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Verboten

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Scales were installed on station platforms. Those who were overweight were turned away

Noodles

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It's Granny hauling her crooked soul into heaven. Guess who I stole that image from?

Heather.

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Gone Heather, with her hands in her hair, silent for help, over-involved now scared.

I used to think the sun was the moon

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I imagined the sun to be the moon and discovered it was not on a road trip in California where I noticed the sun on one side and the moon on the other.

The Little Things (three versions)

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It's the little things that trip us up: a small hole in a level field, an innocuous root in a well-trod path, a disinclined sidewalk...

Drift

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Dreams & foghorns.

Do the Funky Penguin--With T.S. Eliot

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True story: T.S. Eliot introduced Virginia Woolf to new dance steps including the Grizzly Bear and the Chicken Strut.

Amy-Loyd Plax

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When I no longer know you, what signal will you give to remind me that you and I once loved?

Cream Base Neutral Tan

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Face defined-front part of head Cybil's eyes stick to a mirror and guard the woman's skin. The woman's image could be the result of uncontrolled narcissism, yet dry wrinkles are visible from her reflection. Disguise cream covers some of the woman's c

A Little Bit of Syrup

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"I made up my mind then, in the backseat, sucking on a cherry Popsicle, that I wanted to be like Ruby’s mother..."

The Cicada's Cry

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In the cicada's cry No sign can foretell How soon it must dieBasho "Hear the locusts?" The woman lifts the child's head. "Hear em, baby?" The child looks blankly in the…

Confessions of a Politician

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Forgive me father for I have sinned.” “Tell me how you have sinned, my son?” Lies, father. I have told lie after lie in pursuit of my personal gain. I have lied to my family, my friends, to thousands of people who desired nothing from me but the tr

Keep it, Curt

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Just move out.

The Signal

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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

MR. WOODCHUCK

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fat furry marmots who play hide and seek

The Red Suitcase: (Conclusion)

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—You must be joking, he laughed.

The Galleries

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We invent our beauties// as we find them and engineer/ our horrors

Testament (complete)

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Their nouns are few and stark./ Ours are numerous and dappled/ or subtly shaded and shadowed/ by circumstance and possibility.

This Train Is Bound For Paoli: A Multiple Choice Essay

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Train 664 leaves Thirtieth Street Station bound for New York City at 10:55. Concurrently, Train 663 leaves the station, headed for Harrisburg. Both trains are, confusingly, called The Keystone.If Mark and I have tickets for Train 664 because we plan to…

Snake Walk

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The Viper turns so quickly that Father's grabbing hand now faces its head instead of its tail.

Phantom Energy

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She called it phantom energy. She said it was costing us money every month. A few cents here and there, sure, but it all added up.

Not Sure If You're Actually Having Sex? I Can Help.

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When I stumbled upon evidence that the man I'd loved and trusted for 20 years had a secret girlfriend for the past 10 of those years, he tried to deny it.“We never had sex!” he told me. And I believed him. For about two minutes.“You never…

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter 3 - by Brian Lepire

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I’d made it to the motel parking lot when I heard the footsteps. A sombrero may make me look good, but it does shit for my hearing, so the bastards were able to scoop me up real quick. The first one gave me a hard slap on the top of the head with an opene

Scene from the Clinic

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No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.

Beamers

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I try again. "You can make a big cup by putting your hands and fingers together, see?" He glares at me. "A giant could make a big cup," he says. "A giant could make a giant cup." I thought so before, and I’ll say it again. A little genius.

The Man Who Couldn't Move

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Without warning his eyes expertly navigated into a closed position setting off the dream machine long without power until this very second.

Extra Ticket

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My best friend died yesterday. His name was Franklin Seever, but we all called him Lin. It started when we were in Little League. There were two Franklins on the team so Coach, who was my dad, called the fat one Frank and my best friend Lin.

Creator

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What purpose other than misery/ can cancer serve? And Parkinson's,/ AIDS, and STDs?

Internet Hole (an excerpt from Psychopomp)

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Seventeen-year cicadas are the sometimes-singers that surprise spring with the ugliest mouths of all.

Storage Access Framework

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At first we thought metadata rich, non-hierarchical, network based, multi-provider filesystems were our future. An arduous journey but well worth the efforts for the beforehand unimaginable user experiences enabled by new technologies that thereupon displaced the…