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Maximus and Kimchi

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The dogs shit on the roof and then, every two weeks or so, the man in Apartment 311 climbs out the window with a plastic shovel and scoops the shit into a white plastic bag, which soon grows heavy with dung, dangling from his black-gloved wrist.

As If Not Breathing Could Save him

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She turned him down again. Said it was her insomnia. She was so tired, she said, she had to work in the morning, and why couldn't he understand that? She rolled over facing away from him. He sat up in bed, thinking. When was the last time? Three months ago? Four? He…

The Burglar's Golden Rule

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Undies before jewelry!

The Hitler Channel

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The sound of a siren approaches his home. His wife asks him why he's so nervous. It's nothing, he says, but he rises from the couch and peers into the night from behind the curtains. The siren approaches relentlessly. The road twists and turns and the sound fades but always…

Summer Is An Itch

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Underwater your eyes collapseand your feet touch decayed leavesand soft sand at the lake's bottom, the texture of tenderized flesh,maybe an intestineYou spring to the surface tofind your skull met by waterflies, and their limbstweak your peaceOn the shore your…

The Dog

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They stood at the intersection waiting for the light to change so they could cross the highway.

Monkey Business

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Benjamin stands beside his bed and unpacks his few things – wire cutters, knife, tape, line, two blocks of C-4, wallet, brush, and a small stuffed animal – a monkey.

The Threat of Distance

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The lone young man walking in the distance,/receding silently,

Amputee

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He is my daughter's son and his father's worst enemy.

sunburn

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I used to compare her to a sunburnthe first of the summerit is always the worst oneexposed skinalmost hot to the touchturning warm and pinkthen raw and redit is a transition that is effortlessbut still you can feel it happeninga lot like loveyou can feel it all around…

Second-Shift Parenting

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Your mom’s favorite joke right now is how enamored I am with the chair the nurse brought me, the one that converted into a bed. Apparently, it’s all I can talk about when people ask about your birth. But really what can I say? If I say the birth was easy,

OldSchool

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The gated community of Dos was named for one of Babbage’s landmark educational figures, Ms. Dos.

Wild Oats v. Shredded Wheat

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Written across an old geezer’s sweatshirt At the Farmer’s Market in L.A.

Karma Wash, Hog Wash, and Swill

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The beer on the shore is Lapping at the foam of memory And I can’t sit still Until I take my pill Karma Wash, Hog Wash and Swill I went to the top of the heap At the bottom of the Hill I saw a bum’s sign that read: “Will eat dog food for

In Distress

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When a multinational big box furniture store opened just off the expressway outside the city selling all the same products at greatly reduced prices, they contemplated the possibility of closing their store.

Love Thy Neighbor

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The summer I turned fourteen I wanted a job so I could start saving for a car. Actually, I had a job, but it wasn't much. Seventy-five cents…

just because the maker of the tracks and the tracks themselves are invisible doesn't mean there's nothing there

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breathe out somewhere a tree falls

77 Words About Last Night

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Blacked-out out on junk, I bet money on a sport I hated just last year.

Another Way

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If there was another way to describe emptiness, I'd word the endlessness of the sky, of the ocean at low tide.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Photosynthesis

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Minimalist/realist short-story writer Raymond Carver was fired from his job as an editor of science textbooks because of his inappropriate writing style.

News Sequence

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On-air personalities inflate a balloon Trump head to the point of bursting.

The Judge's Wife Part 3

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Everything clicked.

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

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1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

Cancer Always Calls Collect - Part 2 - Dear Santa

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We all know that sometimes miracles happen and sometimes they don't. Some days are good and some days go by slowly as the fatigue sets in and he realizes that he is fighting cancer.

Out of the Woods

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No, your clever costume won’t protect you.

Myra's Accident

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We’ve both been broken, we’ve both been defeated and jaded and we’ve both cried uncontrollably, but we’ve always managed to get back on our feet.

Mud

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People ask me sometimes what it’s like to meet your wife when you’re six years old, and I have to admit now that I don’t really understand the question. Marla and I, we were just friends for most of that time. She made me laugh. I let her crib off my math

Elegy For the Old Republic

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You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.

Houses Are Havens and the Outside Plans Your Destruction

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The first of the fires that started by the river in the abandoned mills were so hot they burned white and pale blue

stye

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poked in the eye