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55 words #8

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Weight of faithlessness... Mist Of bodily Existence Grave expectations for the future

Autumn in the Afterward

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A year after we'd last spoken I can still remember your commentary, our ill-fated reunion at the baggage claim forever immortalized as this solitary instance of unobstructed joy.

Billionaire* Consternation - a play in three acts

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Is it you with that fucking gold and platinum yacht?!?

Zoo Story

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I tell my friend, the animal lover, not to get too near the panther's cage. "Why not?" she asks. "You'll see," I say.

Monkey Business

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Benjamin stands beside his bed and unpacks his few things – wire cutters, knife, tape, line, two blocks of C-4, wallet, brush, and a small stuffed animal – a monkey.

Monogamy

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cummings starts to sniff, his usual routine. He feigns aloofness while raising one wolfy leg to pee on Eliot's sneakers.

Anatomy of a Breakdown

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Can’t seem to put your clothes on today. You’re wandering in the little closet of your mind again, picking at socks that won’t stay up, shirts that are always too big -

Bogdan

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He was a tenth grade / messiah, famous for acts of attrition.

The Nature of Things

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She’s not coming today. She didn’t come yesterday either.

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

Mutants

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Elin and I had religious differences about the garage. To her the garage required regular sweeping and organization--it was an extension of our house. Elin believed dust and mold to be manifestations of inner sin. I insisted that they were agents of evolu

Cognitive Therapy in Russian

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We aren't designed for darkness. Something deep inside of us, something much older and deeper than us is telling us to move away, get to warm, because if we don’t, come winter we will die.

The Black Hole

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Matilda went wild at sixty-five. Legs left unshaven for the first time in fifty years, hair still and proud, knotted with forgetting. She’d roam the streets at night, a traveler without design. Matilda was a gardener of sorts, digging up all previous assu

Well, I LOVE Darkness . . . But I've Chosen YOU!!!

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The elevator door opened, and Tom ("The Baffler") Frank found himself confronted by Jesu bar Joseph, who opined: "You're WORTHLESS!" and recommended: "Why dontcha PULL your PANTS down, and CUT your COCK off!"

fragments of their lives survive

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Only fragments of their lives survive, like broken Sapphos. I have known them, alleged killer of themselves for the love of a man., but we know this is an invention. The leader of a whole guild of girls, who wrote 7 books of poems. What happened to them

The Tourists

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They acquire him in a bar that is famous for its shipwrecks.

There's a Panther in my Poodle

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There are glasses in the sinkfrom the water that I drink.And the books in my li-braryare not dumb and ordinary.There's a doggie at my door;did I go to the pet store?There's a puppy on my couch-ywho was happy, now she's grouchy.Was a writer, now an authoror an otter; no, an…

Ginger

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I didn't tell her how deeply a terrible weakness for ginger haired people ran in our family, how fortunes had been lost only because of a red beard, a freckled shoulder of exquisite paleness, or a pink nipple.

Looking at the Light of the Moon on the Sea

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It was hard, in the crowded vacation house, to make love as they would have alone.

Gloss

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Follow my finger up the canyon wall, past the Chevy wedged into its own ferocious orbit. It was that innocent...

The House

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Two stories, limestone, gray shutters,next to the park.“We almost bought that house,” my father always saideach time we drove by.He doesn't go down that street anymore.What could have been taunts him from the sidewalks —two little girls and a bucket of…

the leisure to walk about sweetly

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You seemed to have that leisure to walk about sweetly when I was with you, honey-singing the reward for the intensity of emotion you lunged about in. Nothing seemed like it was going to hurt or harm anyone, even while I was going nuts between the legs.

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…

Beneficial

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Had I said something before, she might could have saved a little face by telling me to go to hell before we tumbled into the covers. All right. Again, I was no gentleman. Send me to hell. Whatever. I lay there on my back, my arm around her, and listened t

High Jinks

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“Gorgonzolla!” The remnant croaked, his eyes wild as he thrust an open hand in Jaffron's direction. A burst of energy tilted Jaffron's pod on its axis and sent it hurtling backwards...

Oh, Myth...

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Philip Ahearn woke up in an empty field. Last night had been one hell of a party - he almost hooked up with Rosamund - and, at the time, it seemed wiser to crash outside than to drive and really crash. But he wasn't a kid anymore and sleeping on the…

55 words #7

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Let's make a monetary enticement for writers who can revel in the magnitude of this tragedy...

from Flatlander's Suite

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Under nervously flickering fluorescent lights / your name will grow / fed by the tongues of Those Who Never Leave

Wedding Day

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A bride, dressed in white gown and flowing veil, totters in high heels down the uneven pavement past Simone’s Café. She holds a bouquet of red and orange chrysanthemums. Three men, wearing black tuxes, accompany her; one of them holds up the hem of her dr

His Nightmares

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