1818 2 1
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Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole
where electric, shoeless uncles
allocate their copper goulashes
to catch white dripwater.
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181897
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1The Bird King has fallen in lovewith a radiator.He adoresher pockmarked skin,her neurotic arias,her coldness,her impulsive warmth. 2Tiring of his dalliance with the radiator,the Bird King woos an armchair.She's amply upholsteredand groans dreamilywhen he sits on…
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181852
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Jimmy wore a tie to top that torn green tee he toted every day, every other. He smelled of dirt, said he had a feeling we had watermelon somewhere since he caught a whiff from his room inside his house across the street.
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181820
|
What the heck to believe in??
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1818129
|
Wake up! But it was already too late for Charles.
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18171815
|
We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.
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181775
|
Every time I squished an ant with my finger, I felt a piece of me loosen and chisel off.
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181722
|
She would have moved on to the next guy in the next bar, the one who looked like danger on a stick.
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18172916
|
"...they ran shirtless like pagans under southern stars."
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1817169
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She was as distant as Mao, someone I never met, but whom everyone carried in their eyes,
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18171917
|
A flash in seven chapters.
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181733
|
“I don’t want to scare you,” the stewardess says, “but there are ten police officers waiting for you outside the plane.”
I reach into the diaper bag and grab an Elmo raspberry/pear cereal bar, rip it open, take a bite, sip some apple juice fr
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181753
|
When farming started in September, I thought of gambling, of my childhood best friend’s marriage ruined due to gambling, and of farming as a trope for living in the Midwest.
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18162013
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You died from a bad heart.
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181621
|
The Bike Messenger on Lexington Avenue
Comes to rest
taking a moment
in the falling rain
slowly massaging the
veins at the top
of his bald head
Cracking his neck
while the yellow cabs start
honking behind him
Unwilling to mov
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1816139
|
Things don’t happen here, life is so boring in this little Irish town.
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1816101
|
I wonder, God. Do you sit around and play with the universe like it was your Wii? Or your Farmville? Or maybe your little iphone app? I mean, really. Did it ever occur to you that the little men, women and children on your screen actually bleed? Do you think…
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18163315
|
To envy faith, to envy love --//
is there a fate more hateful? Choices/
scatter like stars. Too many.
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181684
|
He beats the girl, stabs her 22 times, rapes her, then uses his fingertips to push her orbital sockets into the back of her head before killing her. At trial, he laughs about whether or not there…
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1815138
|
There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.
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18151613
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Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.
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1815129
|
Some time ago, I began to write you letters with the idea of helping your newspaper become a more complete map of our little shared world.
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1815139
|
Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…
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181587
|
I'd been working for two years as a barista in a Starbuck's in a giant, two-story Borders in an upscale mall on Rt. 355, a main artery between Washington D.C., and Frederick, Maryland. I'd finished my M.F.A in 2000 and was trying to build up steam for more grad…
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18151614
|
In the St. Mark's Bar and Grill romance is a speedy thing, a blurred whir of grope, kiss, connect. The tricky thing is timing: to leave in time for the boozy love of the hour to carry through to full, naked contact. Some succeed of course. Others overstay, hang past the…
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181521
|
The trail wound through oak trees and climbed up a hill. The sun was high and hot whenever we came out from the cover of the trees.
We stopped under a tree.
“OK old man,” Leda said. She came to me and kissed me. Then she was unbuttoning my pants and kne
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181520
|
“We’re prisoners,” Sean reminded the guard. “Prisoners of your military.”
“You have never been treated as such.” Captain Hughes looked around the bar. “This festival is a celebration of you, of all of you. We pride ourselves on ou
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181533
|
IN BOX 12 OF DD FORM 214, the Department of Defense requires a narrative reason for every military discharge. Mine reads: Continued involvement of a discreditable nature with civilian and military authorities.
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1814168
|
This latest married man who lives at a great distance has leeched her energy in that very particular way such men do. Next to him, I am as interesting as long division.
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181400
|
His footing unsure and his clothes covered in vomit, he grabs the railing and stumbles up the three steps. He pulls off his shirt, finds a cleaner area on the puke-covered garment, wipes sweat off his forehead, dripping wet from the humid, stormy night, a
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