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A Knobby Thing

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She feels ugly but ready for anything.

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.

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

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."

The Way is Dark, the Road Long

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The day I got out of prison the sun was shining.

Animal Park (Part I)

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“The robin is the one. …

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…

Why Dogs are Men and Cats are Women

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Dogs will hump anything. Cats do not hump.

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.

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.

House Rabbit

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I would be proud to be your house rabbit. I make this case: I will listen flop-eared close to your every concern and exhultation. If I doze off nudge me. I wake quickly.

The Unknown Substance

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Mama's good at finding things, but hardly ever what she's looking for.

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.

Lisa

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She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no. She didn’t say anything. So I helped her to the car and we didn’t talk along the way.

Passing Past

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

Elephant in the City

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No beeping of horns, just complete silence. No panic, just calmness. There’s this one word: serendipity.

Urban Renewal

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Bike shops, vintage shops, after hour bar shops

Peshawar kids

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a dark day

You Friend Me On Facebook

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You look just like your mom she says I LOL her and say, funny cuz you look just like yours

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.

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…

Oklahoma, 1944: Howard Hughes Spends the Night in Jail

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There's a drain in the floor.

We Have Eskimo Bars

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Real men don’t screw around in Canada, he confided to the strawberry blonde sitting beside him at the Houston bar. He’d bought her a couple of beers, and her body language said she was interested.

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.

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…

Close to Ireland (for the Paddy Group Challenge)

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The closest I've been to Ireland is Conwy castle on the coast of Wales. It was summer, mid-way through college. I was naive and dreamy then. I wandered historic and literary monuments throughout England and weighed my future options.

Turning Thirty

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It was a year of red, white, and blue bell bottoms, chokers, and mini-skirts. It was not a decade of pink stretch pants, pink sweatshirts, and pink snowsuits.

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 …

Tracks

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The winter following their son's death, Mr. Kelly's wife became absorbed by the tracks that ran in back of their house. At any given hour in the night, he'd hear her in the next room, their son's old room where she now slept, shuffling through dresser drawers. He…

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.)