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As the Bat Cave Turns

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A study found that in bat species noted for female monogamy male bats have small testes and big brains, while in species noted for female promiscuity males have testicles five times as big, but smaller brains.

Good Belongs to You

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I hope you enjoyed the celebration last night. Good things always come to you. I thought your family would never go home. I didn't get to sleep this morning until 2:59, although I had set my alarm to 6:10. I didn't want you to miss your plane. At daybreak,…

Untitled Haiku from Japanese Game Show by JANEY SMITH

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It's a haiku. It's its own snippet.

Decision Mountain

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For decades the land the village sat on had switched its allegiance between two countries.

This Old Man

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“Have I told you this one before?” I can’t think of one he hasn’t told me, but saying so won’t stop him. I fire up the FreeCell game, put the phone on speaker, and pour a tumbler of chardonnay.

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.

Ghoster

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Ross, I've been a ghost hunter for almost 10 years now and this is a place I said I WOULD NEVER NEVER EVER go to!

Low Dose Yoga

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Names are forbidden here. So is apology.

Books

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

The Cherry

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He then spent his walk home to his single apartment spitting up various textures of red, combinations of cherry and blood mostly.

Cold/Warm

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I wear boots over bare legs feigning ignorance To the coming storms, the snow the ice the cold

Not Enough Sin To Go Around

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Inevitability: it's what's for dinner.

At the Brooks Brothers Hip Hop Summit

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I pat my pocket to make sure everything’s in order; a Starbucks blueberry scone to sustain me, a $50 Brooks Brothers gift card from my in-laws, and my “piece”–a fully-charged BlackBerry handheld device.

Twelve Pens

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Their last story

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

Quarter-turn the Quaternion

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One could count fifty moons hanging in the sky, in rows and columns of smaller skies.

The Dog's Familiar

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The county sent two crews, one to get Mr. Meyers, the old shut-in, tall and affable, but quiet and bent, like a crooked coat rack with a porkpie atop, the other for his dog, an english setter whom he shadowed like a familiar. I say he was the familiar and

Five Million Yen: Chapter 74: Coda

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It was the first warm day of a late-arriving spring. Ben was sitting in his divorce lawyer’s office on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

Exquisite Now

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In the exquisite now, I feel everything around me, in me, before and after, I think, I should call you, say goodnight, but I do not, choose instead to write this poem, as though I can capture the magic of what is happening between us in words, A…

More Of My Dark Job History

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In my 14 to 15 year old life in the late 50s I worked as a clean-up boy in the neighborhood butcher shop up on 5th. Ave.,

The Bachelor's Hymnal

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OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

reality concedes, for once

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beckoning with citrus streaks blue cobbled streets/and stuccos lit with gold lamps guide strollers here/to Place du Forum in Arles and this café . . .

Things Get Fuzzy

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

Teeth - Yet Another Obsession

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The teeth I want must hold significance. Like the quote, “it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey,” for me, it’s the connection that I’ve had with someone and the story behind the lost tooth that interests me.

The Shopkeeper

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His eyes are closed yet restless, as if too many thoughts loop beneath the lids.

Distance

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We must sometimes see the world/ as the pale blue dot// surrounded by brighter dots/ and that endless field of darkest dark.

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 5: In Which Lymph Nodes Are Involved

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Astrid did not smoke. Astrid did not drink. Astrid was not overweight. Astrid did not live a sedentary lifestyle; her whole life, aside from shopping, was working out. Astrid had no history of breast cancer or other female cancers in her family. Astrid di

Ashes to Ashes

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Day by day people went missing. Reports of the ads being answered with a robocall solution to their problems were at first unconfirmed. Yesterday my best friend told me his emotional distress call was going to be channeled into a free trip to what he call

Arcana Magi Pure Vol.7 - c.2

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Mayumi and Rumiko stood at the top of a hill into stone forest, with the town in view from a distance. The mist made a single path, safe for everyone to travel through. In the town, there were lights flickering everywhere, some areas in total darkness.

Brown Plastic Bag.

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