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The Bear (April Fool's Day Challenge)

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Poor Daniel gets the ultimate trick played on him by nature when he encounters a bear for this April Fool's Day Challenge story.

Storm and Shelter

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Sometimes one person's shelter is another person's storm.

Event Particle

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She is a manifold of temporal flows.

A Scalar Boson a Day

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. . . the empiricism of the mechanical had wound tight into her, lessons her few calendars could never impart without aid from sundials, hourglasses, clocks.

Cocoon

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Small wonders, her worthless,priceless treasures fortify the wallswhile hoarded trinkets protect her like armor against memoriesof a desperate past.

Elk Hunters

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"Damn! All I've got is a hundred dollar bill."

Homecoming

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Pion's long fingers fly from black to white, white to black, without missing even a measure. The nocturne starts soft.

Rentals

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You master their secrets. Mirror adjusters... Air conditioning knobs... Fuel door releases... Changing their satellites to Mojo Nixon. But you never really know them.

The Cold Bank Ravens

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In punch drunk waiting rooms... On election routes

bucket of keys

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I imaged him at his mother's house, eating chicken and tabouli with her at her round marble table, leaning back and laughing, then reading my “love you” and excusing himself to cry in the bathroom.

THE RICH RIVER

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I must have been six years old at that time, but the events of…

Ymir

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Ymir used to be a big nothing;Now he's everything.His hair is the grass, the trees, the reedsHis scalp is the desertHis skull is the empty vault of spaceHis brain is telecommunicationsHis skin is a reality made of matter and miragesHis forehead is the Ten CommandmentsHis…

End of an Astronomer

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The Town, Part 1

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Waiting for the light to turn, his mind wandered, wondering how it was that bridges of this sort collected stories. Old thru truss bridges with grated deckings, or any older bridge for that matter. The stories seemed to have died out since the concrete

Godot Finally Shows!

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Vladimir and Estragon stood hunched at the corner of Ellis and Taylor in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. Bedraggled and spent, they looked dully around them at pretty much nothing. They could have been thirty, or maybe…

Those Brain Motility Blues

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Philosophy: a muscular exercise of throat, jaw, tongue, and brain.

Miniature Golf

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Sadness as foreshadowing

Five Stories From a Funeral

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1. Premonition “He had a premonition,” Agnes, the widow, said. “He said he was going to die.” “Ma,” Gregg said, “he always said he was going to die. He was the Fred Sanford of Central Ave.” “But this time it came…

Argoyle

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He extended his bent arm to its full length with a crack, straightened his hunched body and tried, and failed, to close his lips over his frightening grimace. Stone lips are not pliable.

From This Distance

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Can you remember how we could each disappear completely. . . .

In Small Packages

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Linus had it right with the security blanket he held like a beloved pet swan. Geneva had it all wrong with a pastel-colored music box, painted with impressionist-styled daisies and tied up in gold-ribbed pink bow. But it had come from her grandmother. Her

The girl laughing in the dictionary.

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Trigger Warning.

February 1964

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New York, New York The winter drizzle left the streets shiny like in movies and this night Manhattan looked like it should look, vibrant, clean and sparkling. It was…

Someday, Somewhere, waiting for me.

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Out in the open air, the sun's rays washing over the dead, open fields, Nick lay, his back against the wall of the train platform, eyes facing the sky, hands outstretched to the…

55 Words #1

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I would roll my eyes, give one word replies or a smiley face.

The Budweiser Sign and the Ghosts of Saturday Night

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It waited and witnessed the seasons complete a grouping and form a year. Then it watched them do it again. Winter, spring, summer, fall. It watched from the inside of course. But it could see. Big sliding glass doors and long and wide windows stayed the course also, way…

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.

Obituary

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I won't fail at this like trying to fix a leaking sink without mud grease or washers tinier than Cheerios.

Personal Hell - I'm Not Scared, Just Disappointed

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Satan is a wide-eyed Pollyanna mime who communicates with a ventriloquist dummy that corrects my grammar, speaks in internet acronyms, tells me that I’d be a lot prettier if I just smiled more and lost fifteen pounds, and nags me about how all my problems

Miss Zoldac's Fifth Grade Class Balloon Launch

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INSTRUCTIONS: To all students, please address your index card: "To the Finder of this Balloon." Beneath that, write something that will encourage the finder to email you back. Then tape the index card to your balloon's string.Happy Ballooning! To the Finder…