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The Celebrated Jumping Flippit of Tau-Ceti IV

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One day me an' Elvis was down at the riverbank with Huckleberry, chasin' darters an' watchin' barges go by. It was a lazy day bein' a Sunday an' all. We had jest got back from Church an' Mami told me to change my clothes so's that I didn't get my Sunday

Men Are Beasts

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They both have an annoying habit. She talks to him while she's in another room, and he doesn't answer because he can't hear what she's saying.

First the Newborn Birds on High and Then the Awful Climbing Beasts

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"Stop watching the news!Because the news contrives to frighten youTo make you feel small and aloneTo make you feel that your mind isn't your own"--MorrisseyThe world has gone crazy, but please let me make you One of my healing songs. You can eat it now, if you…

A Christmas Tale

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leaning over the banister, her Christmas waist making the wood swoon and creak, a warning sign if there ever was one...

True Vocation

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After lunch it's vocal coaching: shrieking, screaming, crying Oh-my-God!-Oh-my-God!-Oh-my-God!, panting and face fanning. Next it's ‘situational training', where we pretend to be audience members on real talk shows and practice everything we've learned th

To My Students, After Paris

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I will not tell you that your anger is wrong, child.

Game Night

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We’re all competitive and drunk.

FAMILY VALUES

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that is a fair description of our family if I add the disclaimer that the girls are whores and we don’t have much in common.

Chicagoo (from Swink literary journal)

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When Kim handed me some of her husband’s condoms—“Here, use these”—out of one of their bedroom dresser drawers, could she sense the astonishment I was trying my best not to show?

Dog Days

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The air is dry and smoky from a fire some miles away. The air is cool. A pair of vultures is soaring in a circle high above the rising land.

The Laughing Grave

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Newhouse returned his gaze to his wet palm, which he lifted to his nose with suspicion, sniffed again and again, then struggled to move out from under the growing stream.

How I Left Onandaga County

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So, like I said. Da. I have dealt with the men, when I was a lap dancer. The men they need the….manipulations. I have good hands. They want me to see them naked, their power. Here it is only the women. The massage, the facial, the waxing...

Undressing The Moon

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the white moon is dangling by a thread tonight you close your eyes and listen to it undress and suppress, suppress you listen to it undress while you yourself hang lifeless in your own arms not meaning to do yourself any harm, not

Gazpacho

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It's a pretty strange feeling when you think you're about to bite into some ice cream and instead it's gazpacho.

The Big Game

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The vampire donated floodlights so the children could play ballgames at night. The lights came on but the dugouts remained vacant. The vampire sat alone in the bleachers. “Sometimes I am less than the sum of my parts,” he said to the sum of his parts.

December 17

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When she finally arrived it was like a cello playing inside me

Da Capo

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Their bodies, ripe uncovered flesh, had begun to erode, the edges of their limbs and cores bitten, taken by the wind in small pieces, flaking and tearing, some parts sliding, falling away.

When the Witness Calls

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Here they come, those witnesses.

Misunderstood

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Leonard didn't know that cute girl well, hardly at all, but he really wanted to. She was his first real crush in Junior High. He got his chance and talked to her some one day while they were walking down the hall between classes. She actually spoke to him first. The bell…

Gateway to the Continent

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I got to Victoria station at quarter to eleven on a Friday with nothing but a small leather bag and the vague idea of getting out of London.

Three Thirds

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"I was hit by an Amtrak train and dragged a hundred feet, and I'm going to die from smoking cigarettes."

Jambalaya

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Your writing offended the editors greatly, and we would select certain word choices we disliked, but we truly hated every word, including mere articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Things That Glow

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The tiny green light flashing in the lawn of an apartment building one night that caught Roberta’s attention while we were walking home from Café Vita.

Curb Appeal

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He kept the lawn mowed at the perfect height. He mowed it twice a week to one inch. Some weeks he mowed it a third time for good measure.

The Art of Joy

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The girl who was me stands in a sandbox with upraised arms, honey hair tied with olive yarn in two ponytails. She says nothing, but wants me to pick her up.

Mt. Hood

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To what better worlds remain.

Slice of Lifeforce

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I, the energies moving through this body, in this particular parallel reality in this multiverse, am standing out in the middle of the night, under only stars, and surrounded by the soft, organic shapes of a tree line.

Pterodactyls

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In his head he thinks oh whatever when I wake this time I shall have a very fine discussion with Someone special, oh but finding meaning in anything nowadays that's Just too much rich flattery, isn't it, filthy mirror? Inside His head's…

mnemonic haiku

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skies electric blue,/limpid dewy air, the world/framed by a small farm.

Jorge Curioso Flies a Plane

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This is Jorge. He was a good little monkey. And always curious.Like the time he and his friend, the man in the amarillo sombrero, had to fly to Japan. *Jorge sat by the window. Watched the ground get further away. Until they were above the clouds. He looked out…