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My Book of Frozen Ponds

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We broke our hearts rather than sit in your reversible seats with the plain brown paper packages tied on our laps, we did so together. You don't want to hear about that. It gets too close to the actual murder of love. I…

They know about fish

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A debacle has been scheduled for 11:45...

Just Before the Funeral

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We had been on the way to the church when we found them. The handkerchief in my breast pocket was folded just so and I'd tried to recreate the perfect ribbon in Ashley's hair, …

Ode to Flannery O'Connor

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Gert sat in the car and wiped at the inside of the window while the defroster blasted at full strength. The shards and slivers of ice that networked across the windshield were just thick enough to hinder visibility. Bane wrenched the door open and shoved

End of Wendell

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...though in reality it is a dirty white with brown splotches now appears to him as a fluorescent green garden snake.

Love in Miniature

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Hole #1 – Loop-de-Loop A piece of metal curved into a loop like a curlicue off-ramp. Jake and I step up to the Golf-O-Rama mat like accidental twins. My ball is half blue and half orange, like a gas station freebie. The old man at the desk said I

Something Like the Promise of a Better Life

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Unhappiness is a necessary boon

Errol

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He prided himself on being not menacing like a bear.

Mantis

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Sally knows the situation: if your name's on the list you can't come in. If they try to walk past her, swipe their card on the electronic barrier's scanner, instead of a short benevolent bleep and the gate sliding open, it will fail. The hapless individua

Pilot Wannabe

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We were both looking up at the rainy sky, while the big jet barely moved through the clouds, coming in for a landing at Oakland between storms. It sort of reminded me of 911, the way they just seemed to hover above us, barely moving, like they were poss

Cleopatra Goes Shopping

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Cleopatra fills her cart with food and cosmetics until it is overflowing. She proceeds out of the store. The clerks stop running products over their scanners and gaze in incredulity, and confusion.

The Tote Bag Song

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You can ask so many questions Of what’s it all about You can empty out the closets And roll the mothballs out But no one has the answers It’s all a mystery There’s a bigger picture But it’s really hard to see

Life Sentence

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“I believe it is some form of primitive recreation with a board and wheels,” the one and a half eyed orange blob said with an Australian accent.

Prick-Tease

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“Pull out, pull out, you dimwit!” Cheryl B told Andy. “I told you to pull out before you came, if you ever expect to climb up on top of me again! God, Andy, what’s wrong with you?” Cheryl had flaming red hair and was what we now call “Plu

Working at a Truck Stop Outside Charlotte

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My name's Barbara and don't call me Barbie if you want to be my friend.

Mom #2

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We’d sometimes find my mother asleep in her chair outside her trailer at the nudist camp when we drove up. She loved her garden there, even with the rabbits eating her young tomato plants. She used to coax the bluebirds down to the railing of her trailer

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…

The Book

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“Are you comparing the communists with Hitler?” “Are you telling me there is no comparison?"

Austin, 22

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A thrill seeker before midnight - but closer to twilight ...

A Young Twenty

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This is no age for love; this is a time for discovery. So no time for me to sit around my candle is slowly burning, while wind combs my hair. If this is what loves comes to then I predict in the eventuality of me being an old woman by the sea living with her friend, the…

War Garden

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From the home front....

Scrambled Eggs and Sympathy Cards

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We spent that entire winter with shaky hands and shrunken egos.

bienvenue (a poem)

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if you lost your list on your way here i will help you get what you came for.

Delicate

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I'm not plagued with high levels. Must be all the raking I do. My pubes look as lush as my hair, so fire isn't even a concern. Maybe heat exhaustion is.This might be a poem,My oceans aren't small.

Invalid Ghosts

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It was just a blob. It was a blob that blocked everything from sight that it covered, and it was a blob that refused to remain in one shape or size, but it was just a blob. It wasn't the first time…

Small Ghosts

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the mother tells her child the flashes at the horizonare fireworks, not bombs, so he will not be afraid.at night he curls by the door or else he follows her to a different place. he is quiet, then. as if he knows the secret challenge.better if he and all the others…

An Exquisite Fall From Grace

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He lay on a wooden pallet, which he had placed inside a cardboard box that might have once held a refrigerator. Except the box was labeled “Robotic Endoscopic Surgery System.” His head was propped on a gym bag that contained all his possessions. Outside, it…

headaches not worth having

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this is one of those "there are two kinds of people" sort of things.

The Prom Queen and the Quarterback

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Friday night, a bar downtown, beneath the swirling dots of disco lights, seated at a table by the door, I come across a Cheerleader from my high school days, having a Martini with the Quarterback she married. Even in forgiving light, …

Agrarian Joys of Ornamental Lawns

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The leaves/ that clung through February/ fall, dung brown,