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How Jellyfish Make Love

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It was 1986 when I met you. We both lived on Decatur Avenue in a tank that had enough room for you, me, and all our fake plastic accoutrement. I was 30 years old -- really old for a jellyfish. Some people thought I'd die sooner. But I knew better. I was…

Buttons

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I opened my switchblade mouth and sliced through the scab of silence.

Cellini's Salt Cellar

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An old man writes the story of his life into a book.

The Year, In Review

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And him, now there’s a him. I’d like if he were perfect, but perfect things never are. My daughter says it best, when she contrasts the two of you, “Daddy worked to forget about his problems. When he works, it makes him feel like there is a problem.”

SUPER DAD flies coach

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“I don’t want to scare you,” the stewardess says, “but there are ten police officers waiting for you outside the plane.” I reach into the diaper bag and grab an Elmo raspberry/pear cereal bar, rip it open, take a bite, sip some apple juice fr

Numb And Number

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He looked up as he reached the intersection, and crossed as it cleared. His head was down again as he walked toward his car, which was parked beside a schoolyard, where junior high students were involved in an after-school game of touch football. He smi

Gazpacho

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It's a pretty strange feeling when you think you're about to bite into some ice cream and instead it's gazpacho.

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…