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Filth

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“Get ya hands outta there, ya filthy old cunt!” I look up, his distorted face hurling more abuse.

“Give me fifty words about a Beaver…”

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…Professor Wumbat begins.

Macarena Lithuania

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At dinner in Marrakech, Namid danced on the table, waving a white napkin, propelled by jetlag and poor judgment.

Feeling Marlene (from OPEN CITY Magazine Number 16)

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I got your card in the mail via my ex-wife in Saskatoon. On it you wonder where I am, if I am still writing, and if I have any stories I would send for you to look at because you think I should be published, too.

Good intentions, and all that.

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There was something in the pressure and the urgency that made her smile, and then laugh. It was like carrying heavy furniture while someone made a joke--the effectiveness of the joke seemed directly proportional to the weight of the furniture. What was it

Beverly Abbey

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Downton Abbey and The Beverly Hillbillies. They're practically the same show.

Now

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I'm looking for the perfect/passage, a safe, sound/jettison to now.

Queen Jane Redux

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The laptop has ruined the sanctity of the library. And so I get up and go see Queen Jane.

Waves of Memory

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"Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. It doesn’t mean anyone is to blame - It just is."

Once I get through this

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Once I get through this I'm going to start: daily yoga stretches; walking the dog all the way to the waterfall every morning; tossing out, unread, Saturday's ads so I don't think about going into Walmart to buy Stack-A-Shelves (assembly required). Hey, even…

ANALOG

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We’re going to talk about our future like the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40. Like there are 40 great songs this week about our future.

Skippy Goes Sailing

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I coughed a little. Some bloody fluid sloshed in the rubber tube coming from my chest. Outside my door some doctor was ranting. He was looking for the patient in the room across from mine. “She's in X-ray,” the nurse told him. “It's Friday,” he…

Cookies

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What was it about the aged and cookies? Here was another one that relished them. Sebastian's grandmother was a specialist. People on the outside thought she was a bird enthusiast. Grandma could be seen refilling the bird feeders at all hours. After the morning…

Sex on Other People's Lawns

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Miss Dolan was different in the way she wore her short, curly hair, and in the way she swung her long, well toned arms as she walked so flawlessly across the classroom.

Love Is All You Get

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"All these people," Rammstein complained, "seems all they wanna do is write about love, and sex along with it, you know? And I think it's because it's all feelgood shit; you know, your sweet baby loves you, and he or she's hot as Angie or Brad, and…

Monogamy

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cummings starts to sniff, his usual routine. He feigns aloofness while raising one wolfy leg to pee on Eliot's sneakers.

Not finding you

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Had this been a film, I’d have seen you at once. Extreme close-up: my finger on the green button that opens the door to the park. Long shot: my leaving my bike at the entrance. Slow shot: my walking down the narrow stone path.

Ode To My Hangover

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you utter fucker.

Together in Tuscany

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Here comes the bus. It’s going to Tuscany and is full of pronouns: he, she, me, you, it, them, us, we, and you again.

Secure Children

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Overheard from the back seat of car:

Friends Love

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She darted out of her shadow, deftly she maneuvers through the tables and chairs and their eyes follow her.

Canary House

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The items were not selected. The people were not forced to choose, with tears and a suffocating feeling.

Ready for Me

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‘Your writing is terrible,’ she said triumphantly, and there was silence. I wanted to say, no Tara, that’s too much, he needs this – working terrible jobs for years, forever, always feeling the discrepancy between his middle-class childhood and his hand-

Axes

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You think about the first time you saw an axe

The River Where His Lover Lay

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“He put his stuff down—sunglasses, lotion and so forth—and I noticed there’s a little notebook that he didn’t have before.‘What’s that?’” I asked, and he said ‘Nothing.’”

Like 37 Hiroshima Bombs

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Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

(melody) floating inside an f

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Like the miserable sledgehammer I am, with no adjective in place to praise your moon, you are a hole well-worn into my favorite rock. I have only been able to reinvent this wronged language, in which being moved by…

Better Spent Time

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there is a tunnel / between your skin and the ground / for kisses to crawl

The Scholiasts

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It was already 3:30 PM. Where had all the time gone? Linda looked up from her computer monitor over at Carlos, who had his face intently pointed at his. "We have to go soon," she said. "We want to avoid rush hour traffic.""Where did we put the address?" Carlos answered, not…

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbeard

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Across the placid sea/The only moving ship/ Was eyed by Blackbeard