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In Memoriam

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One by one, cars filed into the cemetery, pelted by the summer rain under a gun-metal sky. The procession moved slowly, a series of brake lights and headlights, too close together, too far apart; there were sedans and SUVs, mini-vans and pick-up trucks, shiny new vehicles…

Saint Basil's

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The last of the Kazan Tatar Khans. Each dome represents a severed head.

The Jade Dragon

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FUN MOVIE TRAILER: 41 members of my family participated in a movie I co-wrote and shot with my wife. Have a look!:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA7k2r81iXEHere's the 64 minute film-noir-style…

DOMA Do-Do

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His smartphone rang. A picture came up of him kissing the blonde.

Convalescent

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that was one ending

whoosh

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i learned all

Closest Living Relative

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Uncles. Cousins. Enos. No matter how loosely a net is woven, eventually the strands come together again.

Fur licking City Cats

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Howling, prowling, yowling Baby Dykes, stalkin' chicks, throwin' fits, takin' hits! A thousand thigh divin', rosebud nipped, fur licking dancin' cats, (Claws in, claws out! Yes!) sniffin' that cradle of love.

The Fat Geisha Sings The Ballad of the Bamboo Shoot

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Come gather round and listen to me You senior VPs from AIG As full of yourselves As you are of wealth So engorged are you with raging greed The warnings you neither see nor heed. Come gather round and listen to me Sing of the Minister of the Third Degree. …

our bodies were melting into each other

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I had a dream about you once. I don't know if I told you about it already or not. (If I did, I apologize.) I'm never quite sure who you're writing about in some of your stories (maybe a composite of everyone?) but I did hold you one more time. In my dream

Reciting Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians Aloud Word for Word to Distract Myself From a Panic Attack

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I hold dreams made of iron / that tip my spear of regret—

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 44

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The butterscotch on that painting makes me want to lick the canvas.

Check

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My toes curled together under the pathetic rag of a bedsheet, the frost creeping in through the two-inch deformity of the window on the left wall. I was tempted to sneak a glance at them to insure that they weren't black, but then decided that I'd…

Weeks

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She was wearing a black tank top and jeans, standing in the shade. Why was she there again? The camera hanging around her wrist answered her question. Right, he had called. He had asked if she could take picture for him and his…

Punkin Head

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The old neighborhood, long paling in the shadow of greater Los Angeles, was reduced to two blocks in length and occupied only one side of Figueroa. It was the crumbling bastian of homes whose architecture remembered yet street-car bells clanging, watermelon farms and…

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 5

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Vladimir walked down the little path next to the creek with us. I stopped along the way and picked off a sliver of some of the bedrock that was sticking out alongside the narrow path, to take home with me as a souvenir of my family castle, just to be ab

Decided

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Millicent asked me to stop over at her place for coffee after work because we needed to talk. While pouring, she said she was torn about telling me what her father used to do to her when her mom was not around, but she thought I needed to know how twisted her life was…

The Forest is Falling

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another paper saving 55er

All you need is a friend

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So, before he could brew with the crew, God decided to make one last trip to Earth, drawn by nostalgia and the prospect of watching a football World Cup from the stands. That is where He met Mini.

In the Sequence of Events

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Eroica sprawled among/ the horns and violins

you are the stem that rises

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In my dream I am the showy leaf, and you are the stem, and you are the strength. I am the leaf turning colors, my face flushed, the fine hair at my neck, and there is the deep carnal twisting around your stem that sends me floating to the ceiling over a

Inner Demons

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Every soul has a shadow.Last night, I saw mine. I saw greed,with his sticky, gnarled fingers,seizing the tablecloth of a grand feast,indifferent(or conveniently oblivious)to his starving loved ones. I saw ingratitude,with her proud, scornful …

Her Smile

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The white and yellow are sublime and desperately powerful, like angry screaming over tears and through laughter or hatred. Maybe the words are about crying or laughing, but the expressions are altogether impenetrable and distant. The jokes told behind the teeth and through…

What was your first Combat Mobile Team experience?

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My first Combat Mobile experience was as the only Specialist in an ATC ("air traffic control") assignment. The rest of the squad were simple grunts lead by the massive Sergeant James T. Adams, Regular Army, the ghost of the Central Highlands. Sgt. Adams m

...until love lasts.

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She didn't know why she thought the ring wouldn't fit her finger, but it slid on easily and effortlessly, coming to rest in the old familiar place it always had, the groove that had worn in her finger after seven years of wearing it. She hadn't worn it in a few months,…

Nothing Ever Stays Looking

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The same, some things you Can't explain, most trees Have felt it go bone dry at the roots before. I've learned to let love Go bye bye. You think they don't Want to answer your pathetic knocks, But they're…

Behold the New Day That Allows the Rabbit Hole to Disappear

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For hours and hours she swirled, and swirled some more. She was trying to be there for everyone, yet no one realized how much pain they were causing her. Some of them had thrown invisible darts of anger all day, and she had endured each one, because she c

One Day I Will

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Gotta ask myself what I’m doing here. What keeps me tied. Caged. What is it?

This Is How Far It Is

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How long has this been going on? the admitting nurse asks.

A Scriptwriter's Story

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He paid the price for being a dick when he tried to write. The Muse did not care for violent behavior.