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It is I, Hamlet, King of the Crabs

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Ronnie comes home carrying two sacks of groceries, one including a four-pack of Virgil's root beer. This is heavy stuff. It amazes me she is able to carry these items up our steep hill, nearly a mile in distance. I watch the news on our French cable station while she…

La sfida

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You don't see the bruises ... you can't foresee the pain. It's intense, so deep and yet so volatile, in vain. He slapped my head once more while he uttered for the millionth time the same old words again: "You're a loser and you'll never win. I hate for you to be my…

Superfoods

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It doesn’t get dark for hours but Sam doesn’t know that. Mum bought extra-thick blinds for his bedroom windows.

We Are In Our Thirties Now

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For years, Nina lived in an apartment with furniture that was silver or clear or metallic, she could see her reflection in every surface. She had an enormous television that took up one entire wall of the small living room. She and Anna and Desmond, Nina's downstairs …

#30: Bye-Bye (An Excerpt-Poetry)

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This is goodbye,

In Knucklebones, This Is What We Keep

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Outreach the ostrich

An association game with the word 'guilt' (or how (not) to die inside)

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The past operates with incredible gravity. Powerful, efficient, deceptive. Thin, sleek cords sent out by it attach themselves to your back, your legs, your buttocks, the back of your head. Resist. Walk. One leg after another. Easy does it, like a baby. Do

Cat summoned for jury duty in Boston

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Cat summoned for jury duty in Boston Wayward hawk loose inside Library of Congress finally caught (God only knows what happened to the doves) Vacaville roof collapse blamed on bird droppings These are a few of my favorite things Piano mysterio

Decrucifixion

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"Isn't it time to remove the nails, and put Jesus to rest once and for all," Mary asks.

Peace be with you

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Published in Calamities Presshttp://calamitiespress.com/2014/08/24/peace-be-with-you-slippy-realism-by-joao-cerqueira/ Peace be with you Jesus returned to earth by walking down the middle of…

Intentional Households

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Bradley turns out to be a walking red flag. He approaches as I unload the U-Haul and says, "Hi, I'm Bradley. I'm not very modest so you might see me from time to time in various stages of undress." Bradley is the last man on Earth I wish to see undressed.

to You

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A glance—I dissolved completely.

Porch

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“Emerald Leaf Borers, Dutch Elm Disease and Gypsy Moths blow through here like the Plagues of Egypt,” said Rafe, sipping from his glass of Parallel 44 wine. “You'd think we'd get more than a few days of good weather for all the parasites we feed.” …

The People Who Won't Get Back to Me

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Literary agents, also editors, But most assuredly not my creditors, Someday they won’t mean jack to me— The people who won’t get back to me.

le flâneur passed by worlds

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I’m wearied with these tired Potemkin façades / these elaborate gates for alleys all blind / worn out with walking into dead ends each time.

Flicker

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His eyes were marbles floating over a void.

Valentine

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XO

Cross-stitch

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Janice’s jaw dropped when I told her how much we could get for it. “Enough to never work again and get a nice new pair of these,” I said, squeezing her tits.

thank you, for everything

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I was in life, in my dream. I was feeling around underneath your clothing. My fingers were shining in the underwater afterlife of memory, searching for those lovely nipple-sized mollusks. I lived in a land somewhere between the past and the future. Now

Juan Looking Good

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Juan’s tío, Richard, who works for the city and is the kind of Mexican who thinks he isn’t, took care of the lawyer. Juan checks himself in the mirror, didn’t know how good dressing fancy would feel.

The New World Act

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It was said that in order to decrease population— and thus poverty, crime and the growing uneducated workforce in Etherage, New World— they needed to limit, if not abolish, the Social Reform Act of 2013 that provided government assistance and aid to famil

Swimming Lessons

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He came up from under the water and looked at us. I asked, Whatcha doin' here? Then he said he was going for a swim because the water was warm. Mickey and I looked at each other. He is going for a swim because the water is warm, I told Mickey. Then his…

Kandie Contretemps

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She sat in a tall chair and there was only one time in the interview that she took her sunglasses off. She didn't really take them off, but just pulled them down for an instant with thumb and forefinger in order to look out at something going past the window. They said…

she used to be really wild. she's calmed down a lot

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I remember distinctly the first time I saw Lynda. She was not a stunning-looking girl by any stretch of the imagination. She was short, with naturally blond Swedish hair that she wore in a long ponytail that dropped down her back. It was freezing outs

Song: Three Good Hubcaps, music by Tom Casesa

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3RAM7-ciU

Again

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Their footsteps stopped suddenly, leaving them staring at one another across the bleak expanse of playground at south Los Angeles' Gompers Middle School. His uniform's white polo shirt felt too restrictive as he watched her budding solar plexus rise and f

Jack Arnfinn

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... and the train pulls up and my shadow from yesterday steps off, and I'm standing on one leg balancing just like the weather between winter and spring, I hear a siren and my heart races, I'm about to step aboard when I hear footsteps behind me and two hands cover my eyes…

Charms L.P.

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Funny, you can drink wine and eat stale crackers, but you cannot suck a simple lollipop? Where does it say that in the bible? Nowhere, that’s where.

Wheelbarrels

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What a great feeling it was, the day I first thought about and discovered how toilets work. Nearly as exciting as the day I learned wheelbarrel is actually spelled wheelbarrow.

Bucolic

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He could smell the vestiges of alcohol on his folks. They’d let him stay up till midnight to mark the new year, and his mother had sneaked him a taste of her whisky. He remembered now what she’d last said before sending him off to bed, how strange it soun