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Quitting Smack

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I figured he knew what he was doing–he was the crazy one, after all, not me–so we took turns snorting lines of equal volume.

Just Do It

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He is sitting in his bedroom trying to decide what to wear. He has an appointment at five. If he wants to make it he has to either catch the bus, which comes in about fifteen minutes, or drive in. If he wants to drive in he needs to put petrol in his car,

A Walk

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I suppose the lazy trees would have a thing or two to say about love

Excerpt (Writing With Wine)

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Damn, I joke with myself, who was the fucking idiot that bought this cheap bottle of red wine?

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 52

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In his dreamlike state the pianist turned into a preying mantis.

Public Transport

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Suicide was on his bucket list. Redeeming a lost soul was on hers. If not for the train drivers' strike they might have met.

55 words #5

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"...,beautiful, yet neutral, an oversimplistic reading of the people we meet."

The Breakable Bonds

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I signed up for functional I did not ask for this mixed bag of broken glass I have enough to swallow

Thanks for the Unsolicited Advice

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And what is it I’m supposed to do With all this unsolicited advice?

A Burst of Color

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There’s a sudden Burst of color Like the dispersal of a ghost In a light wind And now candy wrappers are Scattered all over the heavens It looks like God got lit up By the sky As we flew too c

Munchausen's By Sick Time

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I will never waste my sick time on my own sicknesses unless I am in a coma.

This is

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nothing. But it could be something. I don't know. We'd probably have to agree on at least one thing for it to turn around and face us. Then it would have to be named, set free. We could watch it fly away together. That's a portend to…

Band Names Too

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Gun Notches Working Stiffs Garlic Torch Dog Crouch Menbrain Membrane Ein Zwei Drei Fake German Soldier Wet Tissue Tissue Paper Pants Tough Stain Adam and Evil Closed Loophole Wait For It Fiscal Cliff and the Cliffhangers Repu

A Night in Saudi Arabia

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I walk through nameless streets, narrow and winding, past shops selling scarves, spices, skins.

Poetry is like baseball

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Poetry is like baseball.

Butterfly, a novel by Julie O’Yang (excerpt)

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‘So what exactly did you decide?'It was two years later that Sato-san put the question to me. The two of us had been hiding for two bloody years, moving about in the marshes along the river, living off small, skimpy meals. We couldn't turn back to our unit, because Cesaru…

Haiku for the Worried

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Real life escapes you.

Cooperman

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Unconsciously she shook her head at her own weakness in coming out to see Wayne when things were in shambles at home. Guilt had beat resolve in the cosmic game of rock paper scissors.

Lunch Business

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It's lunch in the car time at 5:30 pm The car sits next to the mattress delivery truck in hope of receiving a blanket of shade

Rhapsody in the Rain

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so many bills to pay the list keeps shedding its skin like a snake

The Second Extinction of Chocolate

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Cacao production had always been a tenuous enterprise insofar as commercial cacao tree cultivation had always been limited roughly to the land zones within twenty degrees of the equator north and south.

Un(en)titled

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Our trouble decided when the CUNY PhD student, a poet, cried out, “Racination!” during discussion of my poem.

Woman Outside Funeral Home Lighting Up

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If you ever find yourself outside a funeral home lighting up contemplating the future of the unknown, contemplate this Maybe the cigarette’s wet on your lip and you are wondering why Or in the middle of the night you are lying awake and try sa

At Last — My Dream Come True!

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Some fiftysomething woman with a small dog in her arms was waiting for him, backstage. Security hadn't succeeded in restraining her. Strange.

New Moon

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circa the early 90s, Buzz Aldrin and my father had been invited to a dinner at someone's house on Bainbridge Island and gotten lost.

What's It To You

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Oh I'm melting all right, into a foul vapor rising from a dead volcano, not even able to spit fire, but only cold old frozen rock like dribbles of putrid plasma.

Three Short Slips About Plants

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That twig looks pretty dead to me, He will never ever be a man.

Bar at East Capitol Road

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My friend, drunk, spoke to me / outside a bar where we hung out; / and his eyes were red from tiredness,

excerpt from a forthcoming novel

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I wriggled in the bed and felt the sheets soaked with perspiration. My arms were lined with tape and tubing, needles pressed in veins. I reached for the cloth again and again, and every time they stopped me. The hands that came were cold and hard, urgent

Pieces

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I was a whole man once.