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The print is not ideal, it's true.

Sixty words or less

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She wakes up sad. She can't shit. She spreads out the foil. no creases. folds it in half. She puts the stuff in the crease. holds a lighter under it. A zippo. then smokes it. Well smokes the smoke. It's like kissing god or the…

Corkscrewing.

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[SOME PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS.]

After

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The next week, she sends a small white box in the mail / with tissue paper, a ceramic mold the color of bleached bone—

Insidious

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Thirty years later – and all the years in between – Alan Walton would remember how insidious it was, the anger that started that night with Quinton Harris, fifteen years old and the undisputed leader of the troop, and spread like a virus to the other boys

Tourists

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someone left graffiti on the billboard over: "God's a hard act to follow"; the one that made the news

Mon Oncle

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Mrs. L. was sitting on a love seat in her nightgown. She was sitting in a man’s lap....

Safe

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She left knives and hot pots with handles akimbo. Like a guardian angel, he turned them in. Like an ungrateful Eve, she turned them back out.

Assiduity Three

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Everybody needs a flaw or two. It builds character.

The Judge's Wife Part 10

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The Judge waited for the perfect wave.

Ajloun Castle

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the wind mistook your arms for wings

A World of Hurt

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Cat fight. I rush outside and swinging my trusty broom I charge the rolling yowling ball of black fur.

A Word About Everything

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I remember having a beer once And feeling like a minor god And I know in some lie you told Your life began making sense And I also know that the mind likes logic But the heart loves chaos I just hope flies land on the butter of your soul

Five Million Yen: Chapter 3

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Now you are a raving bare-forked fool madman with nothing.

The History of Strands

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We cannot love the past...

Winter's Presence 2010

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A short triangular plastic shovels into the/White plastic container filled with topaz crystal-like/Salt granulars. Scratchy sandy sounds echo.

What If?

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“Can you adopt if you work for the circus?” I asked her

Point of Grace

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Say the world is a smudged charcoal drawing. Slit from its frame, smuggled out of the Vatican. Don't say it couldn't happen. Who would know.

A Game of Dodge Ball

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Mo Dean woke up sober. And tired. Tired of life, of soiled pants, rash, vomit, and whiskey sweat. Tired of holes in his pockets and blisters on his feet, of hanging signs asking for dimes and getting only pennies. And most of all, tired of the police.

Liz

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I catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror on the adjacent wall and find myself becoming shy at my own reflection, which is ludicrous in theory, shying away from oneself, but as I lock onto the few freckles I have spread neatly on both cheeks...

When Hadrons Collide

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When hadrons collide they’re not always Swiss. They may be cheese or neutral but that isn’t of my concern. Look at them, touch them, feel them, the quirks of the antiquarks, masonic mesons, baron baryon.

a chat between Li Bai and Du Fu

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graves left or graves lost, into silence death sinks:/it's leaving the living that leaves us such pain.

Thank God It's Friday!

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It was only a dream. No one died, nor were they even harmed. So horrifying!

Arcana Magi Fifth World - Part 1

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As the four flew beside each other, they shared their stories and got to know one another. Soon they learned from the voice what was happening.

Emma Louise

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Emma Louise is walking over a concrete bridge when she spies, out of the corner of her eye, a man fishing, waist deep, in the river tumbling below. She is thinking that the water must be very cold on this autumn day, when she sees an extraordinary thing.

If I Were a Chemist, Not Now, but Maybe In The 1920s

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She said, “I think I’m pregnant,” but I thought that the sidewalk looked cleaner than usual,

"Is Your Stomach Making You Sad?" and Other Conundrums of 21st Century Life

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The questions we ask ourselves define who we are as a culture. “What is the meaning of life?” “Is there a God?” “Does anybody really know what time it is?” “Where the hell did I put my car keys?” To see what…

Spy vs. Park

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Things looked way too normal to be normal. The cold, gliding black eyed swans never once straying far from each other's wake, the cute blue jeaned lovers everyone secretly watched carefully picking their trickling way over small odd rocks and…

Alarming Apples

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I struck up a conversation with the cricket. We talked about Super Nintendo and cookies and we fell asleep on the boulder. The next morning, I woke up and offered the cricket a donut. He enjoyed the donut thoroughly...

"The Misses Moses," from my collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton 2010)

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The Misses Moses by Brad Watson from Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives The Moses sisters lived together, alone, in the fine old brick house near downtown where they…