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San Francisco

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A dead whale drifts.

SHOPPERS MAKE ME NAUSEOUS

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A meaningful conversation Subdued the huge Toys “R” Us question mark Standing sun-bleached and sprinkler-dirtied In our flowerbed On the patio Explode your fanny pack, A clinking most dangerous The Mysterious: Its …

Five Million Yen: Chapter 46

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This artist has a wonderful sense of line and color. Abstract is not my métier, but I appreciate the art behind this painting. It helps to copy it. You sleep with it for a time and, like a woman, you learn her passions and taboos.

gravelortian part 12

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He said I was doing it all wrong Opened up his ghastly mouth

Trust Walk

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They were two girls walking home from school.

Six or Eight Legs

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I killed it. Didn't even relocate it back to its outdoor home, as I had work to do. This is being human.

The Sound Invisible

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“Behold!” cried the Lord, on a late September morning,

The Legacy

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The old man had always known things, was feared and revered up and down the valley for knowing things. I’d heard the stories since the day I was born.

I Beat Myself at Chess (revised)

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There we sat, myself and I, at a small folding table in the middle of the lab beside the main, l-shaped workbench. The lab was empty - always was - except for the two of us.

How We Fight

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HORDES OF MEN desolated, struck down, destroyed, sunken form of skin and skeleton, bare cloth matted to torso, bodycage and hipbone, face and neck darkened, bloating to black, rain the endless dream stuck fast in the stone-dead skull and blood a fine sheen over all,…

Postcards from a Private Park

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First movement I. The town that I…

Gateway to the Continent

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I got to Victoria station at quarter to eleven on a Friday with nothing but a small leather bag and the vague idea of getting out of London.

(girls in their summer dresses)

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The life, the burning up that works up our loveliness, hot under the surface that is tempted to show forth its parts after being confined, enclosed, shut in. Beautiful honey-water sliding out of long bleak skies, after all the howling of our legendary you

We'll Always Have Paris

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“Tonight’s news begins with a Stone’s Throw exclusive. Intimate friends of hotel heiress Paris Hilton have confided that the talent-starved celebrity has agreed to marry Quaker Bob, longtime spokesperson and package icon for Quaker Oats cereal.

An Advent Cookie's Rumination

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The sugar cookie sits on the cold counter. Alone. He is cut in the shape of an angel, a fact which often causes him to contemplate the possibility that he may not be a cookie at all, but an angel. Who says he couldn’t be?

Moi et Stendhal's Lust for Women's Eyebrows

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“Oh yeah?" I said to Stendhal. "I found six references to women's eyebrows in Travels in the South of France. That's all you think about!”

My Name is William Hurt and I Am a Movie Star

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Not to sound too ridiculous, but Hurt was giving me the hurt, and it felt good.

Mother

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He stood in the doorway of his mother's house. The doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen. Out of habit, he picked at the wallpaper. He had done this for years as a kid. Anytime a corner pulled up, he started tugging. Just a…

Behold the New Day That Allows the Rabbit Hole to Disappear

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For hours and hours she swirled, and swirled some more. She was trying to be there for everyone, yet no one realized how much pain they were causing her. Some of them had thrown invisible darts of anger all day, and she had endured each one, because she c

The Gravediggers

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The night before we dug John Clark's grave, my brother and I stood outside his windows and got an eyeful. Rose, his wife, should have closed the blinds. There she was in the arms of Willard, her neighbor, middle school science teacher. It was a serious…

7 or 8 Things I Know About Him - A Stolen Biography

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Wonderful When his mother was a little girl, her father would braid her hair until it was exactly right. When she asked him how it looked, he always said,…

Archaeology

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I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…

Fumes

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He was choking on the fumes.

Trio of Found Poems

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Paper Bird, Devotchka, TV On The Radio

What It Is Like

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They read poetry to each other. They met at the local drugstore, after he spotted Tropic of Cancer jutting from her bag. He asked her if she’s finished it. “Nothing like Fifty Shades of Grey,” he said. They laughed. He said: “Come to our book club later.

Ballad of Vengeance and Violence

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Two weeks later, on his way to a neighbor boy's house, Tim sees Tony on his way to the nearby convenience store.

~the scent of dead roses~

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i killed a poetic boy yesterday. the old ladies in theshadows swore at him when he was walking home proud ashell with a new pocketknife. they told him we dienext week so laugh like you got limes for balls. hecalled them drippy old vultures in his native tongue.they didn't…

Old Friends Getting Older

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I just amuse myself by buying old guns and refurbishing them in my basement as I listen to old Bohemian polkas on cassettes.

The Sinking Boat of Evolution

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Living dangerously, I left my house with no glasses, no umbrella. I also forgot my straw hat, no purple dye for my gray hair, my map of the world to come,

Lost Boy - Excerpt from Single Stroke Seven

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“How long you been waiting around?” he asks as he pockets my soggy ten-dollar bill. “For a jump or break in life?” I ask. He smirks. “I hear that.”