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Wet funeral

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I know now, how she moves without verbs after you crushed her into the river.

The Field Guide: Olivetti

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When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...

The bridge

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as long as you have some snacks up there I can be brave

The New Meow

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I'm delighted to report that I've come up with my own school of thought. It's called, "Dress Like a Cat Until You Get What You Want."

HOUSE OF GHOSTS

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The blue Victorian at 1145 White Street shifts in its foundation, creaks, and settles in for the night. The girls are bundled into their beds. My wife, too, has gone to sleep. I’m alone in the kitchen, steeping chamomile tea, coughing phlegm into the wr

palisades

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Driving up to the Palisades after 9/11 for a meteor shower

Mama's Boys

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A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?” “Do I know you?” “It's Bill.” The side of his little brother's thin face

Woman

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When you move to the music of a woman

The Nielsens (part two)

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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…

Neighbors

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“Hear that?” asks my wife Amy. Books in hand, we relax on our flagstone patio. A shaft of late-day sun borrows through the maples' leafy canopy and deposits a dazzling, sunlit pool on Amy's lap. …

The Shared Transgender(er)

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...I told Uncle Lou I thought it (trans-gendering) looked like a thoughtful way of occupying the world. It was a personal triumph, for some individuals, over the destructive affects of denial. Besides, it hurt no one, and it didn’t destroy property. I alw

Blues Machine

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Rockin' Joe Heath stumbled into the stairwell in nothing but a black Zildjian t-shirt, shushing himself, trying to see right, pounding head. He recalled the old lily pattern of the wall­paper and something about the tattered edges…

When the Ocean Was Ours

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The Ocean used to be ours. When the stars were still fire and they were the only light burning though the dim, hazy nights, the ocean was ours. Before the smog, and the lights that were carried by the men who rose from the sea, the ocean was ours. We…

The Loss of a Child

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I watched as the light fled from your eyes, No slowly dimming lamp,

the last thing

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salmon maple syrup horseradish smoke detector the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.

a microcosm

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The right is empty, waiting to receive the load like a catcher behind home plate.

Lens

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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.4

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Azure walked through the fog as though she were walking to class. Her hands swayed through the mist and felt the thickness of the cloud through her fingers

Love and Destruction In A '67 El Dorado

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He had her pinned to the back seat, expressing his love. Do you love me? she whispered in his ear. Do you, do you, Jimmy Dale, do you love me? His only response…

Curtains

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She wants her mother back and all I can give her is this—over and over. She doesn't want my mouth, wants no kissing anywhere even. Just this. Like this—quiet and rough. Quiet because her stepfather is napping in the bedroom next to…

Estranged

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He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.

"Fancy Me"

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He stopped the shower and recounted his life, now Kin-less and plain.

Cast Off Thy Suffering

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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

Little Pi.ec.es

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I scare my daughter when she sleeps because she thinks I'm going to kill her.

Hat Shop Girls

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My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

Ingrid Bergman Answers the Call

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Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.

... and I liked it!

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... red lipstick shiny in the bar's light, raven-colored hair spiky and toussled. Jen opened her mouth to say something, stickiness of her cherry Chapstick separating with her lips ... and the girl leaned in and started kissing her.

What the Father Said

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At night, instead of sleep, there were new and secret pleasures. Half-awake lessons in dexterity, in the limber material of human life.

Please

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"What I need to wear the ring for," I said to myself, "I already got his last name..."

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 19

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His wings were down when he got into the truck. It was a used UPS truck we’d bought from someone in Berkeley, and we painted out the letter “S,” so that it just read “UP.”