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my first racist joke

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"There's a guy and he's standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon."

Literate Reply

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an oven mitt in Dachau

Dr. Nishad

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Sometimes she imagined the piles of Dr. Nishad's medical waste at the end of productive day at the hospital. Stacks and heaps of connective tissue, lung matter, gristle and bone, cancerous clumps of tongue and stomach and ropes of bad muscles like wrung,

Aviary

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I am a 33 year old drag queen, and I frequently confuse my dreams with reality. Each morning, I awake to a research project: what has actually occurred, and what was a dream? Today I woke up believing I'd lost a pound, so I weighed myself, and I was right.…

Yadda, Yadda, Yaddo

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I arrived at Yaddo, the prestigious artists’ retreat, in the summer of 1941. With America’s “day that will live in infamy” several months away, my own day of infamy began the second morning of my residency.

Fictionaut Is Audited

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Somehow, random phrases and sentences from the stories, comments and profile pages were generated as “replies”.

The Gulf

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My 99 year old mother...

At a loss

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I used to charm you, hold you in my hand.

Mussel Memory

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Andreas Cappelanus taught that the word / “love” comes from the word meaning / “to fish.”

The Thief

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I said, kiss this.

Over Fifty

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Yet it was another thing to grow to become indispensable to someone without whose infirmities the helper could not exist. People in general had started to call that helpless requiring “codependency,” but to Althea that word did no good,

Skyscrapers

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I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. Peo

Why We Came to Target at 9:58 on a Monday Night

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Donnie remembers just in time. So we run practically every stop sign and red light in town, and get there just before they close.

Arcana Magi - c.15: Chisame Murakami, Sentinel of Genbu

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The water burst into droplets of rain and fell on top of her. Chisame laughed out loud, a joy that overwhelmed her as she repeated this feat over and over.

Night at the Reservoir on Airline Drive

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Del and I watched my brother toe his way to the edge of the cottonwood branch that arched over the reservoir.

Surrendering August

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on the far shore, in the vineyards timed charges explode like the sun catching on fire it scares crows away from the grapes

Pool Toys

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Confused, I paused and locked eyes with the girl who’d just bounced it with the long, dark hair. “I just saw you with it.” She stared back at me. “Do you see it in my hands now?”

Peeling Onions

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I was in the kitchen peeling onions. They stung my eyes, and perhaps I was crying. I heard my dear husband run into the room and turned with the knife in my hand.

French Vanilla Death - Seconda Parte

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The lead man, who did not seem to be the most important or distinguished, just the one walking in line before all of the others, knocked twice on the door and opened it quickly. He stepped gingerly through the doorway and the others filed gloomily in afte

Goddesses

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The man she loved did not love her. At first she prayed to Athena for strength and steadiness. She began to knock on wood, spit on her…

At the Wedding

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I wear a white dress. I vomit on hers.

Rodney & Chelsea

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Chelsea's breasts are more the size of tangerines, but he likes them. He likes that she smells like Fruit Loops and that her front teeth overlap slightly. Her mouth is glossed. He slips his tongue inside.

Cabana

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Children

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This was a dream in which I didn’t know fear.

Swimming

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I held on to the edge

Bougainvillea

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Marcel Proust ran about the grounds chasing an itinerant tennis ball and kissing the guests, his huge testicles sweeping the lawn.

Carapace

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He gathers our abusive fathers, our esophageal tears, our peanut fetuses.

Ants

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I don't know what happened to all the men. Used to wonder if they killed them all.

Full Tilt Boogie

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Your tongue is enlarging... wait, it’s growing hair. No, wait, it’s planarian flatworms, an earthy taste oozing down your throat. A terrible itching spreads from your solar plexus, under your skin everywhere. You know if you scratch even once, you won

The Summer Reading Program -- A Librarian Tells All!

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It's July, which, if you work in a public library, means that the Summer Reading Club is in full swing. The SRC used to be just for kids, to motivate them to read when school wasn't in session. But in recent years many libraries have expanded the program to include…