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Sit In Here

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"You," he says, "Sit in here."

Star Anise

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She wonders if Minh knows fear, if it is something that forms in the womb, like fingernails.

Ambulance

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Once you start telling the truth it's hard to quit. You look around and reasons are everywhere. It's like a new appliance, truth-telling, a can opener that's so good you barely have to turn it.On the phone my sister asks me why I don't come out and see her in San…

Author meets unflattering reviewer in bar

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It was one of those incredible literary coincidences destined to reside in Wiki annals forever.

Moving Day

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I didn’t hear that Duncan Pratt had been killed until I’d been out of the Army for two weeks and had gone four days without a single thought about that final year in Vietnam.

Adagio

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... must we turn again (and again)/ to an orchestra stripped of wind and drum?

Making it Right

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A girl stretched out on the long backseat of the Greyhound bus, her head resting on a bright pink overnight case decorated with colorful stickers announcing the places she intends to go: Paris Cairo Hong Kong Rome.

The Hollow

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They live on the edge of town. There is a cornfield behind their house. When the wind blows, it is like the hands of many children clapping.

Temporary Passport

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It is late in the twentieth century and I'm on my hands and knees for you.

My Mother Loved To Dance

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I can picture her

Naked Ladies

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She said she wanted to find a man who could appreciate a woman who gave great head.

Oops

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Ok so oops. I messed that up. I made it sexual when it was sweet. Oops. I swear it was the beer. Ok I lie. I always lie.

Temporary

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That's what these companies do: swallow you whole and spit you out.

Repair Man

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The repair man is conscientious in this as he is with all things, light with his fingers and his tongue. His hair falls over his eyes as he works her.

Meryl Streep Laughed at That

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The boys' mother lived in a house two lawns from his, but she wouldn't bring him ice packs; she had her period, she said.

A Life Twice Told

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Walking to work, Lawrence Settler was struck by a bus as he crossed a one-way street.

How To Make Your Own Falling Star, or Dreamland Begins at Sunset, So Be a Dear and Pass It On, Will Ya?

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The world moves its roving glass eye around in front of you like a dog trying to flip over a frisbee, as if trying to show you how the loveliness of all things here and yet there, from an anything goes, different, always shifting,…

Snow

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She made them all watch ``Oceans Eleven'', even the baby...

A Letter

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I write to you from waiting for the world to end. I will leave this in a desk drawer.

The Cake for God

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is all but invisible. Some say this is because it is within a bakery window, a bakery within a bakery, and thus appears to be everywhere at once.The cake for God has never been eaten, except by children who seem to later forget what it tasted like.…

See?

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Arise, ye masses, arise!

Bone Density

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Madame Fauve, / with a twisted braid, is dancing.

Three Short Shorts

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When Uncle Dan got sent to the Alzheimer's ward, the ladies licked their lips. Fresh meat.

The Wolf Who Cried Boy

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The story begins ... There were no pigs' huts of straw or stick or stone.

Shooter

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After the shooting, they sent the boy away. He returned taller and heavier, a sulkier version of his earlier self.

At the Bar

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On the Nightly News a pedophile in an orange jumpsuit does a sashay of shame in front of a wolf pack of cameras and satellite feeds that surround the downtown courthouse. At the bar, a woman with big blonde hair and a rhinestone manicure says off with his head. A…

Pig Girl

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"In the camps we ate whatever garbage they gave us." This according to my mother. "We had no choice." But I had eaten pig with gusto at an anti-Semite's table. Somehow this had to be undone. Burial in soil was all I could imagine.

My Night with Sarah Palin

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I admired her stamina. Her ability to Charlie Sheen it night after night.

Celluloid

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Mina stumbled and fell headlong into her apartment, smacking her knees and palms on the hardwood floor.

How Dinner With John Updike Ruined My Teaching Career

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Christmas Eve, 1989, I had dinner with John Updike.