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A Worthy Caws

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It started with crows. I'd walk the switchback trail to the top of the park with its outlook of the city and if I didn't see any crows I'd whistle and they'd come swarming from everywhere. I'd give the peanuts a toss and the crows would caw their heads off and peck at…

Bitter Love Story

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the dogneck gave no support

Not Drowning

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You were a buoy.

Gastronomy

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your olive-pitting thumbs

Unattended (novel excerpt)

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A sticky glass. An open copy of Outside magazine. A flat part of the meadow that reeked of blood and cologne. A dog (my dog) hidden in the closet, shivering so hard the hangers jangled.

The Oddest Thing Ever Found in a Pocket

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On an October day in 1909 Mrs. Prudence O'Kannady, industrious wife of Mr. Joseph Patrick O'Kannady of Corn Falls, Nebraska, discovered, while sorting clothing for the wash, in the pocket of a set of dungarees belonging to her youngest son Rufus, a tiny human head. When…

The Nightly Dance

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The electricity animates my body into myclonic dance. I do not rest. I dance with the demons; I dance with Nijinsky rage. I dance with the fury of Saint Vitus and his wooden cross. My shoes are fashioned with my own fear, tanned and stretched over my feet

Watching Stanley Kowalski in the TV Room of Belle Haven

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That streetcar named Desire, it don't hardly stop for me no more. Leastwise not while I'm awake, and I don't have to be telling no nosy aides why I make them noises in my sleep.

Cow

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“He looks funny again,” the twins would say. “Cow looks funny, Mummy.”

An Object for the Sun God

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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh

Genesters

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There once was a lake skipping stone and it skipped, five times, the end... Ceiling fluorescents brilliant in the white space opened to the exterior of the Hog n' Bluster hero shop through the narrow glass front and shown out to the empty brick paved commons of…

Phantom head syndrome

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The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…

“Kait” the homo sapien

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I am an animal on display in an old fashioned zoo - trapped & violent, violent, violent

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 13

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The next thing we knew, the KGB started tailing us everywhere we went. They must have heard about Lenin’s Paintings, was all we could figure. Because, what if they were real? That night we went out to a pizza place where we saw the worst graffiti in t

A State of Affairs

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We could act the anthropologist.

Unlimited And Limited

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Despite kryptonite not actually existing it became possible to buy, for 300 dollars, pieces of kryptonite on eBay. Personal protection, the sales pitch said. The pieces of kryptonite looked suspiciously like green plastic.

THAT KIND OF LOVE

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I've heard of sucessful marriages where there's very little sex. My heart aches for that kind of love.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

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Woman bites into pearl, finds baby oyster. Woman bites baby oyster, finds baby pearl. Woman blows on baby pearl, it begins to grow. Woman gets excited. Now we’re getting somewhere, she says.

TOP TEN LIST

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It was only two days before Christmas.  Jonathan remembered his mother crying.

days of rational belief and mythical thought

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medieval the new:/days of rational belief/and mythical thought.

Man In The Blue Scooter

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Summer

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for my father I want to memorize this our time together — what we did without her there to tell me You wouldn't want this life you're not cut out for it — and me the child…

Self-Portrait with Pipe and Bandaged Ear

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His ear is swathed by a large white bandage that runs down under the chin. Dressed in a heavy dark green coat, buttoned at the neck. Streaks of orange relieve the darkness of the green. Purple and black cap on his head. Calmly smoking a pipe.

Exchange Rates for Zynga

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When farming started in September, I thought of gambling, of my childhood best friend’s marriage ruined due to gambling, and of farming as a trope for living in the Midwest.

Kash Mire

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You watch with frigid eyes, as their soggy woolens squelch dark mud, even smiling a little as they make croaking frog-lure noises. You know eventually a toad or two would land in the Frogger. You like the word Frogger.

The winter I was going to meetings

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It’ll die in there and the stairwell’ll stink for weeks, Greg says in the car. We’re quiet, considering that.

Afternoon Chores

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She is trying to quit—nasty habit this smoking. Still, this is the only time she lets herself smoke these days: Laundry day.

Frances at Virginia Beach

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My husband waits for him to hurt himself. The boy drinks red wine between movements, Staring hypnotically at the back Of a girl’s head.

Yeah, He's Stoned

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He’s so stoned he’s in the zen zone, Which is just beyond the end zone.

The Way is Dark, the Road Long

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The day I got out of prison the sun was shining.