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Twelve Pens

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Their last story

The Humanists

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“She’s very sick. She’s dying,” and he smoothed my hair along my neck. “It’s leukemia. A very rare type,” his hand reached my shoulder and stopped there. “She only has a few months.”

My Neighbor in the Apartment Across the Hall

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She's an obese woman whose clothes don't fit: shirts that ride up too high her belly hanging out her pants suctioned to her strangely pegged legs. Her ballooned cheeks are always chapped pink her lips little slivers peeled back over small beige teeth like…

Snack

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Kerryn saved us from ourselves really. Would you be reading this had she eaten it?

Freedom

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She tossed the big bird into the air. It wobbled, then flew away.

The Green Eyed Lady in the Glass Café

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Is this sought sea dream of the Arctic fox? The green below the circles of the white, above her eyes? On Formica tables where the woman smocks beneath glass borders of their vacant smiles, they pass by windows formulating styles,…

The Boot

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my crotch-heavy press of 'Yes.'

Separation

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The increasingly furrowed lines on his forehead made her stomach clench.

Bubble Rap Blues

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"The Chinese don't have no Mardy Grah, bitch."

Rain Typing

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"I'm just going to take a power nap!"

Dinner with Someone Who Fucks Someone Else

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say no / to me / and devastate me / and I will take it / as god's will / to drown me / in a vat / of my own / entrails

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

it

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where will we be/ when it happens?

Caliban's Dream

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Today I’m feeling crabby and haggard and technology makes it easy to get to the point.

Flash Before Your Eyes

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It was the dead of winter. I took my father's shotgun from his closet. He kept it wrapped up in one of those khaki-colored gun tote bags that had a zipper running the whole length of the gun. It was a 16-gauge, single action shotgun. Anyone could tell wha

Tabula Rasa

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When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

Things Get Fuzzy

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We can’t just bomb Berlin or Dresden,/ Nagasaki or Hanoi, to make things safe

Aftermath

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Oh sweet, sweet morning light

The Industrious Mice

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I am not responsible for any nightmares this piece may cause for all you mice lovers!

Packing

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I left Iowa in august when the air was thick and sticky. I had been there three years minus a few days when the boy I'd been sleeping with packed almost everything I owned into my car and waved goodbye. In Baltimore I had few friends and a job teaching English at a…

In Search of Vince’s Quinces

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Beautiful, he thinks, as he taps the ash of his cigarette over the balcony, but this is not good enough.

The Next Best Thing to Dying

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Later, my daughter told me that she hadn't been scared because as I lay on the ground unconscious I continued to laugh, gradually relaxing into a big smile as I came around a minute later.

three gretchens

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The story of a second, a stone, and an android -- all curiously interrelated and all, coincidentally, named Gretchen

Mauthausen

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I was feeling a bit introspective. I was busy in my own mind assembling the history of the place and getting ready for the visit. I was naturally not someone who would cluster up with a bunch of people I had just met and had arrived to participate in this

Books

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'Like poems,’ I said she paused and nodded her black mop.

The Window (Part II)

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When we saw the window, we were impressed. It was so clean and transparent that it reminded us of a new pair of glasses, everything so crisp and clear through it. It looked on to nothing. Actually it looked on to the refridgerators and a few stoves, though most of the…

Leaping Through Flames

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I should have never gotten involved in such a huge lie. I was a poet, for God's sake, not a novelist. I wasn't used to lying.

Bones

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Got something inside me hard as nails keeps me walking upright ain't never failed

Getting Away

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Daddy says he needs to go to the movies at night to relieve his stress, so Momma wakes us up, puts coats over our pajamas, leads us to the car ...

Glass Rooster

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ghosts of the previous owners who leave a trail of whispers