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Ten Books That Have Stuck with Me Off the Top of My Head as I Make Them Up, #2

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#2 The Typewriter Inside You by Harmon Gentle—I found this one at a garage sale when I was 15. Intended as a manual for sharpening one's typing skills, by the third chapter it became obvious that Mr. Gentle's sanity had slipped, and that rather than mastering the…

The Numerous Uses of the Middle Finger

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They’ve got sketches for The invention of the middle finger At the Museum for The Gathering Clouds of Innocence So, why not go there and get a feeling For the meaning behind everything? Okay, here’s the truth I was so busy giving people th

Valentine for a Homely Couple

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It's none of my business, where Carl puts his prick. But I know one thing; Them Bohunk women go to pot quick.

for one dedicated to artemis

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artemis is but a mincing fawn:/ no sacred bitches need i in my ranks,/ nor hunting dogs to tear a man apart/ when i have teeth enough to bruise fine flanks.

Headlines

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He brought me flowers once, three wilted carnations I put in water, though the sight of them made me uneasy. He brought me pictures once, too, of three sisters—ten, twelve, fourteen—straddling dirt bikes. He touched my shoulder once, as I edited pictures …

Dishwater Panacea

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Suds, like gossamer bandages at her wrists, concealed the turbulence below but could not relieve it.

Keeping watch

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The machines are alive but she is not. The pads keep her face from being irritated but my mind isn't so lucky."Let me GO!" she cries....at least that's what I hear. They are waiting for permission for her to go. Eager hesitation best describes the tense…

September Morning

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Helen’s mind is not on business. It’s on a pinpoint, a potential, a something so microscopic it’s more a nothing. In her center, it hums.

PHILANDERING

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He had been the innocent stooge for a young girl's selfish dreams. He vowed to be more careful. He would rather be lonely, if need be, than compromise himself with girls like that.

The Ghost

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I stroll out to the front lawn, and find myself against the sea of grass, painted daubs within the frame of a distilled rock. My ears attuned to the starlets warbling on the twisted branches of the lone tree, flock of wings that find subtlety and shine in the rapture…

Can a Hummingbird Sing?

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I'm the first child she ever knew that couldn't sing.

Let’s Make a Landscape

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Viewed correctly, nature is an inexhaustible storehouse of clichés. A successful landscape is their pleasing rearrangement.

An Interlude of Stephen Miller Thought

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If I have not heard of it it doesn't matter. My hearing is a life force.

Caterpillar on a Chalkboard

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What do you want me to tell you about this next full moon cycle that you don't already intuitively seem to have touched upon in your latest bout of almost there dreams? It too will pass? That it is a totally different unfair animal from the repellent one already…

Future Children As Rocks

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I feel like I should tell you things about strength.

A Life Lived In Outline

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He began life as we all do, an almost indeterminate blob. Ultrasound sonar plotting his outline on screen. The echo chambers of his beating heart dispelling the ectoplasmic impression of mere ghostly existence. His rudimentary …

Prawns

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The white Styrofoam box sits on the prep station. It was delivered a few hours earlier. Half awake, I don a black apron and grab a large cutting board. To keep it from slipping, I put the cutting board on a damp towel laid…

Treading Water

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I can tread water like this for months maybe longer

Paul Gauguin: Annah la Javanaise

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It's the outrage of the red monkey at her feet, And the nude thirteen-year-old woman sitting upright In the blue velvet chair, and the hints of blue at her navel, And at her lips and belly and crotch, that so upset Paris. Gauguin had his nerve

After Grief

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Within a day, she had a scummy apartment which belonged to the government. It had cockroaches, which she was not used to. They churned her stomach, repulsive little things. Not even creatures. Two brains, she'd read: one in the head, one in the ass.

MONSOON

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a beautiful cool quiet day

Anaphylaxis

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The reaction had started, the hives and respiratory swelling. Maddy huffed for air, each inhalation rattling her throat louder, more hoarse.

Hip-Hop Lit: New and Noteworthy

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Her son was doubtless the biggest wanksta that ever went to Andrew Jackson in the whole crumby history of the school.

Turtles Don't Have Hair

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“You’ll have to do better than that,” Skip says. My husband laughs. He has a high girlish chuckle when he’s truly delighted. He can sing really high like a girl, too. “All right,” I say. I leave my headband

Two poems

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I cut myself. Often. The bloodslice like thin lips parted/in prayer. life’s color drained to ashen/as the old world spins, pirouettes/like a circus dog on the back/of a galloping horse.

Bright Red Leaf

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Little scoundrel Name of leaf, No one knows He's a thief. The shadows stretch, The birds fly south, And summer's a word Of ash in the mouth When all of a sudden The colors are gone But for a red…

Pictures of Mona

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Jersey's ex-girlfriend calls him on a Saturday in the fall and asks if he'll help her find her cat. She says it ran off on her while she was taking it for a walk in the park. He thinks for a second about asking her why she was taking a cat for a walk in the first…

A Good Sized Puddle Suits the Fish Between My Ears

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Tell me everything about yourself, if I could care, I can pretend, let me pretend.

ROLLING LIKE THUNDER

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The ocean smelled like decomposed plant life and clinically despicable vagina, but I still spoke of its power and my fear of it in moonlit clichés and she still listened.

Henry Ground

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Henry Ground was a healthy and well adjusted English man who excelled at chess and folk dancing. One day, for no apparent reason, he decided to fill his guinea pig with helium. He carried the animal under the light of the stars into the shed at the bottom of his garden.…