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The Catch

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His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

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Joanne Simpson sat in her pew of the church that dominated her tiny town, listening to the buzzing of disturbed voices like a hive of bees trapped in a wall. She knew exactly what was wrong. Some parishioners sat on the edge of the pews, while some whispe

Masquerade II

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. . . once you start reading and thinking about what he's saying, it's like looking at the reflection of your soul in a mirror . . .

My Stuff

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Crass, vulgar, boorish, impaired, angry, depressed, jealous, regretful.

Continuing Sundown

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He gave her everything she hoped for, with the exception of two things.

Forever KAP

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She mustn't...

Friday Out

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Seeing her in black / with his arm around her / from the other side / of a glass door. / He gave her a beer. / She might’ve been thirsty, / uncomfortable.

It's not heavenly light, b!*&#.

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He stopped believing in God when he learned how balls worked. Spermatocytes turned into spermatids and spermatids turned into spermatozoa, the transition taking place in tiny loop de loops called the seminiferous tubules which contain at least three…

The Thrill of a Lifetime

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I honestly can’t say, with Lynda, who cheated first. More than likely Lynda did, because I know she was pregnant when I came home from college for the summer (this was 1963) and we had to go out and find a doctor who would give her some pills to get rid

140 Words on Solitude and Being Alone

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As a child I drowned myself in the pages of books, and as a writer I prefer to be left alone with my imagination.

BLT

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I had a sister-in-law who was a licensed nutritionist. Not sure what “licensed” means, but she had some certificate and worked in a hospital. Hospitals! Places not known for their cuisine, much less their nutrition. —So, what do you…

i've worn it like a trophy all day

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if i could i would leave/ my beating heart like flowers/ pumping blood upon your doorstep/ in gory testament/ to the way you make me feel.

Grandma Rose Watched the Fights

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I think she later thought about that. Just as she loved her son, I loved my mother. Just as my dad loved her, so the same kind of protective honoring love existed. Right or wrong, it was there, the elephant in the room.

Transgression

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I look as sympathetic as I can, under the circumstance, which is entirely unsympathetic.

68 & Riverside

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Martin met Siena in the elevator, carrying two brown bags of groceries. She asked him to press the button for floor eight. As they rose, Martin fixed his eyes on the display as it changed numbers: G, 2, 3… and so on.

The $275 Root Beer Float

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That was some root beer float. It cost us a grand total of $275. She pulls up in front of Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor and leaves the motor running while I jump out and run into the parlor. It was early evening. We HAD to have a root beer float. You

Shark

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Violet goes with her mother to the home, delivering cookies to old folks. She's getting to hate how she goes along with everything her mother asks. Some of her friends are rebelling already, and Violet feels something under her skin. It's still just a dark shape, lurking…

My best

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I don't have time

The Virtues of the Patient Lizard

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He will feast and die beneath the glaring gaze of the western sky, waiting patiently for what will come next

Snark

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His Danger Pistol was out of bullets, his Bag of Tricks was empty, and he wasted his last can of Antimatter back at the lab. All he had was his Charm and his wits. Charm wouldn't last forever, and he'd always come up a little short in the wits department.

Waiting for Wanda

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And why rabbits? Rabbits never went to a slaughter house. Rabbits died in the road, run over by cars, shot by prepubescent boys or eaten by dogs but never slaughtered in mass. It didn’t make any sense, thought Art and he wanted to ask the small man i

Bog Crossing

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Written within five minutes, being a parody of the artless vacuity of observational 'poetry'(By Tedward Weeney and Seamus Spews) The large wind in the treetop tells the blackbird its own voice. The yellow grainyard resounds to the clodding of my farmer's…

The Umbrella

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Joe and the Spiderman

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Once upon a time I sat in summer chairs beside cool vine walls. This was in a borough east of the major city, where families gathered in seasonal joy, by blooms fragrant, to worship the summer and its might. There is nothing diminutive about the world when one is…

How To Win With Mom

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My mother’s serene and patient voice flew up the staircase once again “Megan, are you done feeling sorry for yourself?”

Like 37 Hiroshima Bombs

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Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

The Brevity of Anthropology

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In time's embroidery, the human storyis a short stretch of a short strand within the thread of half a knot-and that stretch of strand's defective. What will mourn us when we're gone?Not the plants which live so lightly on the earth.Not the scorpions and not the ants.Perhaps…

The Fat Girl

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She never leaves her desk, but food appears like magic.

Free Form Jazz of Spiritual Harlem

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we are one

In Which Mad Dog Kicks French Women's Bony Butts

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If Mad Dog were interrogated by female U.S. forces in a combat-riven no-woman’s-land to see if he was really an American, he couldn’t name the most recent WNBA champion.