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Existential

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To envy faith, to envy love --// is there a fate more hateful? Choices/ scatter like stars. Too many.

Take-Home Quiz [DIRECTOR'S CUT: Now, w/pretty colors & font changes!]

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[PLEASE SHOW YOUR WORK!]

Why the Woodpecker Laughs

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Once upon a time, before there was Prairie, there was Swamp. Therein lived Salamander and Snake. High above them, in the tops of Cypresses lived Woodpecker.

Hostage Festival

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“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

MAO

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She was as distant as Mao, someone I never met, but whom everyone carried in their eyes,

What's It To You

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Oh I'm melting all right, into a foul vapor rising from a dead volcano, not even able to spit fire, but only cold old frozen rock like dribbles of putrid plasma.

Husks

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She would have moved on to the next guy in the next bar, the one who looked like danger on a stick.

Sidereal

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"...they ran shirtless like pagans under southern stars."

Waylaid (1999)

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In that mix of sports and religion, TV was what there was of virtue. I thought bars were nicer.

We Threw These At Each Other

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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.

Escalation

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Don't fall to sleep.

Closed Curve

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What the heck to believe in??

Mind The Gap

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Alone,we are ageless togetherin the heart of our precious now.A relentless wedge of image and vanity, gossip and innuendo, acceptable and most certainly not, dashes our agelessness intoan insurmountable chasm of years.That diabolically…

All Fur and Bones

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I wonder how much time she has left. I think she’s seventeen. I don’t know for sure because she was already grown when I got her from the pound, just before Christmas, years ago this was --back when I had hair and hope.

The Woman Who Cut Down Her Husband

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The woman carried a wooden log which was her husband into the house.

Break-up Bars (A Recipe...)

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2 sticks soft (like your heart) butter... ... 1 cup crushed (like you) walnuts...

How I Made My Fortune

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At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f

Phil's Last Stand

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Phil was scared. Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.

Robert Penn Warren and Orange County Blue

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We were old. Wind came in with small threats and played games with drapes. A print of orchids and some other green affair that looked to me like kiwis. Sadie was arranging some items on a desk and I noticed there was a cricket on the window. I was thinking…

Tooth Decay

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The schedule fell smoothly into place: After Imogene went home at the end of the day, Calvin locked the office door, then he and Rosalie marched into the examination room and she flossed him.

THE WEDDING

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I am at a wedding with a new girlfriend. The bride is her old college roommate. I don't really know anyone else here. The wedding is being held at a huge estate, located on the edge of enormous cliffs that overlook the ocean. Despite the danger of this precarious…

Things You Can Do, Some Can't Be Done

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The deep breathing has helped. My heart rate is back down to a normal resting rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 beats per minute, about one solid thump every second like clockwork, a precision I can truly appreciate.

Crane Man

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Inside my high-rise studio apartment there are only three locations where Crane Man can't see me. The bathroom is one—although he watches me go in and he watches me come out. Crane Man does a lot of watching. Sometimes it seems he spends more time looking…

She tolled me

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You’re mad as a hatter she said. Eons, eras of epochal proportions go by before you call me. I said recalibrate your linear thinking, incubator baby. I whispered permutations of wonder, told her secrets only the sufis know. We ate French goat cheese lac

Can I Take My Gun Up To Heaven?

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I thought of Ruth burrowed deep in the nest of her closet and quickly jumped into the footlocker. I nearly stopped breathing as he entered his bunker.

Circling '84

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Other things are on my mind when the Tupperware lady says, "First, let's move your couch over by the door and the table here."

Carlos The Impossible (Part 1)

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And so the deal was struck. It was arranged that the empresario for the Plaza Mexico would buy the giant bull from Button for Hernando to fight. Come the Fiesta de la Fuerza Irresistible, the Great One would meet the bull that was born of a thunderclap at

Tiny Dancer

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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.

Need

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I knew I needed to visit a beach / made entirely of sharks’ teeth

Eat, Pray, Network

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The image was startlingly unfamiliar. Looking at it, no one would guess it had been their last attempt, their last failure. No one would believe that they had never really been that way, or that the life they shared was built on mind games, manipulation a