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"A Death by the Sea" (excerpt)

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Then a flicker caught my eye. To the left of the balcony, where the residential high-rise abutted a commercial building to its right, a shape--half-dark, half-lit--stood on a limestone ledge.

I Don't Understand Poets

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I haven’t read many of them, these poets that they speak of – Whitman and his Leaves Of Grass, Mary Oliver and her wild life

Lawnmower Season

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"this is the year I'm going to plant a yucca tree in the garden."

I Knew Her

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We met in the theater.

Mercury Unbound - 6

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Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor. I don't like it but I can't stop listening. It doesn't fit my mood, or the high plains landscape, or the early evening, pink and blue, pastel colored sky.

Museum Guard

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"Well if we break for lunch at the same time wanna sit with me? I got fruit roll-ups I'll share." Cory looked up at the boy, removing her hand from the water only to brush a lock of dark hair from her eyes. He was still smirking, jaw crunching, saliva

The Man Who Defied Gravity

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Let us be stranded in the Andes and have to eat human flesh or at least toothpaste to survive! Let there be an earthquake! Let there be a flood! Let there be a tornado, a new ice age, an invasion from Mars. Only: let me survive.

Fireworks

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You load the pipe and suck in the fireworks. Whistling missiles, slithering sparks, shivering teases, dripping embers. You fall asleep with flashing neon outside and the Fourth of July in your veins. When you wake up, your room is the saddest place o

At the Faire

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Carl and Dolly were actors. Dolly was offered the lead in a porno film, but she turned it down.

Man Resting On Tires, NYC

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A man asleep on a stack of tires in front of a tire shop on 10th Aveune, NYC. A store that’s “open 25 hrs,” where apparently time is being manufactured. The unknown new element, the 25th hour, even though the other 24 may have been shortened som

Sunrises and Borrowed Pages

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I'm sitting on the B-line toward Park, and there is a woman with the same black bob as Mad TV's Miss Swan, and she is leaning the whole front of her body against the whole pole in front of me, and even though there is plenty of space around her, she is pressed up…

The Swimmer

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He got tired of the pool party, the chit-chat, the suburban posturing, and he decided to swim home.

"they"--inspired by Lynn Beighley's "Ten Amazing don't-miss writing prompts (especially number 6)!--(but I chose number 2--thank

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52. they hate the word hate

Naughty Alice -- There's No Laughter When You're Extinct

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Does life have an expiration date Alice asked herself? One must be careful when trying to deal with a broken person; you might cut yourself on their shattered pieces. Life can be like an arrow penetrating your heart. Hard and painful to pull it out, yet i

Consuela, Your Love Chaperone

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he took me hostage as I came out the door. Nelson took me hostage and we went back to his parents' house. They were gone crappie fishing so I had to spend the whole weekend alone with him. I didn't have anything lined up for Saturday night, so it wasn'

Flash'em Tag'em Bag'em

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On a hot summer day in downtown San Francisco, a flasher gets more than he bargains for when the woman he flashed at a coffeehouse pulls out a gun.

Drunk and Disorderly

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Growing up in Mississippi meant growing up in a “dry” State which it was until 1966. Dry State meant selling alcoholic beverages, except for beer, is illegal. Period. By period I mean there was no distinction between selling whiskey and stuff to adults and…

The Planet Will Erase Us

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We control/ nothing.

Old Man's Winter

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The old man’s face is worn and tired, his nose and cheeks tinted red over his pale black skin from the frosty January winds blustering through town. He looks more than half frozen, which I don’t find surprising.

Volume

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Something reached into Avi and took his voice, turning his volume to zero.... A short story of one day. A man going to work, a little magic, a car crash, and a wedding.

Gravity as Destiny

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Falling// is something that comes quite naturally/ to puffed up things. Like the soufflé

The Scavenger

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I am a scavenger. I sit on the telephone wire, a ravenous vulture watching a man and a woman arguing across the street. The clouds remind me of ashy marshmallows I found in a fire pit yesterday. The woman starts violently shoving the man; he stumbles…

Hero Song

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paper cuts, an old film unraveled from its reel, risking exposure.

Bone & Air

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Devoid of flesh and muscle, Composed of bone and air.

Nancy's Brother

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Nancy's brother, Ronnie would wait until church was out and pull the bench up to the piano play and sing show tunes, even humming them loudly if he didn't remember the lyric. Crooning away — as if he had the lead in a Broadway musical. Well, that was part of it,…

Balloon Seller

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...painted by my mother with meticulous attention...

Porch

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“Emerald Leaf Borers, Dutch Elm Disease and Gypsy Moths blow through here like the Plagues of Egypt,” said Rafe, sipping from his glass of Parallel 44 wine. “You'd think we'd get more than a few days of good weather for all the parasites we feed.” …

Another Etiquette Lesson from the Jungle

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I lie on the floor of the hut and for some reason I start to think about the Harvest Days carnival and that game where you have to toss a dime in a dish to win a stuffed animal. Next thing you know I’m a little tiny guy in there in that world of plates

One of Four

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She stood with her sisters, pretty maids in a row, felt cold despite the scorching spring sun. Heard what the man said but didn’t register; words from the Lord flew around her like the flighty trill of the robins up above. The birds made more sense.

Let the shitbirds fly

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Ann had the vague idea that they would get it all worked out, and somehow, by tonight, she’d be in Robert’s arms again, and he’d be the old Robert, the man she’d known 15 years ago. She had no way of knowing, of course, that a Robert was going to