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Imagination Factory

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I sit in a small office amongst a huge pile of letters picking out individuals and arranging them on a big square made of something like paraffin

You Couldn't Pay For a Review This Good, But I Did

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I’ve previously tried the old-fashioned route to get my books reviewed, calling up editors, asking friends who work at newspapers and magazines to put in a good word for me, stalking . . . I mean, contacting freelancers.

It’s Real TV, Uncle Remus

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We’re lost in a brambly aberration, thorny tangles of a wacky nation.

You Better Quit Your Runnin' Around

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I remember it was late at night I was with Johnny Appleseed’s younger brother Bruce Bruce Appleseed He was the lead singer for the band Fake Moustache Turns out he was just a bum Set on vibrate Who’d bought a 10-gallon hat once But h

Flash Wk 4: Cartography

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The surveyor began at the mouth of the Klamath and worked his way toward the mining camp. He'd expected to find a trail, but for most of the way he hacked through dense underbrush. The river shrubs clambered into the water, just skimming its surface. There were…

Tinnitus Story

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I went to see an audiologist this afternoon. He specialized in tinnitus. Good news for me. I've been plagued with tinnitus for 55 years. It started the morning after a catastrophic experience with LSD. It was there when I awoke in a padded room in a hospital in San José,…

This Life

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Me and the wife are tucked away in our little house.

East

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We went east. It wasn't all that easy, but easier than staying where we were, unable to freely move or give birth to anything brand new. We went east insearch of the mysterious faraway beginnings of a mythical wild west. We went east becauseit…

You're Never Going to Break My Heart

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Like any lovable lump of hidden rocks, these hills she breathes life into, blinking existence, are all well worth jumping up and over again and again. Just ask the little kids. Their endless landscape of discovery…

Snacking Sneak

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He was sitting in the library, slipping the pistachios nuts between his wet lips.

3 Dollar Bills

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At home I cranked the oven and stuffed both pizzas in there and when they were ready I ate every crumb of both pies.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

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One of his big failings was getting pissed off about things behaving badly but not troubling to immediately fix them. He was working on being more prompt.

The Summer Of My Beautiful Idiocy

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In the summer of '68 my father persuaded me to go visit my grandparents on their farm in North Dakota. I had long hair and dressed like a French symbolist outlaw. Took the train to Minot, spent the night in a hotel (watching Your Cheatin' Heart, movie about Hank…

Bug Water

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Milton Berle bought a hot dog at the Stucky's snack bar once. True. I wasn't there, but I believe it.

suggestive lipstick

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Maybe in some lie you told, your life began making sense. Not mine. But your quiet beauty may be what carries you. We have to both quit eating Couch Potato Chips, and read the book Tender Is the Squid, instead. Your ghosts – they’re so soft and sensitive.

How It Started

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At two AM I went to bed, and the mill shut down shortly after. The silence jerked me out of sleep so fast I almost screamed. Choking and sweating, I lay there and tried to figure out why I was so scared. And then I realized: for the first time in half a y

living alone now

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Oh, yeah, that's me, the girl in the blue dress, the girl with short blond hair. Slight smile occasionally passing over her face, sitting at the café table, waiting patiently for the semi-famous rock star to show and buy a house. Brown and sea-green

An Idiot is Never Worth Your Time or More Mythomania for Your Buck An Idiot is Never Worth Your Time or More Mythomania for

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"It's a true saying then, that 'it's never worth while speakingto an idiot,'" answered Smerdyakov firmly, looking significantlyat Myshkin." - Dostoevsky "Why are you telling everyone that you are going to Tchermashnya, so that you think you're going to Moscow, when you…

Small Talk

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Popping in to buy a tire gauge. Stumbling, drunk, on your way to buy cigarettes with two cops coming in behind you. You hold the door.

His Heart’s In the Right Place

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Andy was puzzled. “Why, then, does everyone say my heart is in the right place?” “I think that’s just an expression,” Doc said. “It should not be taken literally.”

From This Distance

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Can you remember how we could each disappear completely. . . .

The Sinking Boat of Evolution

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Living dangerously, I left my house with no glasses, no umbrella. I also forgot my straw hat, no purple dye for my gray hair, my map of the world to come,

Revolution

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Suppose a bowl of mushroom soup. A table and a chair. A woman arguing against the uselessness of war. A bomb ticking in a man’s groin.

Second Career

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“Just how many different bipeds try to hide their nakedness?” “Only one. And that'd be us, idiot.”, Twinkle responded. “Then, why don't we mind showing certain parts of our bodies?”, she then asked. Twinkle could see it was going to be…

Chapter 15: An Introduction to Regression

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My mouth is orange rind and whiskey, my tongue a cocktail cherry.

The Wood Hover (a parody of GM Hopkins)

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My trousers turn when her these eyesights earn is learned in light,Like limn of laugh or limbs hers — do I know her, no? — but gauzy Greyhair ravings greyscale havens of Old Jake whose floozy Wooed, ne'er raised the wood that, pencil-perched, arrests…

Late Eulogy

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We wished it had been murder./ It’s easier to hate for hurtfulness/ One you never knew.

Afternoon In The Park

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He liked to say that he was taking a moral and spiritual inventory check. Well, he would like to say that if anybody asked what his problem was. He was a ticking time-bomb, as his grandfather liked to…

Throw Away Society

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And this will be our testament

sweet beast of idle speculation

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So, the sweet beast of idle speculation may be calling my name by memory, because I am capable of feeling, or suffering. I may be a conduit to such, because the rational soul provides the bridge. Some wild ass summoning your name, clean, uncovered, disc