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Can Bone-Munching Zombie Worms Help Fight Childhood Obesity?

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President Kennedy’s national physical fitness program tried to reverse the incoming tide of obesity, but for many it was too late.

Gone

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Erased. Like chalk across my body, a fine powder of forgetfulness, with a few swipes --- all those names and faces, gone. The letters burned.

After He Stays

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When the sex that is new and promising in its awkward moments is over, you turn to him. You expect that he’s figuring out a way to leave; the parts of you that know wait for him to stand up and put his clothes back on, quicker and with more eagerness than

Remembering Ginsberg

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Remembering Ginsberg who howled through just about everybody's idea of the real weirdo poet

Dog Years

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Already my back aches

Real Love, Real

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For the first time in her life She felt she understood The smell of a man. The smell of white tulips, The taste of a persimmon In her mouth. She remembered how married she felt To him, in that moment. How close To the earth, and ancien

Size Times New Roman

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“I’m making a dress,” she said, feeding the pages through the sewing machine. He didn’t know how to answer. “Are those my books?”

The Widow Teasdale and the Ineffable Warmth of Personal Services

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Her cash. It smelled like seven-dollar-a-quart gardenia perfume and cave aged cheese—like hope overgrown with mildew.

Did You Get Two

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“106 more miles,” she said.

Deadheading

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No matter how much he composes and prepares, he cannot override the electrical trigger in his brain. Something to do with the resonance of physical memory. It remembers amplitudes of current.

I Was a Cat Once

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This is a 50-word story.

Freelance Your Way to Poverty

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Buyers of freelance writing have a well-deserved reputation for responding slowly, thereby increasing your pleasure in much the same way that the Pointer Sisters longed for a slow hand.

O Where Did Our Funny Go?

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What a nation! First we lost our money Now we’ve lost our funny

The Silver T to the West Side Highway

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They watched the seven o'clock news.

What I'd Have to Call My 'Meatsack Family'

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This story is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional and should not be inferred. (Really!)

All Fall Down

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He just up and dropped dead one day, Charles said. Pretty tough on Karen, I opined. Charles looked the other way.

Same Old Song and Dance

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You want to get laid talking socks

Three Micros

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I asked the hospice nurse about maggots.

Enough, Trump

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Enough, Trump. We've had it my dear, with your pink ties, your hairs, your swagger, your towers, your money, tempers, walls, bombs, smarts, snarls, pouts and doubts, bigotty bile, and once again, style. We just…

Far As You Want

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At a rest stop in Montpelier, they stopped to buy Cokes and gum from the vending machines. He was showing off, trying to jimmy one of the locks with a safety pin but it stayed locked and she laughed at him and he said goddamn, look at all a them Milkyways

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 40

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—Mazel tov, schmazel tov!

Barbarian(s) Within the Gates

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This writers' conference (sponsored by VQR, which had run its banner ad atop the Fictionaut home page in the summer of 2014, which begins to explain both my attendance and this essay) revealed itself as an apt subject . . .

My Latest Failure

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Jason, the obnoxious host, thrusts his microphone against my nose.

Bodies Approaching Rest

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He hates this body no less now/ than he did at 14 for its pudginess/ and the hair that can’t conform

Tale from a Möbius Strip

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Francesca is a sweet girl and everything, but her incessant doting on Paolo is best left private . . .

left handed

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under your skin the moon is alive

HEADLINES

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Warranties are what made America great, although hers has expired and the mailbox will remain empty for another fifteen days.

Heirloom Pendant of an Ash-Tracked Snow

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If I do not hear you leaving by the door... The nearness here of this yet questions when I know you will not come so back again, Nowise the same as you were there before. My own reflection, centred at its core On knowing each …

Cigs,

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They teach that emotional pain is physical pain, culture pain is science pain, but they cannot test for the absence of these synaptic conclusions. I will say, if you can test me and find something missing then you can supplement me for the missing thing.

In the Stream of Space Expanding, Eddies

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Microscopic purposes emerged// with their combinations and permutations