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Papadad: a portrait

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Papadad has one good eye. The other fell out during a rant and has since been replaced by a rifle scope, which he uses to scrutinise enemies.——Papadad is an authority on everything, even topics he has not researched. He expatiates on these at the dinner table,…

Spilled Milk

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(I'd appreciate some feedback on this very weird story.) A Frosted Mini Wheat walks in to a bar...

I'll find you - A Dedication to Mathew Paust

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Matt was among those rare creatures; an ideal kind of reader ...

From The Plague Year 2020

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I went to Costco

This Story Isn't About You

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"This story isn’t about you, even if it seems as though it is."

Voices of the Dying

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raging on road and page

The Curse of Plenty

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Dinner conversation reminds me of the chatter of birds. Happy talk. Nothing real.

Raw Meat

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I took Annie to the zoo, and the tigers got out. The little tigers, that is. Cubs. Two of them. The zoo employees scurried about, peeking into nooks and crannies.

Sweet Dreams

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But tonight the circus is dark. She is free to go to her lover, to embrace, to float in the night sky.

Mad Love

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No fear of that, / he assured her,

Any poem is possible

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I wrangle word juice from the Oxford American, sighing at photographs of blues musicians with solemn lakes for eyes.

Restaurant Rondo

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Before she flushes the toilet the world is spinning.

Working Girl

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Suddenly a hand shot up on the other side of a hedge. “I’ll have one of those!” cried someone who remained invisible.

Egon Schiele In Prison

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With his hand, he sees through walls: from the street, From Schonbran park, girls go to rest in his house. They sleep off parents’ beatings. They eat.

Scuffle

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Last Christmas Eve, my Nana shot my grandfather in the foot because he wouldn't stop boning the woman up the street.  So on Christmas Eve, after Nana drank a bunch of those baby-sized Miller Hi-life beers, she went upstairs, got her pistol, and said, “I'm gonna…

Animus and Vitriol

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At some point, we will have to shoot them/ through the eyes and skull and heart

The Girl in the Storm

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There once was a girl who was lost in a storm. She wandered this way and that, this way and that, trying to find a way home. But the sky was too dark, and the rain too fierce; all the girl did was go in circles. Then, suddenly, there were arms around her

Bricks

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There are things we must not say.

Three Flash Sonnets

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Poor souls. Likely they'll be poets.

Of Cameramen and Death Squads in Tbilisi

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we share somewhat the same past he was bureau chief of ABC overseas

Why Men Compete

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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway

He Spreadeth Sharp Pointed Things upon the Mire

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My uncle looks into the bleached eye of his cat and asks "What happened to my ear?" The meerkat’s eye replies: "You had cancer. Remember? They had to cut off your ear to save you."

Dog Park

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We met an old friend and his old dog. We went off leash on the lush Buffalo grass. He and I—this old friend, I mean—talked mostly of divorce, something we shared between us.

Masturbatory

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Back when I was fifteen, Svengal, Mohammed and I used to scamper up to the roof of our sixteen story apartment building and use it as our Masturbatory. We called it that because it served as a sort of observatory where we could diligently perform our rece

Twister

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The rain pelted down, it got dark, and they couldn't see a thing. The wind roared like a thousand locomotives.

Demolition Derby

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ornery women / in tall hats, suspender dads, kids deformed with / ribbons

Last Night On Oil Street

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Tomorrow the authority smashes. Tonight we march, splash, carve letters in wet paint from room to room until steel blades bend. The letters will tilt in shadows gliding over the walls to mask our tales born of fractured wrists and the ghosts, our keepers.

Derivative

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It’s not the money. The money’s/ just a way of keeping score.

That Particular Diamond

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looking space packed right in up therelike a sun bleached kite stuck in between the several bluish colorsof the sky today has its ownamazing heartbeat. I can seeit clearly from here. Oh I can feel it reverberating for miles andmiles. If I look away it…

Mother Tongue

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And when at night you stare at dark walls and one pair of lips comes closer, whispering in perfect German Ich bin deine Mutter -