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Almost Like Real Skin

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...this dim and empty room, and behind a wall of glass a flag materialized, backlit and fluttering, and I am not saying what country's flag it was, just that it was a flag, that awesome symbol of the nation state and fervid jingoism...

It Isn’t Personal. It’s Business

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because you pay/ for it to matter to me.

Hot Flashes

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On high a centaur is pulling a yellow chicken on a sled.

Bibliophagy

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he knows that his wife knows. she can smell the adverbs on his tongue in the mornings. but he cannot get through another evening in that house without consonants.

2 and 2

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I was a six year old with no bike. Only the males in my familyhad that privilege. So one morning I got up very early, before the older siblings awoke, crept out the back porch door where Iknew there would be two bikes in the yard just waiting for me and my…

Ice Bar

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I can’t stop looking at the burly man to my left with the blue lips and three-inch mustache. He orders his fourth whiskey. He laughs at my melancholy like it was a flat thing--a dead animal to strip of its fur. Why be melancholic when you can float on whi

Scooter and Skipper at the Roman Colosseum

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We make our way into the Colosseum–excuse me, the Prince Spaghetti Colosseum–and take in the beauty of Italy’s national pastime; sadistic cruelty to wacko religious cults.

Police Mistakenly Release Murderer: An Analysis

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He has no plan, he needs a plan, he has no plan, he needs a plan -- the two thoughts bounce around inside his skull like racquet balls.

As Many Will Fall

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tumbling for you from afar as close-up. They will rewrite your dancing form like a proper magical spell on all their maddest days, using the branches of cherished trees dipped into the trapped wells of certain hosts of …

UNFILTERED

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I made myself tiny as I could, imagining I was Houdini shackled underwater, holding my nose and practicing my escape...

A Christmas Story

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I pay for 3 Trump Troll Dolls and a package red licorice twizzlers and head back toward the door. Dancing Gnome Girl is there to greet me. I stick a twizzler in the teeth of the donation pail.

Ackermann

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When he took Medieval German Lit in graduate school, Ackermann read Der Ackermann aus Böhmen by Johannes von Tepl. His professor was amused both by his last name and that his grandparents were Germans from Bohemia. Of course, only his grandmother was from Bohemia and…

Bookmarks From Hell -- A List of Unsavory, Alarming and Downright Nasty Things Librarians Have Found In Library Books

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Why would anyone stash a used condom in a Bible?

Four Thousand Dollars from Baghdad

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“This is the most dangerous road in the world and you want to drive down it. You crazy,” he said.

Surrendering August

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on the far shore, in the vineyards timed charges explode like the sun catching on fire it scares crows away from the grapes

Like Virgos

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-- All the guys who hit on me are Virgos. -- Like Gary? -- Like Gary. -- How could Gary be a Virgo? Look what he did with his hydrangeas.

lament of Liu Ch'e . . . while elsewhere--

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in her silk sleeves is silence sheathed.

Drive-by Neighborhood Fiction Flash

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It's about dinner time. My neighborhood is in Sa-bur-bia. Driving my gold 2007 Malibu i pass Chick. She notices me and stares standing in front of her house. We were friends about ten years ago. Chick is still divorced. Tall skinny legs. Educated blu-ish eyes. Wet…

SMOKE

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And so it begins, like this, waiting to long for a lazy train out of West Toledo...

With Nothing Here But Me I Begin

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to unwind looking for the answer.I confess I wasn't so discreetas life demanded, laughing like anowhere poet. Nothing relieved thegod awful boredom. Many times Iconfess I hadn't really takenthe vitamins, crying like a courtjester thrown into a dungeon onmarket day, and felt…

I Was Strolling Through The Water One Day

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The Killer Whale came back and promised to be nice.

Amelia

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Every time she tries to sleep they come; legions of small armored things scuttle claws aloft across the purple sand as soon as she stops moving.

Epithalamion

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They talk but they don’t really / talk

Snake Dreams

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As soon as I pull into my father's driveway, a light goes on inside the condo. I don't have to wonder what he's doing up this time of the morning; he's always had a knack for knowing…

WRECKED

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There

If I Could Locate the Tether that Keeps Me Here I Would Chew Off the Limb That It's Tied To

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She is face down in the snow

Divided

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Sasha and I had snorted a table of cocaine and I had her trapped inside my Joy Division bedroom.

A Certain Distance

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...a headwater stream that has never had a name....

Face to Face

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The face had become a chilling death mask.

Blue Moon

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I suppose it was inevitable, This crashing of souls, This recognition of possibility to create. If we were younger, We would make a baby, The ultimate act of faith. Now it has to be something else, Nothing to force a track with night feedings, …