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Get Thee to a Nunnery

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I was in a nunnery wondering how I wound up in the midst of so many nuns as it wasn't my nature to hang out with nuns. I find them tedious and redundant, though I do have to say I appreciate their economy with words. You never really saw a…

the wall

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Looking at an image of a graffiti on a wall on our computer screen we ask ourselves: what is the image's main graffiti-like property? We might answer: its location. But that is a contextual and political interpretation. There's nothing in that answer which addresses the…

Coal Mine Pickle Jar

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I can’t move - I try to move my arms - I try to move my legs - If I can scream then that will wake me up - I scream

Burying the Tramp

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Heaven and hell. Hadley believed in neither. One way or another you’re a meal ticket for someone, best to be the one spending than the one being spent. The worms and insects are getting their meal ticket now, that’s for sure.

Sunday Morning Series- 6: I Love You, Man, but Hate Your God

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But if He makes you happy, stands/ as bulwark against the vast, indifferent/ and deadly universe, then cling to Him

The Gift

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and oh how serratedly so

Wolf - Variation 5

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his eyes see blood as circumstance.

Dissecting

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skin is soft and too easily sliced away

Tons

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Drink tons of water they keep telling me...

Female Scent-Marking in the Suburbs

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We watched through the plate glass window, like kids watching a mother guppy eat her young. A woman approached the sweaters but stopped suddently, as if she sensed the dark force Darth Vader projects in Star Wars movies.

Lights Out in the Ardennes

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Once with the lights flickering....

Read Through

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“Professor Gosser,”continued Victor, “I once screwed three women in a row--I mean of course, time, not space—good one, huh? Well, each woman farted at the exact moment she climaxed. Would that qualify as coincidence? And did it have anything to do with th

Me and Frisco on the Road

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I don't think I minded so much watching the trucks hit him, one breaking his spine with a decisive snap, and the other finishing the job by splitting his skull. I don't think I minded watching as much as I did watching those two boys poking around at his

The Answer at the Bottom of the Stairs

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She knew she had missed a step as her body rolled down the stairs. Panic set in as the world flew by her at lightening speed. Would she survive?

Each Planned to Kill the Other

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What was heinous about it was how easy I assumed it would be. That was truly heinous, and it was a mistake in the end to think of it that way. But I’ve learned from what’s heinous. I’ve bought a plastic cylinder filled with nylon zip ties. They’re great f

missing glory

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i found her world cluttered and noisy, a place where logic frowns

And then we... Part 2

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The way I figure it, mom wasn't worth a shit. I'd cry when she hit me but she'd just keep pounding. When I was seven, she burned a hole in my back. It happened one day at the fair. We were walking around. She didn't have any money so all we could do was walk. I had…

A Good Provider

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She looked over from the passenger seat at her husband and smiled. It had been twenty years. She hadn't expected him to remember. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, placed her hand on his thigh.“We'll be home soon enough,” he said. He was not…

He's All Man--And He's All Mine

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My man’s got a habit that’s kinda strange. I’ve got a feeling he’s never gonna change. Whenever I take a trip, when I git back, my underwear’s ripped.

LEAVES

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...black birds fall from trees...

Crash Car Star

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here we go.

Payments

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What it was for, didn’t matter. When Susan walked into Fred’s house every few weeks and start talking, he’d just nod and say, “Sure, I know how tough it is out there, baby.” Then they’d drink some wine and put on some music, and he’d give her a little mon

Handicapping the Saints

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I've been a fan of hagiography—the lives of the saints—since first grade when Claude Dunham and I were asked to represent St. Stephen and St. Sebastian, two martyrs of the early church, in a tableau vivant of bored boys.

The Truth About Storytelling

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irretrievably we tell ourselves stories irretrievably as beaded water slides off our skin

Politicouscous II

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In which era was it not a scary world?/ Last century, the perils were both red and yellow/ after Jerry was undone. Now, they’re brown/ and cross, without respect, the Rio Grande

Ai Kitano

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Sick of sight, Ai Kitano constructed glasses by which the wearer was rendered totally blind.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 47

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Who better to know the wiles of the fox than the vixen herself?

This Bud’s For You

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I suspect I’ll make the right decision.

The House on El Nino Diablo Court

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On a cold, dark night near to All Hallows' Eve in October of 1930, I was summoned by Constable John Wakefield to the house of Vernalier Driscoll. The constable was wild-eyed and very nervous, his hair appeared to be standing on end.

Let's All Go Down to the Rising River

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As the pastor of a small southern church, I'm often asked by our younger members about this prickly notion of global warming. They herd around me, as adolescents are prone to do, and they ask me, “Dear father, is this something that we should fear, these…