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Sees, Kindness, and Made

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SeesWe fell into this lake together and traced the clean soft lines straight back to ourselves, with a carefree laugh, ha ha ha-- an embarrassing ease. This small miracle does tend to put in orbit something high flying besides clouds into the sky inside of…

Out of That Bed 1963

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My father's hands were huge. His left knuckles gashed as a kid when he rode his bike too close to a moving train. When his fingers fisted around a glass, the scarred joints bulged from his grip like blind eyes.

Parking Garage

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It's that quiet comfortable darkness. One should feel it often and necessarily.

Novel Excerpt - Full Chapter of Jimmy!

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Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound ...

Why I am Afraid of Spiders

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SPIDERS

A mostly true story about the Coca-Cola Museum

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At work I recommended someone go to the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta. I told you about recommending it to someone. “I always wanted to go back there,” I said. “You did? You never told me,” you said.

Snapshots

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Jake remembers that Amy told him once that she thought that somehow he would always be a part of her life. That was before she went to Spain and married an American bull fighter.

Sugarfoot Pond

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i was jus countin' your heartbeats, Emmie and you know what? i think they's the same as mine!

Pieces

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I find my mother’s pink Pyrex mixing bowl at the antique store on Fairview Avenue. It’s in the hands of a fat woman in a blue down parka, and she’s holding it upside down, squinting at the sticker on the bottom.

We Don't Need No Education

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“There’s an ill energy that emanates from your precise heart that I find attractive”

The Duck, the Clock, and the Condom

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Every night famous authors read not only to us, but to a duck. A wild female who emerged from the lake just as we were gathering, settled her gray-brown feathers down not three feet from the podium, tucked her head inside her wing, and remained there. If the duck liked…

Necessary Heat

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What is writing, Rick B.? You appear in your photo to be more handsome than your first brother. Sudden memory appears: "Question mark? Curvy: cock. Exclamation! Stiff: prick."

The Most Beautiful Truth

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I still believe in the very slim chanceI might say something luckyenough to reach your truest insides, your at homespirit, that you will hearand understand ascare on my part, evenif you can never quiteidentify me asits secret sender, that warm…

Arcana Magi Behind the Scenes: Character Sheets

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A behind the scenes look at the character designs of the Arcana Magi Universe.

How to travel with your Demons (3)

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Watch her now as she tries to not smoke. Considers, reconsiders. Checks her nylon bag for her phone charger, and lights a cigarette anyway, which she immediately extinguishes in the kitchen sink.

The Inkblot Test

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“Regard this inkblot,” the Psych says to Worker 168. “What do you see?” Worker 168, a thin young women wearing overalls, peers at the inkblot. “I see a beautiful summer day,” she says. “A young woman, wearing a flowing dress, sits…

Tainted Love

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...skinny love, skinned and thinned weak broth love...

Veld fire

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The crackling inferno sweeps across the ground Devouring all in its scorching path

Whatever Happened to Sue Ellen?

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When she awoke in her yard, she poured what was left of the rum into the dead grass. The man beside her lay with fingers curled, a claw she’d found wedged up her skirt when she woke. Tom, she said, his name nonsense, tongues. Might as well have been any

Eating Grief at Bickford’s

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Eating Grief at Bickford's · From Allen Ginsberg's “Kaddish” There are no places anymore Where I can sit at a threadbare table Pick at the crumbs on my plate And wipe The white dust From my pitch …

Thirteen Ways of Nevermore: Arkansas, 12/31/2010

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MIDNIGHT all day. Bleak December. A chiaroscuro, snowing blackbirds. (Pas de cinq mille, in B minor.)

Golden State

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The first door on the right is the bedroom. Even if I try to forget; my body remembers and the strength of its yearning fairly pulls me inside. I noticed you left the door ajar. Really you should be more careful.

Oklahoma, 1944: Howard Hughes Spends the Night in Jail

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There's a drain in the floor.

John McEnroe Visits the 15th Street Diner

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“What’s a hushpuppy?” 264 asked 118, who knew three words of English. 118 said, “No.”

Samuel Stoltzfus’ Divining Plate

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It’s true that there are many accounts of fascinating Amish dinnerware, but none is more interesting than Samuel Stoltzfus’ Divining Plate, forged in 1881.

1918, 1944, 1991, and now

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Disability is indivisibility—all of us could be its members—unlike its affirmative action forebears who remain underrepresented, even as the groups’ selected contestants prepare to retire early, a distributed group whose specialty is American anthropology

The Cool Report

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I didn't go to China, however. I would have gone there in debt wearing their clothing. I was afraid to owe even $4,000 (what I still owe) living overseas.

Forgetfulness

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But the urge now is to unknow the urgency with which I forgot my self-description.

Swicks Rule!

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She waves her hand around, says, “Pah!” and starts digging invisible things out of the potato salad with her bare hands.

Urban Renewal

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Bike shops, vintage shops, after hour bar shops