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Human Frailty

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Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

He Holds an Expired Visa and a Monday Grudge

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Somehow the world survives

When you were nine

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When you were nine your head fell off in the playground. Dr Mort was called. He pasted it back on with PVA glue. You'd never know now.——When you were nine your arms turned into trees. Dr Mort worked his magic with the chainsaw. You still need light pruning once…

Awaken Sleepy Star

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Don't sleep. Tiny orange Balloons like seahorses are bobbing This way and that trying To get your hair to lift Off its marvelously mud- Swamped and pillowy support beams, blue sea strand by green. Don't you want to see…

Our Story in Ten Photographs

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1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…

Bile: The 'Sexiest' Fluid You Can Share with Other People

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[SABATOGE!]

Child's Play Brings Back Memories of Busted Heads for Greying Protestor

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"My boy Jake fell in with a bad crowd when he went to college," Coffelt says, shaking his head. "A bunch of accounting majors."

Redacted.

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Almost on cue, Xavier emerges and is in the vendor’s face. “X,” as he is known around here, is indoctrinating the obvious newbie on the merits of showing up earlier and the logistics of placeholders and markers.

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…

The 2nd poem.

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You came to me In the self made calm Causing quite a storm You want me to rejoice and relax? Not knowing my fears Shall we ever fly?

Taxi

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lost in a taxi cab, 4:30 am

The Truthmobile

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She's had a magnetic sign made for the side of her Honda, TRUTHMOBILE, simple and elegant. Maybe too simple; she's worried it suggests a religious affiliation.

Milton wrote his best lines blind

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the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

Finding the bog body

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It’s a bitch of a day, devious. It started out calm and then those monsoon showers hit. The lads legged it back to the vans for a bit of a warm sup. He was going to follow them. The rain machine-gunned the window.

The Night Bird

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A night bird lands on the windowsill with a struggling copper moth in its beak. The bird cocks its head at Rasmus, then swallows the clockwork insect in a gulp before flying away.

Oddities

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One day my wife got so mad at me she raked her fingernails down my face.

Arcana Magi - c.21: The World Stage

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The old mage said nothing. She did not even return the complement. All she had was disgust in her eyes as she looked at the grown men and women. To her they had no hearts.

Window

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Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"? Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.

Seed Toss

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Know what you’ll become? You’ll become one of those guys who masturbates in any single occupancy restroom that locks.

The Damp Place

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As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe

The New Dark Ages

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It was only later, much later, that we would discover that the war we were fighting was a war between ourselves. Melissa and I left the machine, with Carlton lost forever inside. We abandoned the warehouse. Our backs were scalded from the heat, and the hole in the…

A Blow to the Possible

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Tombstones are only granite symbols of a man’s life, Gus thought as he changed lanes. Children, they were the ultimate epitaph.

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

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You got a lot of people, out there

Invicta

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As military tears soaked into hymnbook pages

Miss Edna's Lace

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When Elvis died, I felt so empty that I headed straight for Jimmy Choo's, but quietly, with the half-veil of my pillbox hat draped low over my face. I didn't want to draw attention to my vintage Dior mourning outfit, since I normally wear pants, even here. The voices…

Roper RTW4640YQ1

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locking the door against dangerous// human curiosity and forgetfulness.

Mr. Twitchy

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I used to think the world was fucked and it was up to me and me alone to see it unfucked. That's really what I used to think, but I've been trying to work on that. It's not a particularly flattering characteristic I have. I'm trying to be more positive.

Bookends of a Life: I

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You have transformed me into an aimless, sleepless wraith...

Book Killer

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Sometimes after bookbinding for a few hours at the hand-sewing table, Jillie would, after scraping her knife too roughly over the glue of an old book's spine, feel not like a resurrector of literature, as she should, but a killer. Not a calculating or

Locations

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They confess love for Karaoke and metal rock. They have purchased expensive Stratocasters and Zildjians.