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  • Thursday’s Clarity

    Thursday’s Clarity

    Good morning, Thursday. The week is nearly over. January is already in full swing—by next week, we’ll be halfway through the month. I went to the eye doctor yesterday. Doctor M has been my optometrist for over twelve years now. It’s a comfort, walking in and not having to introduce yourself all over again. She…

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  • Broken

    Broken

    A broken clock is correct twice a day. It strikes true.Its hands remain motionless.Gears, sprockets, jewels, springs—all frozen. You and me?Two pictures. The clock keeps timethe same way you and I do— twice a day,working,doing time.

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  • Gardens

    Gardens

    Fifty words hardly seems a story. At 57 I’m over by seven,trying to write an endingappropriate to the characters. This life made moviewhere happily ever afteris six feet below dirt— fodder for red roses to bloomwith thorns that cut deep enoughto match.

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  • The Chirp

    The Chirp

    Hey Dad!Her tiny voice—a small, blue birdat the nest’s edge.She’d remembered her way home,but her mom wasn’t there,and I hadn’t set footthere in years. Hey sweet pea, great to hear your voice.How’s work, your new place, your husband?It sounded strange—my own words,a slow fall from grace. Chirp, chirp, she went on,a new song I’d never…

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  • Feat

    Feat

    I don’t trust white feet. If they haven’t seen the sun,how could they ever walk in my shoes?Or pretend to. Feet in robes?Think flip-flops—hardly up to the task,if you ask me. Blindfolded,they go where they’re told,peeking only at day’s end,no longer pretendingthey don’t smell,or that they’re a size smaller, larger,girl, boy. Brown, cracked,leather stretched over…

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  • 50 word Christmas

    The 26 was Friday. Nothing stirred, not a mouse. Discarded paper piled around rum cake crumbs he’d eaten. New year celebration come early. Drunk, he wasn’t sure on what but it helped. Alone, he swallowed truth; there was always next year. Too far away, an April fool.

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  • Lead

    Lead

    “Heather died.” Those were the first words out of his mouth. I’d picked up Don’s call on the fourth ring with a cheerful, “Hey Don, what’s up?” His voice collapsed on her name. I remembered how it felt when my old man passed—how I’d scrolled through a Rolodex of forty names, hoping maybe some of…

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  • Kind of Blue in Pasadena

    Kind of Blue in Pasadena

    …Texas. Miles came on smooth,took the wrinkle outof speakers too tinnyfor his magic. The skyline could have been Tokyo,Manhattan, Paris,but it wasn’t—it was Pasadena. I settled for a Pasadena somewhere in Texas,not even California,sandwiched at Jake’s Baron a Taco Tuesday,35 floors of heat abovea mixed-use zoning fiasco,where business sucks bad enoughthey serve two-dollar fish tacos.…

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  • Couches Are the Things of Feathers

    There’s this L-shaped couch—sleeps four if you’ve run out of bedsand won’t surrender to the floor. The seller called it gold.I see beige.It belonged to someone with money—new tech, or maybe just old. It was meant for the curb last Friday,but saved three days later. Now I sit and wonderwhat asses have rested here,what secrets…

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  • Cigarettes after Sex

    Cigarettes after Sex

    The Chapter or: How Pat Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Algorithm It was immediate. It was what was needed. It was a point in a pointillism canvas of a prosaic mosaic rendering of the new times. Pat rushed to get thoughts down in the early hours of the morning. The start was journaling…

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