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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.

I Am In Frequent Contact With You-Know-Who

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"I am in frequent contact with you know who, and am able, most of the time, to surreptitiously send messages all day long every day, whenever I am inspired."

Flesh and Blood

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On Monday I cook coq au vin. Fatty yellow skin detached and floating in the sauce.

Don't Touch

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Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day

Falcon Street

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Marcy is two years older and got her period the summer before me. She thinks she’s a professor of everything, but she’s my best friend so I don’t say she’s being stupid or that her tangerine lipstick is smeared across her front teeth.

Hot Dish

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Millie was a good woman, Bobby said. A good Christian woman. Well, I said, you can’t hold that against her.

And Her Eyes Said Something I Did Not Understand

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A herd of garbage trucks groaned down dark streets filling their black hydraulic hearts with rotten trashcans and glass, and a smile ate her whole face. I showed her a text from a friend: "T-minus 10 seconds till meltdown."She laughed and I wrote back.A small,…

I Wrote a Book

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About halfway through reading some book that was supposed to be some really deep shit, I decided to write my own book instead.

Without A Trace

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There, at that cabin, she had first tasted the back of a hand in anger, the sting of a horsewhip, bone-deep fear and, finally, an unthinkable act of self defense.

Withdrawal

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What He Knows What She Knows What You Know

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next time i come around i want to be a redwood.

Fall Of The Twin Towers

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Sitting at an outside table at the Bassett Café on West Broadway, I remember, in the background always the Twin Towers behind me in the photographs from that time And the sparrows in New York, bolder than anywhere working over the scrap

ANNIES CHASE

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Annie remembers clearly the smell of that classroom, the look and taste of it. Thirty little cruel girls, as cruel as only girls can be, sitting in rows of five.

Saving Grace

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It essentially comes down to this: If you have nothing left but paper, all you can really use it for is wiping your behind if you’re in a jam.

Bert & Ernie: The Pre Nup

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BERT AND ERNIE -- THE PRE NUPBy Roz Warren and Janet GoldenInspired by a recent Supreme Court decision, Bert and Ernie are finally going to tie the knot! Their just signed pre-nup was leaked to us by a Muppet whose identity we've promised not to reveal, in…

Three Sentences, Adding up to One Spectacular Disease-Ridden Bed of the Broken Hearted

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1.Oh yes, I'm just kicking around in the leftover moon dust you could say I'm certainly not waiting around for your satellite feed anymore certainly never ever hoping to see if your free falling hair strands still look…

Check

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When Quince came rolling up into my front yard that morning, we were up to our neck in August, staring down a seventh-grade year that had crept perilously close when we weren’t looking. I’m thirty-five years clear of it now, and I can still sense Texas on

Science Homework

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The difficulty of disabled parenting was predictable, but nothing could prepare me for having to say goodbye to my wife again on problem #7.

The Serious Writer and His Penis

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Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it.

Corporal Punishment

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When I was a little boy, I had a thing about women’s behinds.

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,

"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…

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.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 4

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That night we slept on the floor of Kirk and Maggie’s apartment and listened to them arguing all night about art and life and love. Ah, me, I sighed, the sad soul of America! I thought of Walt Whitman. I thought of Allen Ginsberg.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 6

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The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe

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.

Like Trial and (Also) like Error

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We sat all in a muffledlittle line up, on theconcrete lips of tomorrow'ssleepy chin, like all the world's good little children should, as the paradelimped itself slowly by, slapping itself against the young day'sexcitement like a damaged flattire, trying its…

Gerade rechts zum Volkszimmer

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So, we are all healthy but suffering financially, not equally so, and the tendency to suffer financially has been caused by humbling ourselves to particular men. We take a quiz in moral values, phrased as a party game.

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.

'Introduction' to LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT

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Was Sligo an unfeeling privacy-violator or an uncannily-feeling empath, privy to the deepest longings of those whose lives he came in contact with? [...] Sligo's grave is as silent as these pages ultimately would be if they were left unread.