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Assiduity Eleven

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Uzma accepts my invitation for dinner.

Biography of a Splotch in a Parking Lot

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She hadn’t died. She wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t even invisible. She just wasn’t see-able.

When the Time Has Passed to Do Good

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Both his parents saved their pent up Puritan pasts to fill his ears with brimstone clichés. "Idle time is the devil's playground", he would tell me, scrunching up his face, stuffing it full of meat lovers pizza.

Every time we kiss, my hair falls out

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I’m in high leather boots; I’m talking many dead cows here and I respect that

The Comedian

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Sitting near her desk, like a dunce cap, red

Solar

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Trollo Martinez was wearing a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and an old LA Community College T-Shirt. He needed to find some water so he could down the 5milligram tab of Ritalin in the palm of his hand.

Beyond the Brown Paper Bag: Baggers & The Bagged Items

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[THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN EDITED FOR CONTENT, AND TO RUN IN THE TIME ALLOTTED.]

Books

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It sometimes happens a student remains a friend long after you both have abandon academe.

for one dedicated to artemis

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artemis is but a mincing fawn:/ no sacred bitches need i in my ranks,/ nor hunting dogs to tear a man apart/ when i have teeth enough to bruise fine flanks.

It's a Wonderful Life

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My wife is making lunch. I suggest leftover pizza. We are going over to the neighbor’s house for pizza tonight, my wife says. I tell her that’s okay. I like pizza.

When it Gets Dark

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The world—the natural world—was terrible and beautiful in wartime. The leaves shuddered off trees. The pockmarked fields. The fallen brick chimneys. The way the birds heaved together in enormous flocks like rescue missions and then just as…

Remember the Maine

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He remembered waking up on those lazy summer days hearing the sad song of mourning doves.

Malady

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When the malady struck and the world fell dark at noon, she and I groped the walls and found our front door. Outside, bewildered, we heard the whine of jets in free-fall, explosions in the imagined distance. And we heard a car — or was it a truck that veered…

You deserve to be choked around your lying throat and this how it happens, slowly.

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Writing as a form of imaginative hatred

Considering a Career

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Mostly, though, reiteration of the old/ in an idiosyncrasy that strives/ to become fresh and fails

Literate Reply

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an oven mitt in Dachau

Old Haunts

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“Why do you write filth?” they howl

Literally Choose Your Own Adventure

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You enter the lobby of the office building tentatively at first - you're a little nervous about this interview, after all - but you recall how spectacular and professional you dressed that morning. Plus you read through the company's LinkedIn profile at least five times…

Cat Tales - a 55 word story

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My spooky cat got out again. Under the deck she ran. Out came the hose that chased her about. Fur spiked, tail pointing, yowling, she hissed at me, and back in the house she pranced. It's been two days now. She slithers out for food after…

Of the smokers I’ve kissed

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The man next to me on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto makes me think of the smokers I’ve kissed.

A Brief History of The Real

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A little contempuous aside by the critical theorist guy, Frederick Jameson-- that it was logically absurd to call anything that human beings do, produce or effect “unnatural,”-- has brought forth the following. We are…

O'Arlo's Journal: About Myself

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Every morning if I don't have to go potty....

Submission guidelines

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Somewhere in her the name triggers/ a grainy chain of Cheech & Chong

care & danger

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When Roger was small his two favorite toys were a tiny, squat doll called Care and a rubber millipede.

gravelortian part 9

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Unhook the newsfeed

A Desperate Tweak

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I have two of those hand exercisers jamming the tray and keeping it locked in place

Key West with Poo and Company

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Excerpt from Flamingo …

Forging

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Taken by agents of the United States of America, Felix Six-Killer grows up at the Carlisle Indian School near Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. His hair is cut and oiled. His shirts are starched and creased. For months he is startled to find himself seated for…

Merry-Go-Round

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I thought the Ferris wheel was dumb. All it did was give you a high altitude view of the little Minnesota town where I had grown up.

Anise Fish and Colin behind the glass

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“What is the sickness that you have?” Colin behind the glass wondered. “Too much world,” said Anise Fish. “We have that in common.”