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Sand Dollars

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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.

Finger Lost Finger Found

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Little Roy Farrell'd taken a bite of his fourth grade teacher's ear as she bent close to help him sound out the word “grace.” Doc Felter had sewn most of teacher's ear back on, but by seventh grade Roy still couldn't read and never understood that he'd in

Model Home

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In the living room of a model home, Mr. Jorgensen lived. He was a mannequin. He spent his days in display windows. He spent his commutes displaying the latest model cars.

Ukai

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If it weren't for the different lengths of dock, I would think the river just goes past me. Maybe it does, and the banks move too. Orderly where the clouds are random. I have cormorants, passengers, and salmon. They catch each other. They make my crew money. When did my…

When The Sun Goes Down

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Though his heart aches his melody seems to flow It creeps into the dreams of all in slumber in the valley below

34

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The space they are in is years long.

The Impending Fall Of Space Junk

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The world is always changing, even if it's in several eras at once.

My Smelly Valentine

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He asked me if I was going to buy Valentine's for the office this year, and I shook my head. We were in the dollar store, February 13, and I could get a box of twenty kids' Valentines with last year's favourite cartoon…

Paddy Wagon

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So many are so sick.

Forever and a Day

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Just an abnormal visit to the post office.

Squishy

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Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...

Groceries

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Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He's been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he's never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a…

Calenture

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CALENTURE The horizon is marked with the still sculptures of dead gulls; A young man floats off slowly on the…

Pigs Fly

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You are rounded just the way the mountain is, out the window. The sun sets on both of you now. Three of you, I should say: the mountain, and you, and little Frank, who is currently batting my ear because he doesn't want to be named Frank but it's for your dead father,…

Life at the Red Diaper Baby Factory

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Von Meckel had us all go out and paint this huge red square around the Red Diaper Baby factory. Then he held a big naming rally, at noon, during our lunch break. We weren’t allowed to eat our sandwiches. There was all this pomp and circumstance. We were

Palinode for a Love That Failed

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Palinode: A poem written to retract something said in a prior poem.

Breaking Eyes

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-No, just drugged, I remind myself. The hallucinations are more real, more accurate than before. While the dreams get more nightmarish, the hallucinations get more nostalgic. I prefer the nightmares. No one knows if this treatment will work, but what bett

"Not like a duck"

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with its head cut off

Sea of Tranquility

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We weren't sleeping much, either one of us. We went through the ritual, Pat and I. I brushed and flossed and got into bed and read while Pat took her contacts out and applied a…

April, Thirteen

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There is a roofer straddling part of our house, pushing shingles off of our roof with the edge of a shovel. …. I've thought seriously, at times, about becoming a nurse. Seeing your mother in a hospital bed, hooked up to a tube, more than one, too…

Sit Down, Here.

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“The window is a much better place to read,” she said.I wasn't aware she was talking to me, at first. In my typical manner, I was thinking about far off possibilities and realities completely detached from my own. Yet, here she was, a far off…

Please Blow Me.

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[TURN-ONS: willingness. TURN-OFFS: rejection.]

Slave to the Rhinestone

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He introduced himself as Jimmy Stamps and shook my hand with the confidence of a man who is Microsoft Windows certified. Reeking of vodka and Swisher Sweets he proceeded to expatiate on the virtues of X

Searching for the Word

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I separate my thoughts into two / camps

3.8 in Chicago

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A 3.8 magnatude earthquake ravages Chicago suburbs.

La insistencia de Jürgen Fauth

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¿Qué habrá sucedido durante la invisible noche que se abre tras el sueño, esa Narnia en porciones individuales, para que el día se haya bestido, y con urgencia, de ira?Como si tubiera las manos bañadas en resina, intento limpiarme los ojos a zarpazos del filtro que…

Flooding the Memory River

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His movements were slowed by the metaphysical force of his own passing recollections, and he brushed from his face the silt he'd distrurbed on this forced descent.

Catching Forks

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Last night Jim taught me how to catch forks. Meaning, he taught me how to throw them. But he called it catching forks. It was late, and we were low down 3rd street, south of the Bay Bridge, the baseball stadium, all the people and cars, on top of a warehouse. There were a…

The Scavenger

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I am a scavenger. I sit on the telephone wire, a ravenous vulture watching a man and a woman arguing across the street. The clouds remind me of ashy marshmallows I found in a fire pit yesterday. The woman starts violently shoving the man; he stumbles…

Blind

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a dim wood-paneled stair leading to the ladies’ rooms, candle-lit.