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A College Town

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Five girls wobble into the train car. Their blistered feet protrude from the bedazzled straps of their sandals. Conductor: “Girls in the back with the open containers, you can't have those on the train.” A heavy-set girl in a belted yellow mini-dress…

Nothing But Neat at the NBA All-Star Game

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“I’m sure he meant no disrespect,” LeBron said, playing the peacemaker. “For example, I used to be ‘The Chosen One’ but I changed my nickname to ‘Chip’. Like it?”

Pitcher

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3D is killing my porn career.

wanna ball?

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There was still another, in 1971. That would have been this girl who had been a student of mine at that little Midwest college (her name escapes me right now.) She came out to Laguna Beach one time when I was already living up in Santa Cruz, and we saw

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 16: In Which Frank Learns Six Lessons

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He can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe turns the handle can't breathe falls onto the front porch gasping in the cold night air. And Dad is lying on the smoldering carpet in the parlor. And all the kids are upstairs. And he swallows the air. And ever

Hoops

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Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp.

War

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We borrow a flag from a neighbor. It’s sitting on top of the TV in the den. We haven’t figured out where to display it yet.

Paul Steven Stone Goes Topless

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Breaking News: Noted local writer and very minor celebrity Paul Steven Stone joined a growing list of talentless wannabes to bare skin and a hint of nipple in a shameless attempt to draw attention to his current blog posting. When asked how far he would g

Earth Below

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Lover’s leap to a bank of smooth shale/ Where I sat drinking beer that past summer/watching a group of hard shell Baptists/line up to be saved in it’s muddy waters

Descanso

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Lupe says stealing is bad whether it's from a Baptist or a Catholic.

The Lament of Last Century's Escape Artists

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Here's to the new, trying ever so hard but not too hardto have an audience with their own personal God ontheir own super duper terms, wonder kids. Aren't theybeautiful, one of a kind cells, Ladies and Gentlemen? Thepaint job alone is worth the…

The Raisin Effect

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I imagine diving into a vat of dried fruit, enjoying the unmistakable sweetness in each shriveled morsel, until I find myself biting into an undetected metal shard.

Sermon of Lilac

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The night was a lilac bowl of darkness

Home for the Holidays

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Deployed to Afghanistan for more than half of his two-year marriage, Trent is coming home for the holidays. But which holiday, exactly? And will he make it?

Carmen Scarpino, Pioneering Wise Guy, Dead at 78

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Breasts were developed after World War II, the result of improved nutrition and the additional muscle mass that “Rosie the Riveter”-types acquired through manual labor in jobs that males abandoned to join the war effort.

Clean

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He shows me how lift the windshield wipers up, clean under them, put them down and I follow him around, watch him slap the sham over the van, pull it away, slap again. I do the same, stop every few minutes like Daddy does, hold it out, twist, wring the sh

DRA

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DRA musical - 1942… Open on the General Jackson crowded with Marines, headed to (Tennessee Base),at the front of the ship, young men laughing, unrealistic military dreams/wordless chatter... LET IT RIDE .. main character is a marine en route to base...Solo verse,…

Wayne Recalls Rocking and the Power of Positive Thinking

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My mother told me I came out of her screaming and didn’t stop for two years. After that I took up rocking.

show the soul its own beauty

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Go ahead, show the soul its own beauty. But also tell me again about my own, so I may know I lived, and loved you. The one who shows the soul its own touching beauty gets to keep her. Who shows her the golden nightly song that's given us life, is like t

The Moral of This Story Is

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Always take the train.

Diary of a Bolshoi Potato Dancer

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Today is the audition for “The Bright Stream,” and I believe I am in tip-top shape to win the prize role–potato carrier! To train, I have been hauling rocks up the stairs to my apartment.

Thin Flame

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It was impossible that you wouldn't love me

Screaming Woman - Excerpt

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Bree was mean as a bag of snakes and had done laid out most of the eligible bachelors in Culloden County at one time or another to the tune that at this point no man who’d heard of her wanted much truck with her.

Un Americano

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His eyes are wide then narrow and brown. Hers are gray then they look away, toward the back door where a delivery driver has walked in, carrying a tray. Nothing is going to happen today.

Hometown News: Newsprint Jesus (part 2)

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If Don’s story was one of faith carrying someone through his trials, the story of Randy Slafter is another. It was faith that brought him and his family to Johnstown 15 years ago. The wings of faith protected him from the dark angels of grief and tragedy

the mixture of pleasure and pain

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But Allison was so tight, poor thing, that it was a little like having sex with a virgin every time we did it. I could never understand how she could bear so much pain. I guess it was the mixture of pleasure and pain that kept her going, or maybe she was

Headlines

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He brought me flowers once, three wilted carnations I put in water, though the sight of them made me uneasy. He brought me pictures once, too, of three sisters—ten, twelve, fourteen—straddling dirt bikes. He touched my shoulder once, as I edited pictures …

Lotus-eaters

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empty wine bottles, and a single abandoned boot

The Poem

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Riding in a pick-up-truck, the radio wailing some 'love em and leave em" country song,