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Old Haunts

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“Why do you write filth?” they howl

Mercury Unbound - 8

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The border crossing at El Paso will soon be arriving. I'm apprehensive about Mexico, all the violence.

Talk To the Bionic Hand

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Talk To the Bionic Hand “Scientists have discovered how to program intention into a bionic hand so that it will react to impulses from the brain like a normal hand” Man found being choked by his own out-of-control bionic hand after han

Don't Mangle the Mongol

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Back in the Dark Ages, the Mongols invented the first hamburger pattie. They put slabs of beef under their horses' saddles and after a few miles of rough riding -- voila! a flattened piece of cow meat. They then proceeded t

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, lxiv - lxxii

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words have their own ancestors,/deeds are commanded by their own lords./ knowledge and thought do not make me understand—/no surprise, then, that I am not understood.

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…

Boardroom Bullshit

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Push the envelope

I Would Make the Worst Cable News Anchorwoman Ever

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I'd laugh, cry, splutter with confusion or outrage. I'd probably say “Duh” a lot, grow pale, flush, and wink at the viewers. I'd furrow my eyebrows, raise one or both, and my eyes would narrow, widen,…

Fertile Ground

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Miriam forced herself to focus on the kitchen door and on putting one foot in front of the other. “Is everything alright?” she heard Ada ask the family. “Of course, everything is fine,” the woman said. “What could be wrong other than the impossible serv

BABY MOUSE

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BABY MOUSE She and the baby squeeze into the neon blue star-studded rocket ship in front of K-Mart, a tight fit because the baby's still inside her and the ship is made for under ten year olds and the steering wheel dents her stomach and the baby backs up and…

Life on TV

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The television volume softens in the shadows.

The Rising Tide

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I'm just a rental dog myself looking for the guardian of starlight peeing on the expired parking meters and barking up all the wrong trees.

Why won't you lie?

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And out on that lake that day you yelled “desperation please!” And I heard “desperate pleas?” I wondered about first impressions.

The Piano Player’s Dead Rejoice

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Requires one of those leaps.

Now or Never

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One by one our friends are kicking the bucket. Let's get together. It's now or never, we figure.

Birth Mothers, Seeking

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A blonde girl, her youth evident beneath a cosmetic mask of bruised eye shadow and plum lipstick, claims the seat beside me on a train. A radiant six month-old gazes out from her hip, awe-struck at life, as my own son must have been at that age. I never e

Starry Night

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I invited Van Gogh over for some drinks and a chat. I'm talking about Vincent.

Pick Me

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Strike me down hard, bolt of pure blue, laser focus square, blast of hydrogen nuclear, knock me on the keister, blind me down, oh Lordy Lord Lord.

Light Eyes

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Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of

Written Six Weeks Before

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March 16, 2006 My mail, e-mail, and phone calls go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Apologies for the cliché, but I can't resist its perfect applicability: In my mailbox today yet another catalogue of boob jobs in bikinis and an invitation to explore…

Waiting for the Voice on the Line

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hoping for a happy outcome/ like a kindly voice on the line

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

Penny cosmogony

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On his knees he divinates diverging lines with belly laughs he levitates the rebel spheres into geodes .

Getting Stood Up

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"Sorry, I need to confirm the results." Sal turned to Paul. "Is it true that you got stood up?"

Or Do You Love It?

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published in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review.

The Preservation of Innocence (through Times of Hunger and Doubt)

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Alicia got to third block early and scribbled down some of the derivatives homework. Others trickled in intermittently, drifting to their seats like impurities getting caught in a filter.

blink

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far from this time

Escape

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Can’t you do anything right?

Daddy's Teeth

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At night, I wake up, and Daddy's in the bathroom with a hanger in his mouth....

Leaky Pipes

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I was thinking everything was OK, until one day I woke up and realized that I was living on an entirely different planet, and you seemed like a complete stranger to me. I was feeling so ashamed of these feelings, that I couldn't even tell you about them. I couldn't…