

Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem Here?

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I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill, and … Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem here? Thank you. Sheesh! As I was saying, I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill. And I meet someone who names all his fish after people he doesn’t l

Refugees

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Four in the morning. I was awake because I'm always awake. There were little fog-halos around the streetlights.

Wildfire

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Those resting in clusters of bones, Cradled in ashes of what once were homes.

Magnificent Pigs

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I retrieved the book from the middle of the room and set it in front of her. "Look," I said. "If we open the book up again at the beginning, Charlotte's alive. She'll always be alive in the book."

Song In the American Soul - song

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Through the lonely night All the roads are breathing While somewhere on the road The American soul lies bleeding The past is all in yellow The future’s all in blue While living in the moment Has lost its rosy hue

Moon Stone

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It is late at night and you lean / over me to make sure your alarm is set.

When Not Laughing, Fortuna Only Smiles

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. . . a visitor from the preceding century would have been aghast to the point of vomiting to behold the regard with which pandas were now held almost universally.

Narrow Results

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How would we know?

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 25

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It was 6 a.m. when the phone next to the bed awakened Francesco.

Broadloom

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I have constructed this emotion with tinfoil and stilts. I wear the mask of a typewriter. I have roots in Minnesota. I have a glass hat and a junkyard monstrosity pregnant with parables.

Erasing the Modern World

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An electromagnetic pulse/ scrubbed the servers./ The clouds wisped and blew away, empty./ Markets lost what little mind they had.

The Big Game

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The vampire donated floodlights so the children could play ballgames at night. The lights came on but the dugouts remained vacant. The vampire sat alone in the bleachers. “Sometimes I am less than the sum of my parts,” he said to the sum of his parts.

TWO STEPS

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It turns out I know a thing or two about momentum. I know, I know. Like the crescendo of your bicycle wheels. Like the force the florist put on the stems the day Linda died. The way my fingers spin between planetary mass. This is how I know I’m not real

A Life of My Own - 4

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"Middle class workers and working class poor and the unemployed will soon be forming a revolutionary movement to break this stranglehold of corrupt elites."

My Worst Nightmare

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the new path

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once he had planted Lucille things changed./his emptiness rivalled the hollow grave/dug for her . . .

Otherwise Chaos

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“It’s okay” Her psychic from Santa Fe Said on the speaker phone: "live and love and create otherwise chaos"

Independent Assiduity, part one

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This is me pitching a recently completed screenplay to a film producer at lunch the other day:

The First Several Chapters of His Memoirs

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He went for long, quiet walks. These seemed to quell the seething rages swirling about him as he exhumed and reconstructed the truth of himself.

MY WAR

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In May of 1982, my daughter and I planned a trip…

The Work of Constant Rising

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The poet said, ‘I feel the fell of dark, not day.” but day it always is. Bright! Bright! the city claims its blue salutes; its stopping in mid-sentence at a name where fingers roam a stone.

If You Are Without Mercy

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"The opposite of fear is not courage but compassion."--Peter J. Gomesyou are going to die amost pitiful death from your own tearsof crushing boredom. Crying overyour self you will probablynever understand how it is asimple blue-capped flower savesthe world,…

The Train

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"You'll be alright! Just pinch your nose!"