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The Charm of the San Joaquin

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They say ehmand for almond in the San Joaquin Valley.

Gateway Love

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Gateway Loves are lethal. They do not discriminate between bot or flesh, primary or clone.

Twenty Questions

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Did you take out the trash? Did you water the ficus? Did you cancel the cable? Did you take my black sweater? Did you tell the neighbors? Will you get the friends? What about the cat? Will you send me a Christmas card? Will I tear it up? Did you know…

"Brava! Brava!"

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I woke to a crash and the sound of coins rolling along the linoleum. “Mom?” She did not look up. Her shaking hand was gathering up the single crown coins, the fifty heller pieces. Triumphantly she rescued a ten crown note from the piggy bank shards. …

Rock On

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...fancy the idea of tapas, Spain an' all.

To Kill a Deer

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On September 12th, 2011, the ban on deer hunting became official. Apparently, the hunting and killing of deer had become too cruel. The ban had been a long time in the making. Ever since man began hunting deer way back in the day—somewhere between a fe

The Birds

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When I left my wife, I got the birds. Two parakeets, blue and yellow, male and female. They were loud, messy and, because my ex rarely cleaned their cage, smelly. So I got them. At first, I called him Rod and her Tippy. Rod Taylor and Tippy Hedren? The Bi

Mystery by the Bay

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The water was like glass except for a ripple here and there where Spearing were jumping. Joe didn’t know whether they were playing or avoiding being lunch for larger fish. He set up shop above the point where, light years ago, his father, a fisherman, had

The Clod and the Pebble

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“Lightning has more longevity than I,”

Preserved In Amber

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So no one ever caught sight of Eleanor picking her nose; besides, that wasn't what she was doing.

Without Forgiveness

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Click-clack, click-clack. The cadence of the tracks below push George back and forth between what happened and what is to come.

Mitzvah (wc:55)

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So, how did they meet? After years and years of starvation and gruesomeness and lack of human contact because there were no humans left, only walking corpses, a woman gently lifted the sixty-pound dead man's penis with a cool washrag and wiped him clean. The dead…

En Pointe

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Her gaunt arms softly rose, sweeping in front of her with movements that were hesitant at first but, as the music that only she could hear took her in its grip, became graceful and assured.

When He Left it all to Me

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Where did you go?

The Tree is Farther to the Man

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I am constricted by rings. The weight of self crushes me.

Anti

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“What do you call this place?” I didn't really want to talk much in there. For some reason, talking felt too—linear. The words seemed to have a kind of reverberation into associations that seemed somewhat meaningless at the time.”

Derivative

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It’s not the money. The money’s/ just a way of keeping score.

Mice

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Short, but true. Damnit.

The Law of Natural Selection

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Once a student brought him a jar of black widow spiders. Tony put it on his desk. Somehow the jar got tipped over, and the spiders got out.

Arcana Magi - c.20: Compelling

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Danica paused for a moment as thoughts of going to Avalon Tech changed to heading for Mystic Intelligence. She could not understand why she thought about going there.

Cliche

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Six thousand dollars was a small price for a man's life. Mario was in the back seat of the Honda with Johnny next to him handcuffed, all tense. Francisco had it on a rap station, the sort of music that gave Mario a headache.

Chattanooga Afternoon / Let’s Talk About Chattanooga

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Let’s talk about Chattanooga, the cloud / mountains, the monastery bench, drunk / at sunset

Body to go

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I’m squatting naked over the hand mirror, feet cold on the terrazzo floor, looking at my winking arsehole.

What Is Life?

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He heard her crying out behind the curtain that had been drawn around the bed. Each cry was more strained than the last. She complained about the burning, called the nurses "putane" and threatened to rip out the device they'd inserted into her. He sat t

Half-and-Half

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Terry worked in a factory out in Northlake where she added a little squirt of milk and another little squirt of cream to those tiny half-and-half coffee creamers you find at every motel in the country. The owner of that factory hired only women to work

Rough Draft

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fated and cruel, a person I don't love

A Sacrifice For God And Man

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The words of prophets only serve to demonstrate that ‘unreliable narrative’ can often result in poor literature; unfortunately, poor literature can attract a very large following.

Sea Floor Fever, or The Note that Came With the Stone to the Head

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I'm dying but that's not to say what you think it says. I've crossed the river of myself many, many times before and wandered to the shore, broken and drenched and full of the fever of dyingdreams. Each time was a kind of ritual mask, drying off the beat ofmy newly…

||||||||||| (Munun)

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Winter melts to ashes and now we walk where hillocks dip like pillows, where a warm pocket of air keeps the scent of spring beauties for itself. Sensitive vetch so easily shocked folds under a feather yet the earth trembles where trout lilies shove. Buds stall on lilacs…

Dream Girl

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There was something wrong with this picture. Was he the man she had slept with last night?