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Beachcomber's dirge

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...clash of gulls wend upwards, disappearing into grey night's high tide recedes

everything moved in circles

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everything moved in circles like the music, the booze and the drugs

The Same

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The bus is late; the papers disappear. The china breaks, and the suit does not fit.

Dreams

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"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is…

Take You Me for a Sponge, My Lord?

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Who does that besides Kafka, Arreola, and Steven Wright?

Pirate Ship

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I was a disposable disaster at first, a thousand Light years ago. We sail the seas we're given, and Like all of you I did my best to survive , but that doesn't mean we get To survive it like you. Our course may have blown us Completely…

last light

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whisper to me

Nothing Special

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I want nothing to do with anyone, other than doing nothing with you.

The Optimism Of Despair

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He felt sick at heart, as if he'd just been told he'd been fired from a job to which he'd devoted 60 years of his professional life. And for no good reason; the profession no longer existed. It had slipped into obsolescence, like blacksmithing at the beginning of the…

Mario's Three Lives

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The plumber has three lives left or else he is already dead.

Spatter

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Splat.

Carnal Knowledge

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He says he’ll have a Bud, too. The woman taps her pencil on her pad, looks at the kid and says, “When?”

Taking a Bath with my iNuke

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Mickey Mouse mini-nukes are often placed in children's school lunch boxes for cooling sandwiches, though an accidental meltdown could cause the food to become dangerously hot in both senses of the term.

Corn Porn (Uncle Pete Goes A’ Ploughin’ with Another Consentin’ Adult)

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When the sun saw what they was doin’, it slipped behind a sexy cloud and turned a blind eye.

How Filthy the Human Mouth

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When he saw me, he jumped faster and faster, wild like something rabid.

Memory and Restoration

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How a breeze feels evaporating sweat on neck and forearms.

The Page Turner

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Her hands are swift and supple as swallows, bouncing off the keyboard in rapid-fire constellations of notes, because she's playing Bach's Concerto no.1 in D Minor, which is busy and prodigal and all over the place. She is Polina Olegovna Osetinskaya, a beautiful Russian…

Sleep and Poetry

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It’s that, really, nothing else could be Sleep and Poetry, Mr. Keats

What I Saw in Mexico

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"I wanted to see cities whose names sounded like sad sighs...Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Reynosa, Camargo..."

Not Sure If You're Actually Having Sex? I Can Help.

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When I stumbled upon evidence that the man I'd loved and trusted for 20 years had a secret girlfriend for the past 10 of those years, he tried to deny it.“We never had sex!” he told me. And I believed him. For about two minutes.“You never…

Coast to Coast

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No one knows that, while the ex-Area 51 guy delivered his rant, Art Bell left the booth for a Diet Coke.

Girl

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The tadpoles flipped on the brown mud bottom. She dipped one out and held it near, seeing it in her belly, shaping arms and feet and a small, blond head. She set it back and stood, breasts out, arms up. The ducks in the weed, eyes hard like hungry boys, waited for bread.…

Erasure

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All else is unmoved/ and relentless in its indifference.

Steps

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He deplaned Air France flight 9 from JFK to Charles de Gaulle airport at quarter past noon.

Not Good Enough

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So where does that leave me, Roscoe Loomis wondered, dismounting his silver, aluminum steed in his sweat-soaked, spandex outfit, and, clearing the saliva from his beard he walked over, checked and smiled, learning that the bike track's timing unit showed it was Roscoe's…

Giving Birth to the World

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Life's a contradiction.

Texas Weather Triptych

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I worry for the daffodils/ and there optimistic yellow bursts./ I worry for the over-eager clover,// prodigious green on crepe myrtles,/ even for the early green of nut grass.

A Story

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Like many little towns, ours has an archive. It is a catalog of everything that happens.

DMV

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When you bring information, it does not arrive.

Family Friend

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My student assistant was a comely young woman. A freckle faced blonde. She was from Ohio.