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Argoyle

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He extended his bent arm to its full length with a crack, straightened his hunched body and tried, and failed, to close his lips over his frightening grimace. Stone lips are not pliable.

From This Distance

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Can you remember how we could each disappear completely. . . .

In Small Packages

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Linus had it right with the security blanket he held like a beloved pet swan. Geneva had it all wrong with a pastel-colored music box, painted with impressionist-styled daisies and tied up in gold-ribbed pink bow. But it had come from her grandmother. Her

The girl laughing in the dictionary.

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Trigger Warning.

February 1964

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New York, New York The winter drizzle left the streets shiny like in movies and this night Manhattan looked like it should look, vibrant, clean and sparkling. It was…

Someday, Somewhere, waiting for me.

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Out in the open air, the sun's rays washing over the dead, open fields, Nick lay, his back against the wall of the train platform, eyes facing the sky, hands outstretched to the…

55 Words #1

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I would roll my eyes, give one word replies or a smiley face.

The Budweiser Sign and the Ghosts of Saturday Night

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It waited and witnessed the seasons complete a grouping and form a year. Then it watched them do it again. Winter, spring, summer, fall. It watched from the inside of course. But it could see. Big sliding glass doors and long and wide windows stayed the course also, way…

Noche de las Ranas

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He pushed aside the netting and trained the flashlight on the dripping courtyard. Rivers ran off the wide pinanona leaves, surged through fissures in the crumbling wall.

Obituary

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I won't fail at this like trying to fix a leaking sink without mud grease or washers tinier than Cheerios.

Personal Hell - I'm Not Scared, Just Disappointed

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Satan is a wide-eyed Pollyanna mime who communicates with a ventriloquist dummy that corrects my grammar, speaks in internet acronyms, tells me that I’d be a lot prettier if I just smiled more and lost fifteen pounds, and nags me about how all my problems

Miss Zoldac's Fifth Grade Class Balloon Launch

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INSTRUCTIONS: To all students, please address your index card: "To the Finder of this Balloon." Beneath that, write something that will encourage the finder to email you back. Then tape the index card to your balloon's string.Happy Ballooning! To the Finder…

Rocky 4

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Rocky looked iron-built, tall and lean, not round like April. Russian lawn ornament, I said, mistaking the thought as mine.

The small of her back

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Resurrection

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Rudely awakened, confused and bewildered, he stood stone silent and watched me flee. I barely managed to keep my wits together, didn't and couldn't pretend that I wasn't running out of his bedroom as if my life depended on it. He wouldn't call me a cab,

In the Woods II

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The neighbor was a little woman...

Peter's Office

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This is Peter’s office. The room is small, and the wood paneling is painted white. Light colors, Peter has been told, make a room appear larger.

Event Particle (9)

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leaves, starlings and other words fall into thickets of orange or green grasses or tendrils or snakes

i can't have

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Hey there little hippie girl, smilin’ to the ears and dripping with scarves, I cherish our friendship. However, every time you take off your shoes to dance at a rock show, hair swingin’ like silk vines in the paradise that is your shaking ass...

Halfsies

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You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.

Numberplate

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After she died, clearing out her safe deposit box at the local bank, I found more numberplates.

Sonnet I

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Much as the cockerel crows the break of day/ So, too, has our love similar herald,

Another Irresolute Essay on Lit and Crit

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. . . we agree that formal standards for identifying literary merit exist and are capable of being discerned, not merely of being ascribed. —but is this itself true?

Roy and Ray

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Roy Carver owned a big tire retreading outfit over on the Mississippi.

exile on and off the road

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had I gotten home without knowing it? well . . .

two love tankas

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December scent rains coming down sodden leaves underfoot

gravelortian part 22

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This grey is going to kill me

Crossed Out.

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Follow me around a bit. Let me walk you through the rooms, structures, and clouds of my being that reveal junk drawers of "collectibles."

Nathaniel

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sometimes i have to be in the other room just so i can breathe easy away from you.

September 26, 2016

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whatever weaknesses you displayed// as empathetic human fellow traveler,/ your command of English survives you,// on into the last echoes of the human/ once we’re gone.