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Undone

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Last summer our marriage took a direct hit and crashed into a deep pit with little warning when Millicent met a Facebook man and simply left, taking up with him, presenting him with my space in her life to receive her touch and this thought perpetually gnaws away, making me…

As Luck Would Have It

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For fifteen years Wendy waited for Harry to leave his wife. From time to time, there’d been ultimatums, break-ups too, but they never stuck. Now Wendy’s luck was about to change. It was Tuesday, Wendy and Harry’s standing night to be together. His wif

Unwanted Stories: A Public Service Advisory

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Unfinished, deeply flawed stories require the kind of handling you see in movies where a Virus That Will Doom Mankind is disposed of by scientists in hazmat suits.

Nothing Special

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I want nothing to do with anyone, other than doing nothing with you.

RUBYRED AND PARSHOOTER

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This stage of Junior’s young life was static, moving very little off-center since his graduation from high school five years ago. Treading water both professionally and emotionally never worried him. Not until after what transpired that night when Pr

Rosaleen In Mourning

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She hardly twitches. Her face regards the stars. If her body is an object, it is the isthmus before global warming. They want to find the source of the glacier in her eyes that is always melting. Maybe they like a woman who cries.

The Paprika Ewer

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Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. One thing she had learned in her sixty-seven years was that people who whistled were crass. Butchers whistled. So did peasants.

The Mouse and the Cat: A Beast Fable

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Pussy’s eyes narrowed, her dark, luxurious fur quivering on her back. “How can you say such a thing! It’s not true.”

Unseen (a Five-Pointed Star with Four Streaming Lights Coming Out of Its Back Like Mutable Feathers)

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What you see us doing here is not so much, andall we are not being there isn't either. Our kissing mouths may not always be singing, but we are constantly praying for you, and for more rain or less rain, rivers as the situation warrants. Don't…

"Changes" Isn't Just A David Bowie Song

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Erin Hoffmeyer Zulkoski. I was at work today, doodling on a piece of scrap paper. I often find myself writing my name, practicing my signature, for when I become famous. I have always written "Erin Zulkoski." Today, I wrote "Erin Hoffmeyer." This…

Zurich, 1989

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I do not yet really understand the power I seem to have at this moment. And I am certainly too young to recognize that it will end up being weakness, too.

I Knew the Topography of His Face Just by Shouting and Feeling the Reverberations

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Show me where to go, he said out of defiance for the moment in which time was malleable and fat minutes were consumed by wayward, languid hours. And all I could do for the time being was sit there excruciatingly anxious for this to pass, so it…

Winter Kills

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And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.

Post-Mortem

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She threw the wine glass on the floor.

Trees Knees

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A young man pushes a stroller filled with a sleepy child. A young woman strides alongside them, her gait leisurely. They are the first to visit the park today. The trees loom, vigilant.

Karma, Old Dogs, and Fine Men

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“You people remember the thing you learned in science about every action creating its own equal and opposite reaction? The same is true in other realms. All of existence is continually recycled…again and again in infinite permutations. In other words,

Born Too Soon: America's Hottest Teachers

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The teachers who get caught propositioning male students are always wholesome family women. This is why I have repeatedly called for regular round-ups of wholesome family women before another young man’s morals are corrupted.

Arcana Magi - c.11: Feelings

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The warmth flowed around her, and her heart beat at a calming pace. She felt as though the heat bathed her like water and felt her body cleansing within it.

The Parachutist In Love

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The Parachutist closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then opens them back up again. The earth is very beautiful, and very small from where he is. It is getting larger quickly, which is vaguely alarming.

Boys of Summer in Yonkers (Memoir Excerpt # 2)

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I am coming to understand how many memories of my father involve him, driving

Senior Center

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"Are you all right?" I ask. He blinks. He sits up. I help him stand. He looks sorrowfully at his coffee cup, which is on the floor.

Arcana Magi Pure - c.1

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Mayumi did not feel any pain, but it did frighten her. She slid her hand over her shoulder length hair and watched the mist cascade down her back.

Velcro Shoes, a Cardboard Computer, and Other Signs of Brilliance

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It wasn't until later that I realized that any time a teacher complimented you on your use of imagination, it was because they didn't know what else to make of whatever you'd created. My homemade narrative video in lieu of the assigned “getting to know y

Passing Past

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No one means to go that way, on an errand to the mall....

A Frog in a Well

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Ikkyu liked coming over especially at dinner. I'm a great cook and even though he no longer needed to eat himself, the idea of a sumptuous meal and a nice bottle of wine appealed to him. We'd commune about the poetry of karma flowers, seafood, and women, he in his robes and…

The Grief Counselor

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At first she kept repeating "I don’t know why he's doing this" as if the cops thought she was mixed up in it somehow. When they convinced her that all she needed to do was talk to her brother and tell him to give himself up, she looked hopeless.

Proper Grammar

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Another thing about Dysthymia is how I get locked into a thought, a needle in a record of a song I can’t get out of my head, a song that drives me crazy until I hear it again, until I play it just the amount of times to where my brain is satisfied.

The Five Stages of Editing

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The recent release of my debut novel alt.punk was extraordinarily exciting; however, maturing the novel from first draft to publication was not without editing pains. Similar to the Kübler-Ross theory, I progressed through what I refer to as the “five sta

Subway Imitator

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The imitator’s segue to his sad life story was, “But what isn’t funny…”

Cabrito

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Mariposa, the skinny hound, crawls out from under the trailer