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Breathing

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It was the end of a New York City summer, the heat and humidity thick all around. But in her body it was an unforgiving winter, the memory of pain always leaving her cold

Love Songs for Kandahar

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You worry that the mullahs suspect us, but that cannot be. We never touch in public. You weep and I shake when a neighbor knocks on the door.

Feeling Marlene (from OPEN CITY Magazine Number 16)

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I got your card in the mail via my ex-wife in Saskatoon. On it you wonder where I am, if I am still writing, and if I have any stories I would send for you to look at because you think I should be published, too.

A sense that something has happened

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hunting after dark,/ in the quiet they seemed to appear/ with every new poem I read, each new workshop, some hunting carried on/ by both animals.

Tremor

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I ask because she's the animal person, not me. She understands animal behavior.

Fifi Climbs To the Top!

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Fifi is one piece of work, from the Ann Coulter Tits-And-Ass Rattlesnake School Of Broadcasting Venom And Bullshit Like Goebbels...

He knows better

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It’s time to let her go.

The Brother

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I guess it’s extremely difficult to be a decent human being in all aspects of your life.

Oh, Myth...

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Philip Ahearn woke up in an empty field. Last night had been one hell of a party - he almost hooked up with Rosamund - and, at the time, it seemed wiser to crash outside than to drive and really crash. But he wasn't a kid anymore and sleeping on the…

Arcana Magi - c.19: Opportunity Arising

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Kyo held her hand gently and stared at the bracelet as Brie explained everything that happened. It was painful to hear.

Possum Woman

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They always referred to her as the possum woman back home. She scoured the streets just as the sun fell into deep slumber behind the sentinel, sun tanned shoulders of the mountains encircling small town anywhere.

Wild Strawberries of Mars

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might leave NYC or Earth

The Wreck of Me

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“You’re a hard habit to break,” I said. My tongue was flaring. Flirting with nurses was my father’s thing.

Recovering From Debt Rape

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Sure, we'll look at the causes for the lack of smackers, but, really, if you had a Swiss bank account stuffed with dinero, you wouldn't care how much your spouse's sex-change operation costs or if your boss approved of your lunch-hour massages you receive

One Poem, Eight Rejections

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Do you suppose you could make your female protagonist a salamander rather than a human?

A Life of My Own

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You don't make money worrying about other people's feelings. I learned that from my father at an early age. He managed rental properties, which I, his daughter, now own. He wanted a son, so I became one.

Leave Off Doves

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Midway through the fall semester, an unremarkable girl in Professor Woody's Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words.

The Light From A Sports Bar A Thousand Miles Away

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"Michael has had no drink, no cigarette, no illicit drug and very little illicit sex since September 14, 1989."

With Ariel in Their Hands

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Sylvia Plath killed herself while her children slept upstairs, breakfast ready at their doors. Anne Sexton wanted to do it, but Sylvia got there first, making Anne just a little less remarkable, although she tried often enough, her death like a song put on repeat. …

Fort Stark, New Hampshire

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Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get where you need to be.

Postcard

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A tiny story, 55 words, just enough to fit on a . . .

Their Next

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The base of the monastery before him, he let her go into a warm updraft and she cascaded out and up, never falling as she rode the tiger into her next.

London Fog

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I stumbled out of the Ten Bells pub, still a bit tipsy from the absinthe, but had a clear vision of what I wanted to have happen this night. The air was cold on my rosy cheeks, so I shielded my face…

Granny's Reform School Weekend Intensive Workshop, Session One

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Being a grandparent is most joyous when deliberately subversive.

Rain

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The Mating Call Of The North American Female Sounds Like The Deep Bellow Of A Birthing Moose

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"...if Rosie O'Donnell were to attach a horn to her forehead, she'd move up the ranks as the deadliest creature in the world."

Who Will Carry Us?

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1. People avoided Mac, the Great White Hunter, which was how he liked to think of himself, even though he was not white. Mac was cocoa colored and stalked his prey nearly nude. The city was his…

Refill Please

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“Hello, this is Natalie Silverman, I’ve been tying to get my prescription filled for over a week. ... Maybe you recall, you did my brain surgery last spring? I’m sorry that there’s still a balance of over eight thousand dollars. I hope you don’t hold tha

Steady Keel

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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.2 - c.2

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Azure leaned on the wall outside the gymnasium. She pulled back the sleeve of her blouse and saw the shackle glow. Azure realized that her feet dragged across the ground, leaving behind straight-line grooves on the grass beside the sidewalk.