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Icehouse

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It was noon and cloudless when I pulled over next to the icehouse, wedged in the X formed by two dirt roads.

Sake

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I had the smallest taste. Liquid heat, gifted from lips. One long moment spent lost in her warmth. Fleeting. I should have drunk more. Would she have relented to one more sip? One final taste? “Be careful,” she…

Mississippi Burning

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“There are no inhibitions in here,” the postman shouted, gesturing at the dance floor with his Marlboro Light, the glowing tip aimed at a woman in a taut skirt. Leaning far forward, her hands nearly touching the plywood floor, she planted her feet and beg

Bringing a New Poet into Your Home

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You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w

Elevator Neighbors (from The New Yorker)

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“Do you think she paints?” “Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”

Texas

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Cleaning the dust bunnies from under our lives, Zin says she wants to move to the country, maybe someplace as big as Texas. She claims that lately she's having trouble breathing between bricks or talking to hot chestnut vendors with rubber faces. It's giving her nightmares…

Uffdah! (rise to a standing position) Oy veh! (settle to a seated position)

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Cameron Diaz

Hypnagogia

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The figure eight will fall on its side. Become infinity.

These Babies I'm Not Having

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They're haunting me with every spotting. They're convincing me they'd be the unexpected blessing. They're confusing me when I look at my already-children, taking on the shape of this one's face, that one's gestures. We've been…

Blog 9-15-11

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...my books have lots of swear words. So there's that.

Another dead chicken

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in the chicken house this morning. The second one this week. I carry the stiff hen out to the back pasture

The Vermeer of Shoes

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My flash kept going off. The museum officials are strict about such matters. Sans flash! Sans flash, Monsieur!

The Depth of the Dust

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Can anyone remember what the Great American dream was?

The Sway

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When it was sticky cool at night, he'd pull her hair up off her neck and spin it like a pinwheel. “You could be anything," he would say. “You could be a preschool teacher.” She waited for him to add, “For dragons! For wallabees! For…

Personal Trenches

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The headlines were my source of information and contact. Four Soldiers Killed in Baghdad read one. Seven Ambushed in Fallujah. I’d read them, look for his name, and maybe clip it out. It put me there; put me in touch with him.

If You Trace Even One of My Words

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with a finger I will (let you) know. If you mean even just one given look at the moon I will know that, too. If you peel off one lonely star and put that shining shell in your watch pocket for later or to skip across your sad …

Probably for the Best

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“Kids okay?” I didn’t mean anything by it–it would have been innocent small talk any other time–but he took up the suggestion.

The Horror

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It doesn’t shuffle, wrapped in cotton,/ hungering for love and tana leaves.

A short, nonsense story about colours, sounds and Big Mo

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And as he looked at the departing pink cushion in his rear-view mirror (shaped like a canoe without the paddles), the latest big question popped into his mind like a hot slice of buttered brown bread from his shiny, metallic stainless steel toaster –

Prairie Rose

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Every Friday night she gets liberated at The Haymarket Square doing a bunny hop or a do si do with ex-members of The Saint Augustine Women's Choir. She remembers how as kids, shy or awkward in dresses, their voices formed the harmony, the flight of something V-shaped…

Putin Flies!

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Rumors stranger than usual were circulating in Moskva. Naturally, they could not be confirmed, but they were making the rounds so thickly that they began spilling out of the capital. “Putin has become a superman!”

28

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The signal sets the faint young boys into motion

Water Hitting Water.

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Jenny was certain nobody saw her when she took the slinky shirt from her father's store. It was blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light as air. She balled it up in her hand. Her father owned a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks were…

The Truth About Storytelling

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irretrievably we tell ourselves stories irretrievably as beaded water slides off our skin

Crystal Tips

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by the time he's moves onto knives, she has appeared in next door's window: sliver of nut-pale belly, fingers wet with suds, nails painted bright as glitterballs.

Time

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Down in the basement, as far away from the Arizona sun As we could get, we were led by a man that loved the word Motherfucker. He said this was where we belonged. In the basement. He told us science fiction had rules: 1. Don't read anything…

Let's All Get Up And Dance To A Song That Was A Hit Before Beyonce Was Born

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Why don't we do it in a yellow submarine?

Poop

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That’s what she left behind, and I put it in my mouth and swallowed.

Tethered Lashes

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Corina's skin is a circus tent. Her red-striped peppermint scars are a reminder of Christmas and family traditions. The obedient poodles of her childhood dreams jumped through hoops of fire until they became bald and grotesque. Poor dears, now, they no longer yap. They…

Alex

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When Alex says “sorry” in that barely disguised Canadian accent, we call him an asshole.