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Two Things I Did Not Know

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Their breath stank inside my lungs and tamped down the very minute amount of remorse I had left. It was replaced with contempt. Their fear warmed my cold sensibility as I steeled myself.

Quitting

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If you outlive me, she said, it won't be because I smoke but because of what you put me through when you quit.

Zohra El Fassia by Erez Bitton

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Poem: Zohra El Fassia by Erez Bitton

Abletofly: Latest Drug: Read Before Use

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With Abletofly you will be able to fly and the feeling will be overwhelming! That’s right, Abletofly. A few warnings and precautions are in order, however: Don’t try to drive a car if you experience an erection lasting more than eight hours.

Behind Blue Eyes

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“You don't know what it's like, to be an old man, to be alone man, behind blue eyes,” he said to the downtown city sidewalk. The sidewalk said nothing. People with someplace to go rushed by him, not stopping.

Daffodil

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The Trinity boys don’t blame me at all. They know I am not stupid about the world. I am a robust girl. Nevertheless, like everyone else I have limits. I am a clock that winds down.

Nevertheless The Plan Was Not Implemented

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Thomas Friedman was right when he said, “Much of this biodiversity in Indonesia is now under threat.” It had been this way since gasoline became currency; I remember bartering with The Governance for the newest edition of The Guinness Book of

Roadside Attraction

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There is a certain stage of sobriety among men who drink every night. In that stage, they are their best selves: they write novels, fix cars, care for their young. Then they change.

Freeing Annabel Lee

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It drifted into the sea, I say, when you ask me about home. You’ve only known me for a few moments, so you’re not sure how to gauge me. You laugh, and make an Annabel Lee reference. The English teach in me wants to hug you. The New Jersey in me wants

Upstream

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But home won.

Mind Games

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Rendine Philips polishes his courage and enters the fray. Not virtual reality, more reality virtuous. He feels the pull and the push. Electricity pulses resistance.

stinking nightgown

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Frank says if I eat the whole bowl of live crickets he’ll give me five dollars and his grandfather’s silver bullet from the war.

Other People’s Children

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Children should not be made to do things unless they want it.

Heaps ain’t Enough

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"And I listened, too, sitting at the table with him with my palms on my chin and my fingers on my face ‘cause I love listening to my man talking about why he loves me."

Anhedonia (excerpt)

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Things have happened. It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.

Anything Again

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...she lifts one shell, sips a little, then swallows the creature whole.

Early Thoughts on the Oedipus Complex

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Conversation becomes Electra, as do her eyes. Electra’s head is grey, like the head of my Frau Freud, Martha. Her intelligent irises are darkly pigmented, and her sclerae are edged with a dramatic, black line of the sort that Cleopatra affected. In ou

Robotics

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I made this robot. Everyone was making them. Mine was a vacuum cleaner with a rubber jack-o-lantern mask taped to the handle. His name was Z-Bot2131F, but I just called him Brady, after my dead brother. Brady, my brother, had come out cold, and…

Sock me in the stomach until I forget it. Down, down, baby. Down by the roller coaster.

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She wants to be an apple on a stick, a mop and handle, a brain attached to bones.

Remember Me to the Motherland

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When Igor stepped inside the capsule, he had two thoughts: the cramped tin can would either become his victory chariot, or his funeral casket.

it snows

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I popped open the wine with a Nike shoelace, a trick I learned on the internet

The White Cloud

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Like a small meteorite, a white cloud falls. The journey seems to have been long since it cannot spring up again, its wings being exhausted. Like a scared and shivering bird, it curls into my hand. Its apparent fragility prevents me from tightening my grip. A unique…

No access to the Hollywood Sign

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The sign that informs tourists that there is no access to the Hollywood Sign is the most ignored sign in all of Los Angeles.

ER Chronicles (3)

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In the shower she sees that her nipples are large and brown, feels the weight of her breasts in the hot water, and suddenly her hand is between her legs, seeking the pleasure that's always been denied her, always

Sparrow Down

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There's no surcease from heat, no "cool of the evening," like the songs say about summer in the South. Those songwriters sat under fans in the Brill Building in downtown Manhattan.

Huntingtons

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He and I are still and somber at the kitchen table. We’re both wearing black and stare at each other through blood-shot eyes. The children’s thumps echo on the ceiling above. I think about the other family’s children.

Butcher Knife

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When I was young I used to carry a butcher knife to bed. My grandmother placed it in my small hands before tucking me in.

Soap

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Jackson's a chocolate lab. I brought him home from the no-kill this morning. I've always wanted a dog, but I did it more for Wylie. We stand under the willow with the water running out the hose, Jackson, Wylie and I. Dandelions cover the…

Clover Grill: A Short Story

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I'm somewhere on I-10 in Mississippi, barreling westbound at 80 miles an hour through a rainstorm on a late Wednesday afternoon. The last road sign I remember was for Beauvoir, some Confederate general's…

Drought.

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423 days. The old man still possessed the child-like habit of biting his lower lip when he wrote. The thick skin as dry as pork rind. He recorded the days without rain in a spare, makeshift almanac. The pages waxened from the soiled press of his hand