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IN BOX 12 OF DD FORM 214, the Department of Defense requires a narrative reason for every military discharge. Mine reads: Continued involvement of a discreditable nature with civilian and military authorities.
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It was spring. The stepmother brought her newish daughter to the toy store for a surprise.
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The fuckers tumble out of the bathroom like clowns from a tiny car. The girl has these huge tits and dark red hair. She rushes past me, smelling like chocolate. A guy's behind her, holding onto the back of her jeans. He's not good looking enough to…
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Roger's assigned route had him picking up medical waste at most of the plastic surgery offices in town. He smelled it on his skin by the end of the day. The plastic surgery places were less of a hassle than the hospital and worlds away from the free c
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Jimmy wore a tie to top that torn green tee he toted every day, every other. He smelled of dirt, said he had a feeling we had watermelon somewhere since he caught a whiff from his room inside his house across the street.
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“An attractive woman is at a ritzy brunch. She’s drinking a really outstanding Bloody Mary and decides to try a raw oyster on the half shell.
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When the whistle drops, do not take any guff.
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My swinging purse sent saucers tinkling to the tile and the copper-headed waitress flew over, swooping on the shatter, clutching clean forks like a handful of flowers.
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I sat in the dark, mashing damp sand like clumps of brown sugar into my palm while the heavy Gulf air blew my hair into ropes. Sometimes I worried that I was unable to need people, but, as much as the thought upset me, I couldn't make myself truly want t
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Teaching never occurred to me in college. I took workshops and wrote often. Friends and classmates, meanwhile, switched from studio majors to Art Education, or from English to Certification. Not me. Teaching high-schoolers would be all wrong. Briefly, I…
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Late in the morning, standing in line, clutching a bag of Meow Mix, I listen to the woman waiting behind me. She's having a cell phone conversation about the Treasures of Ancient Egypt exhibit. It‘s in New Orleans, she says, and the kids liked the mummy. I slide…
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At the third or fourth discotheque I drink so much I accidentally find myself happy.
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She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.
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Flowing, Flown In the field stands a jealous man with fifteen eyes stored inside the cuffs of well-worn khaki pants. His pockets pull with clinking dimes…
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Emma held her arm up to John’s eyes. He looked, nodded. “My burns are on the inside,” he told her. “I’ll never show you.”
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The ocean smelled like decomposed plant life and clinically despicable vagina, but I still spoke of its power and my fear of it in moonlit clichés and she still listened.
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It keeps coming back to the end of the world. Dogs sitting on roofs, birds flying about indoors, clattering locusts.
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A secret search rolled from Odette's eyes. A gulch split her down the middle and she had the world believing this was the way she liked it. Odette was a woman who spent entire days bending backward within herself, never letting on that she was…
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Two thousand and two was the worst year for love in the history of sports. People carried their sadness around in wheelbarrows.
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It would wander the hallways after the 3:45 bell, after the last class, after the students had all disappeared with the homework they'd never finish, the papers they'd forget to write, after Nate the janitor pushed his broom through the endless doorways,
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It's been so long since I've been in touch with any of you—if I ever was in touch with you—because my family and I took up residence in the local Wal•Mart.
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"Isn't it time to remove the nails, and put Jesus to rest once and for all," Mary asks.
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I arrived Sunday evening to a darkened house. Everything unplugged. Even the fuses from the breaker. Meticulous, this undoing. Silence has a sound. Cold has a voice, a pearly cigarette whisper. It says, “Metaphor?”
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Here are a few tips/instructions to help you out (though I'm sure you'll do just fine by yourself!):Getting to the Apt.:If you're coming from Riverside, you'll want to turn onto Magnolia. So, if you're coming from north to south on Riverside, that means you'll want to turn…
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My cats are my world and more. They are rotund, little indoor-girl cats, though, who were taken from their mother too early to learn things like hunting and properly washing their privates, and so they think the mouse is just another interesting thing to
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In Honduras they say a prayer that sounds like screaming at the top of your lungs...
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One sunny day after Christmas Eldon went ice fishing with Grandma and Grandpa at Haymarsh. He was not fishing for Ice Fish but for regular fish who swam under the ice. Craig was there too. Craig was wearing more pairs of socks than anyone. He was wearing 3…
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As we follow the trail and things snap beneath our feet, I tell myself that the snapped things take pleasure, find purpose even, in the sounds they make with my soles.
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--New Patient: Pearl, 48, 15:00 PM
Pearl is not her real name. Her real name is Stella. Pearl used a fake name to get past the intake screeners. Pearl is my ex-wife.
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At least, I think it was him. It sure looked like him.
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