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A Visit From the Professor
Circumstance obliged me to invite professor Donovan to dinner. I doubted he knew my name, yet he accepted gratefully and arrived at my home alone the next evening. My girlfriend ate with us, after I begged her to in private, …
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A Sentence From My Novel-in-Progress, Presented Completely Out of Context III
Entire oceans would empty from her eyes some nights and she would drown without even knowing how or understanding what it was that was drowning besides a collection of limbs without meaning that she referred to as “myself,” for lack …
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Short Etymology of the Word “Blockbuster”
Report of an anonymous confessor to the episcopal court of Milano, 1503.
Sforza* was already a dead man.
I repeat: My involvement in the affair, late as it was, would have doubtless proved supernumerary to the workings of heavenly Justice. …
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A Sentence from My Novel-in-Progress, Presented Completely Out of Context II
Her father was an empty space defined by flesh.…
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A Sentence from My Novel-in-Progress, Presented Completely Out of Context
She imagines an entire life with This Hortense, of two awkward bodies bound in each other’s geographies, an un-choreographed duet beginning with blushing collisions until it peeled back into something tender and sad that they eventually understand as a certain …
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Letter of Recommendation for Stanley Stanleyson
This one student of mine
had a real tough time
figuring out the assignments
due dates
how to do them
and
where the classroom was
even though the room number
never changedI blame myself
of course
for this student’s … -
This Thing Between Us
The manatee in my hammock this morning turns away from the love seat. He observes the lane, the schoolchildren waiting under their backpacks. Does our love offend him, its radiance as we eat parfaits, my bride and I, on the …
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Just a Bowl of Soup
She made the soup and had the thought that she probably experienced the same exact amount of happiness eating a hot bowl of soup on a winter’s day as a cavewoman. She felt accomplished by the smell of the broth …
La maison la truite
2012: The Year in (a) Re(ar)view (Mirror)
December 3, 2011: We met in front of a coffee shop on Cortelyou, drove a van to Coney Island, and picked editors out of a hat in front of a boarded up building.
This is the last time I …
Read More
The Effect of the Woodpecker on Nonsense, Dear Senators
I arose and a palpable—what?—very well: tweediness, why fight it, fell over the proceedings. The men resumed their seats, the women, who had never stood, stayed their pens. The air seemed to grow clearer and yet coarser, and just then …
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The Guy I Met on the Way to the House
The guy I met on the way to the house had about four days of growth on his chin. He wasn’t the sort of man who just, you know, miraculously sprouts a beard. There were mysterious bare patches. Were I …
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Walking in the Graveyard
When I walk into the graveyard I can see a light on in the house from over the wrought iron spires of the old rusted fence. Behind me, the lights of the fried chicken hut are the same color as …
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Modern life in an old farmhouse
Lately it seem whenever I come downstairs with my newspaper and tea, down to the den I’ve fashioned from the old unfinished room, where first I laid out the carpet and then the lengths of painter’s tape around the edge …
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A Visit From the Professor
Circumstance obliged me to invite professor Donovan to dinner. I doubted he knew my name, yet he accepted gratefully and arrived at my home alone the next evening. My girlfriend ate with us, after I begged her to in private, …
A Sentence From My Novel-in-Progress, Presented Completely Out of Context III
Entire oceans would empty from her eyes some nights and she would drown without even knowing how or understanding what it was that was drowning besides a collection of limbs without meaning that she referred to as “myself,” for lack …
Short Etymology of the Word “Blockbuster”
Report of an anonymous confessor to the episcopal court of Milano, 1503.
Sforza* was already a dead man.
I repeat: My involvement in the affair, late as it was, would have doubtless proved supernumerary to the workings of heavenly Justice. …
A Sentence from My Novel-in-Progress, Presented Completely Out of Context II
Her father was an empty space defined by flesh.
A Sentence from My Novel-in-Progress, Presented Completely Out of Context
She imagines an entire life with This Hortense, of two awkward bodies bound in each other’s geographies, an un-choreographed duet beginning with blushing collisions until it peeled back into something tender and sad that they eventually understand as a certain …
Letter of Recommendation for Stanley Stanleyson
This one student of mine
had a real tough time
figuring out the assignments
due dates
how to do them
and
where the classroom was
even though the room number
never changed
I blame myself
of course
for this student’s …
This Thing Between Us
The manatee in my hammock this morning turns away from the love seat. He observes the lane, the schoolchildren waiting under their backpacks. Does our love offend him, its radiance as we eat parfaits, my bride and I, on the …
Just a Bowl of Soup
She made the soup and had the thought that she probably experienced the same exact amount of happiness eating a hot bowl of soup on a winter’s day as a cavewoman. She felt accomplished by the smell of the broth …
2012: The Year in (a) Re(ar)view (Mirror)
December 3, 2011: We met in front of a coffee shop on Cortelyou, drove a van to Coney Island, and picked editors out of a hat in front of a boarded up building.
This is the last time I …
A Very Tweedy Christmas in the Colossus’s Nasal Cavity
When the whole family gathered—when the dogs of cousins vaguely remembered one another and settled in friendly heaps under the long table around which young parents affectionately bemoaned the little ones upstairs rumbling with the horsepower of imagined engines, and …
This Morning Randy (a Romance)
Provoked, the world let loose on Randy. Fat clouds moved faster than thin ones. There were birds. Someone was sweeping almost nothing off the church steps, he cared that much about the church steps. The girl dropping a wrapper on …
The Effect of the Woodpecker on Nonsense, Dear Senators
I arose and a palpable—what?—very well: tweediness, why fight it, fell over the proceedings. The men resumed their seats, the women, who had never stood, stayed their pens. The air seemed to grow clearer and yet coarser, and just then …
Talking Trout