Most recent stories

Swan Song

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He ignored his scalded scrotum and listened intently. The music was beautiful beyond all physical pleasure or pain. The end of the piece gave him a deeper understanding of the expression 'la petite mort'. While he was still recovering, the next track b

Trophy

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I remember ...all the teenagers offered no-longer favored CDs, last year's cell phones, third-place trophies, team jerseys, played-out videogame cartridges, and candy-colored miniature stuffed animals...

Van Gogh's Peach Tree

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There is a boy. The boy is standing in front of a munificent peach tree in all the splendor and atrophy of his afternoon existing. Shadows? Yes. There are midday shadows, hiding and seeking, long and greyish to offset the bright reds and violets and orang

Roomies

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“I am NOT a hooker.” “What exactly are you, then?” Marlene raised her slim eyebrows. Her almond shaped eyes and high-cut bangs gave her the appearance of a 1950s Barbie doll. “Well…” I stirred my coffee and looked down. I wasn't sure wh

Confessions of a Non-Believer

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Closing my eyes, I try to breathe it all in, absorb the divine presence that is supposed to be here. Faith by osmosis. I guess it doesn’t work that way. God has to be here. Why else would these people be here? Why else would the congregation return w

XAM, PARAGRAPH, May 22, 1998, Houston, Texas

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I wrote this paragraph (the first in a series of 14 paragraphs) shortly after Frank Sinatra had died and during my last visit to my boyfriend, M. He had not seen me write something in years.

Biography / Memoir (outline)

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Larry's next book, A Fly in My Ointment, is due out this summer

Armitage Shanks Checks Into The Hyatt

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I scowl at her through an opioid haze. "Armitage Shanks is my real name." The clerk snickers. "You mum must have really wanted you to be pissed on from cradle to grave, eh?"

Life, in a slowly roasted nutshell

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You wake up. Slowly but surely. Okay, you're in the bookshop. Yes, apparently this is where you slept, on the floor, with absolutely no sense of irony, in the romantic fiction section...

Dear England, Please Send Me A Redheaded Boy

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Dear England, Please send me a redheaded boy, fire-red, please. We have one girl aflame but the others are stone yellow or dark as the sea. The flames are so easy to spot from afar.

Two Things I Did Not Know

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Their breath stank inside my lungs and tamped down the very minute amount of remorse I had left. It was replaced with contempt. Their fear warmed my cold sensibility as I steeled myself.

Noche de las Ranas

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He pushed aside the netting and trained the flashlight on the dripping courtyard. Rivers ran off the wide pinanona leaves, surged through fissures in the crumbling wall.

The Beethoven Delusion

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"It is my argument that a pious fraud has been perpetrated so as to subject mankind to the most humiliating of intellectual enslavements."

Rev. Jasper Pickery and Three Manifestations of the Devil

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I shall simply give you an account of the Devil's own attempts to thwart my godly work and the three forms in which he came unto me.

Non-Stop Service

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Please direct your attention to the flight attendants as they demonstrate the safety features of this aircraft.

The Shopkeeper

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“There goes that slut Kerri Stanton,” the immense woman behind the counter chuckled to her patron. “Who the hell does she think she is?”

Harley Davidson Fanny Pack

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Harley Davidson fanny pack

Brian's Bride

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I had a dream. "And it was a long dream, as dreams go. . ."

The Messenger, Chapter 1

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It's hard to say who was the first to point a finger towards the sky. Maybe it was the cherubic overall-clad toddler perched on the shoulders of his father's worn brown leather jacket. Maybe it was one of the teenaged girls, their long straight hair whipp

5” X 6” In A Sturdy Frame

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The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.

ALONE

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In his tiny fist he held the world In his other his mothers hand

The Spaceman and the Venusian Vampire Vixens

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It’s late July, and I’ve just been given the assignment to cover Paganfoil’s ‘Warbird’ tour. To tell you the truth, I really loathe this assignment. I never, ever, EVER cared for hard rock or heavy metal or whatever they’re calling it this dec

The Mish

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So begins your new career in the car service business. In some ways you enjoy it, too. Sitting alone in the cab each day, totally your own boss; you get a surge of excitement inside thinking about the money you'll make in a way that requires so little work. Clearing two…

The Astounding Adventures of Cyril Bright

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Chap. XI: A Place Beauteous of Which I Dare Not Speak And when I had released the spirit from his worldly prison, he did show to me a way that man does not travel, though travel it I did with him until we should chance to see such things as should never be polaroided (and…

Ditching the Universe for Katy

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I am running for only one thing now. For Katy.

A Willing Forgiveness

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I head out the door into Blustery cold winds Walking to my start mark I begin… Expecting in moments To hear the regular symphony Of anatomies brilliant Symmetry… Then I realize In my haste I have been thoughtless It will exact a price… …

Keeping watch

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The machines are alive but she is not. The pads keep her face from being irritated but my mind isn't so lucky."Let me GO!" she cries....at least that's what I hear. They are waiting for permission for her to go. Eager hesitation best describes the tense…

... 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.

New World

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Everything.

Suicidal god

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My dog’s on suicide precautions. I had to take away all her eating utensils--even the chopsticks. So now she has to eat directly from the bowl. It doesn’t seem to slow her down.