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The Art of Removing a Wedding Band

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If I was going to liberate myself from my marriage to Rosie, the first step ought to be to liberate myself from my wedding band. That wasn't going to be easy. Along with the more prominent rolls of fat I'd been accumulating, my ring finger now bulged over the upper…

Because

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He spoke the "Why" and it stuck out its tail. He tripped and fell with his face wedged between the W. She kept the answer in her chest so the words wouldn't crowd him where he lay. The "Why" found its way back into his cheeks and puffed his face out like a disease. He…

Induce Me

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Life's a beach? A bitch? Same thing.

Sticking My Head Out of the Car Window

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Standing on the beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, before the storm. It is easy to understand why dogs like sticking their head out of the car window. Standing on my favorite part of the beach, merely feet from the beach house. The house you weren't…

The Perfect Day

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Robbie Lange closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. Yawning, he looked out the window into the black night. Another evening at the office, he thought. He counted the other lit windows in the skyscrapers around his building. “Goodnight, everyone

Darkroom Tech

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Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.

Hygga

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Hygga was on the French news tonight. Hygga is big in France. And Scandinavia, of course. I'd never heard of it. Hygga comes from a Danish word meaning “to give courage, comfort, joy.” It stems from hyggia, which means to think in Old Norse, and is related to…

The Taming

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N-n-never screamscold a cat.

Conviction

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“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”

A Rare Meteor Shower

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Now, as we sat on lawn chairs / on the balcony to watch the meteor shower

Rule of exchange

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She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.

Horny

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"I accept it," Leo said in a low voice. "I accept it all. I know who I am, I know who you are, I might even know who Martin is, now. We all have to share this. I think I will forgive you, because I can'

Alexander Hutchison said..

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.

Sunday Morning in the ER

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We do the work of fixing people like him?

a mouth in motion tends to stay in motion

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I remember a big Walgreen’s Drug store (maybe in Elmhurst, or Oakbrook Center?) and this shopping expedition we went on. That’s where you bought your first Dust Buster, I believe (or was this another man?) Anyway, you made me carry everything. We didn’t

Equality

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J., W., and W.’s girlfriend were exploring the nature and mores of homosexual conduct by discussing whether W. would be willing to suck J.’s cock.

Kittens and the Hands of God

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As the breeze slowly died, another breeze brought her back up, one breeze after another like the hands of God carrying her through the sky.

Curb Appeal

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He kept the lawn mowed at the perfect height. He mowed it twice a week to one inch. Some weeks he mowed it a third time for good measure.

From 'Upwards, into the White Eye Rising (Section 3)'

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A fractured world we haunt: the streets, the schoolyards- Across the floodlit roads, where we shared drunk adonics: No marbled halls but towers that stole the stars' eyes- Flat-roofed serrations against…

Thursday

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I will die in Paris on a rainy day.

Freeway Deaths Attributed to Talk Radio

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"I was just coming home from work listening to Consumer Dave," said Murrietta resident Mick Baylor, through his attorney, "when my eyelids started getting droopy. And he was just talking about how Circuit City was going out of business and I was. . .well,

An Argonaut Ethos

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My daddy made all these gold records on the walls, died, and left me to run BadSmack Media, even if I could only manage to run it aground.

Steady Keel

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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…

Research Notes - Single Stroke Seven

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It is within my nature, and many others I know, to cling to what’s consistent and certain: the battles fought in the war for survival and the organic camaraderie borne in the trenches. Sometimes the quest and the people we commiserate with along the way

Hungry

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D'ya have to be so rough?

Nancy's Brother

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Nancy's brother, Ronnie would wait until church was out and pull the bench up to the piano play and sing show tunes, even humming them loudly if he didn't remember the lyric. Crooning away — as if he had the lead in a Broadway musical. Well, that was part of it,…

Swan Song of the Pareto Optimalists

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I nearly burst out laughing when I heard myself telling him in my accented English that she’d confided in me that she was preparing to sacrifice herself as part of an elaborate snuff film produced by a band of psychotic artists hell-bent on making up for

Cholo

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There was that time he decided to avoid the whole situation by getting off the bus early.

Shovelling shit.

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“Whatcha doin'?” “Moving this shit.” “Why?” “Well, I can’t leave it here!”

walks from to walks to

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hands slide into gloves unseen / eyes disappear behind glass / the crank turns the flywheel spins: / every octave has droppt low / sub-sonic shudders within—