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Monstrous Thing

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It's only just a poem. The good that's in us is us. There's a monstrous thing trying to get out and ruin things. To unbalance everything standing on tiptoe. To end the dance. To grab the moment and burn it down flat to the ground. They are…

Outside Thunder Pallets

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Carl’s peculiarity of toilet paper rolls is not covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act – he’s looked it up.

Dog Horse Man

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His appearance had never suggested health, but his body had once been fleshy, his skin pale and soft because he never went outside in the daytime.

The New Dark Ages

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It was only later, much later, that we would discover that the war we were fighting was a war between ourselves. Melissa and I left the machine, with Carlton lost forever inside. We abandoned the warehouse. Our backs were scalded from the heat, and the hole in the…

Morning Sounds

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Morning sounds

fake letters in reply

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I did do one nice thing for you

An Attempt at Reconciling with the Non-Existent

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dealing with an over-aged imaginary friend gone rogue

This is the Day

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"...she became aware of her cold saliva dripping slowly over her bare arm muscle,..."

Not Quite There Yet

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You're not late yet, but if you don't move now, you will be. You close the cover of your mac book, don't even finish the sentence you were working on or close down the file. What had been of the utmost importance, clutching at your…

Hush

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You think you are a perpetual motion machine, free of thermodynamic law. I’m telling you, you’re wrong.

Dig That Girl!

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Leave your dog and your dog-eared lovers at the door. I smile at the bouncer, pay my ticket, and wink at a slasher chick. She gets pumped on heavy metal gods and Kwaito

in that time

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in that time people had gone away and i waited in the inside and looked out on balconies. the ending of the dusk was coming and the details of the railings and brick, the tree branches holding purple plums, the stacked railway ties and a thousand other details became…

THE WEDDING

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I am at a wedding with a new girlfriend. The bride is her old college roommate. I don't really know anyone else here. The wedding is being held at a huge estate, located on the edge of enormous cliffs that overlook the ocean. Despite the danger of this precarious…

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

Generation Blues

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A Satire We are the Social Justice soldiers, we parrot platitudes and lies, And expect you all to worship the same things we idolise. We ignore Islamic extremism and domestic terrorism too, Because we are Cultural Relativists whose brains are up our…

Black Friday Crime Scene

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Her name was Christine and she was nailed to the cross of their lust and their greed, and their vengeance

THUNDERSNOW

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I know who done it. Them goddamn taters. I walked around the yard and started picking up pieces of the camaro, wondering if, from above, they’d laid the parts out into some kinda cult symbols or something.

The Virgin of Last Resort

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In a little dirt church at the end of the world stands the ikon of an unrecognized saint.

Fray

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Someone set a pig aflame.

How to Get Fans For Your Band (or book, start-up, app, whatever)

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You’re finally in a band that can get through a rehearsal without someone strangling someone with an amp cord over creative differences. No one’s in jail, rehab, or MIA from a multi-day booze binge. The group has laid down a few quality tracks that don’t

Little Red Riding Hood, The Woodcutter, Grandma, and The Big Bad Wolf: Their Ongoing True Story

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Grim though it be Little Red Riding Hood and The Woodcutter, with his hewing axe, eviscerate and skin the Big Bad Wolf, thus rescuing sickly Grandma. Grandma’s a bit worse for the wear after her couple of hours in Big Bad’s overstuffed stomach. But she cl

Frontiers Yugoslavia Thirty Notwithstanding

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Frontiers Yugoslavia Thirty Notwithstanding (after Tristan Tzara) Responsible badly countries,circumstances better to that, powerlessness.Women these gender-determined “pluralist” conditionSoviet as overall the Women societies little countries.Have official…

The Revenge of the Dead Music

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The wind is represented by Miss Abigail Weatherspoon, attorney at law. She wears a pink feather boa and is the spitting image of Janis Joplin as she appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967.

The Butterfly Effect

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Now it turns out, the story doesn’t begin with the butterfly lady, herself, but with her brother.

Obtaining Sophia

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My accordion's name is Sophia and she is from Italy. She was born in fairytale fashion, the way my life in Madrid can sometimes be. A great and nurturing friend gathered money from many friends in our village, to buy me an accordion for my birthday. It was…

Burned

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They called him “Albert, the Human Armadillo,” and he was. Rows of hard scales ran down the course of his chest, and he was studied and biopsied by doctor after doctor. “Psoriasis,” they said. “Or, eczema.” They prescribed ointments and oils that left him

What He Lost Round the Mountain

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The plane passes the runway, dips sharply, its shadow straight down below, too cold in the cabin, the sun hitting your arm like a machete below, it is 94, the humidity too, it has just rained for 3 days, it never rains this time of year......

The Crest

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All I wanted to do was lay in his smell, I had missed him and didn’t know it before now. He got up to urinate at one point and his absence was obscene to me.

Faces

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Three months had passed since the grease fire melted Jasmine's face.I sat beside her on the hospital bed and held her clamy hand as she trembled. "No more stir-fry," I joked. The doctor and nurse faked a chuckle. Jasmine might have, but the bandages muffled…

Appetite(s)

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Listen, I don’t want to get all teary and here I am getting all teary, but it’s not what you think. What it is is that I think about that very first time, when she comes out of the bathroom completely naked and she looks like heaven’s very best neig