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Like Father

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Over a decade of late nights and alcohol fueled anger, and still, sometimes some image or smell would click the panic button,

Midlife

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Even suffering all of these conditions, Louise considers herself one of the lucky ones, as she’s learned there are pills, drops, and creams for all of her problems.

No More Little Bridget

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I spend my time sitting on the back step—poison oak reddening my arm—under the eaves, waiting to escape.

Giving Birth to the World

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Life's a contradiction.

so far from home

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Its colour a spectral silver shimmered in the pale afternoon sunlight which glinted on its small red and blue insignia so far from home. The landing stage of the unmanned Viking spacecraft had broken away from the main section on schedule before starting its descent through…

line breaks

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I wish

Cabinet of Particulars

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incoming made of dust

This Story Will Break Your Heart

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The first years of her life she had been owned by a bear hunter and trained to hunt bear, a terrible turn of luck for her.

American MEOW

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No American ghosts are friendly. I hate to be the one to break the news to you, amigo. American ghosts speak in blood and smoke signals and guttural cries. American ghosts MEOW.

fork

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xxxxxx

Here, You Cry

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Once a week the kids at school got ice cream and popsicles. You didn’t, you never had ice cream money.

Wake

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At my daughter's wake Mr. Aleford, her teacher, poked out his pointy nose, sniffing my cologne. How could I be plastered with this, at a time like this? Well, dear Sir, Two reasons. One, to hide the booze. And two, because my wife and I had made feverish love that…

Borderline

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You slipped me the key

Past Forward

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Shivers of desire, bristles of knowing

The Femur

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In the desert, among mauve flowers growing feverishly in the ochre sand, a bone, completely bare. Without underwear, without a shirt, nothing. White as a small cemetery ghost, eroded with age, the weather, the vicissitudes of life. It was a femur. I put it on my desk to…

No New Clothes for the Empress

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Because I was not sure if the poet had said yearn or urine, I zoomed in on her mouth as she commanded the lectern...

Pleaser

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Yes keeps falling out of my mouth

Tyka

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I open the door...

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

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Marcel Proust had never been to a big-box store before. He was dazzled by the sheer size and scope of the store and the seeming impassivity of the shoppers. So many products, so many shelves, such strangely intriguing examples of the human condition. The people seemed…

OBLIGATORIES

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The Tertiary Stage (he probably thinks this poem is about him)

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They say his irrational outbursts and insane rantsare the results of untreated syphilis. Well, thatmakes perfect sense to me. I've always thoughtof him as a tessellated spirochete, a narcissistic chancre,festering pustule of a blistered imposthume. And whywouldn't a…

Mr. Softee is Driving Me Crazy

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It is ten days before the 2024 election.So I am right now alternating between biting my cuticles and sipping a gin martini.I'm reading Virginia Woolf out in the backyard.The neighbor is having roof shingles replaced.Banging. Banging...BANGING!It is 3:34…

Tales Told near Tsmebrovht-5

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“—but although we've catalogued instances of this on other planets, it seems never to've led to the global outbreak of psycho-phrenias and neuro-pathologies as those that plagued the Tiānxiàns!”

Travel Time

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Pain

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My pain is a black pearl hidden in a clean shell.

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Nothing is Resolved

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"I write out of a deep need within myself for beauty. A beauty that I think can only be found through the practice, through the sacrifice over time that's required."

You Pour Vodka In Your Coffee

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I wonder if she is my real mother, if I could get one of those paternity tests and find out if she’s my real mother and if the guy she told me was my father was really my father. I can’t remember him very well, just a lot of him screaming and hollering an

Pushing of Thumb

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The dry leaves, brittle in the breeze, scuttle across the yard like forgotten stories, curling and spinning in the wind, their crisp edges brushing against the earth as if they’re trying to remember something they once knew.

Passing A Kidney Stone In The Twilight Zone

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A few weeks ago I was sitting at my desk when I began feeling a sharp pain in the area of ​​my back just above the hip. I got down on the floor and lied on my side to alleviate the pain however I could. It lasted about ten minutes and slowly dissipated. Is this a kidney…

1 am some October night

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if I get electrocuted—maybe I’ll electrocute back