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A Man Dies

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The spirit smiled and held out his hand, the light in the room magnified and he brushed past the books and the thoughts still hanging in the small alcove, " You are ready now.

Native to Afghanistan

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Your father's remembrance and memorial would be inappropriate for me to attend. never mind the truth the searing…

Three Little Ditties from a Twenty First Century Feminist!

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I Am My VoiceRegimes may throb and dreams may smoke but my sisters' thoughts they'll not revoke. Through rock that quivers, through concrete stream, our reds and yellows, they'll dazzle and teem. My womanliness need not be feminine not that the feminine…

The Mish

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So begins your new career in the car service business. In some ways you enjoy it, too. Sitting alone in the cab each day, totally your own boss; you get a surge of excitement inside thinking about the money you'll make in a way that requires so little work. Clearing two…

Cats Do It Doggie Style

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Xao Ping reflexively dug her claws into the plush chenille of the sofa and let out a low yowl. She knew the old lady would be mad if she tore the fabric, but she couldn’t help it.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 30

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Anatoly Gringovitch took a swallow of beer, thoughtfully put the cap on his Ferrari da Varese custom fountain pen, and launched into his story:

Fast Or Slow

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Some people burn slowWhile others burn fastAnd betweenAll kind of things happen:There's happiness sadnessJoy and angerSicknessThings happenAnd when you are in theWorldThe worlds molds youWith all it elixirs and tempationsThe good timesThen come the wounds and scarsAnd the…

Percentages

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There’s a problem with falling for a mostly straight girl. And by mostly straight, I mean, when you and I met at the Christmas cocktail dress-up party a year ago, you in red spandex with white fur trim and me in my straight-from-work black slacks and grey

Biography / Memoir (outline)

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Larry's next book, A Fly in My Ointment, is due out this summer

How Sturdy Is Your Sick Bag?

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A wave lifted me from my seat, scattering more drops of vomit around, and I thought nastily about bringing the motion sickness bracelets back inside, dripping bags in tow, to ask for a refund.

Our Names Are Written In Water

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Passing us in a delicate swirl of light perfume and healthy girl sweat, three bare midriff elfin, baby dykes with pencil thin eyebrows, and chic art hair cuts, swaggered in like cool young gunfighters straight off the cover of Bad Baby Butch Vogue

Five Million Yen: Chapter 72

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Ben considered his options in the taxi to Charles De Gaulle airport.

Lazarusfish

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Scuttling on his knees now, he crossed to the other side of the boat and dropped the fish into a bucket of water. He knew what he had to do next.

About My Dad

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My dad drove a Model A Roadster and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin with one leather boot up on the running board and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one My dad ro

Katie

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Katie died on Tuesday.

The Stick

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When you finally got blood from the hard stick You spotted the backflash of red And said Thank God. The woman’s legs and arms Were everywhere, and you were in the middle Holding her down with one hand while wielding A butterfly in the other. You stuc

News That Stays News

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Some trick of the morning light makes the tattoo on her ankle look like the burn from a branding iron. She had watched her father as he slept last night. He was handsome and innocent, like a baby boy.

Office Politics

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The summer of 1974, between high school and college, I got my first real job, paid corporate employment. My mother couldn't stand having me underfoot, sitting around all day, watching TV. She drove me in the family station wagon to a temporary secretarial agency. I told…

Desperate For A Good Leg

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Of course the man went tumbling, and though he fell not far, a falling with a body full of meats and sweet breads makes the landing something awful-not so bad that Desperate got it-only so the leg puffed like a blue, rain swollen, earth-bound cloud.

Waking Up After a Nap During Election Day

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He is an exercise in humility:What I cannot have or be. The chances of our meetingand his perfection are darkly astronomical. There are plenty of otherswhose riches I cannot have,why envy him?We are similar in spritbut have different fortunes.It is unfair and…

The Sun, the Trees, the Clouds, the Grass

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The sun was a dish of burnished courage

Kiss Me Quick

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You, who reaches in, touches me in that moment of decision, and knows I’ll be everything you’ve looked forward to tonight.

An Alphabet

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A daydreams about a woman whose name he’s forgotten next to B, who’s been drunk since afternoon.

Cocktail Pianist

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It seems the law of gravity will exert its influence even in such mundane matters as the afternoon rush hour.

After Eliot

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Her breath was on me

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

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In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?” “Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.

Hellgate

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Either it was rescue--if the customer was alive to be found--or recovery, the term for bringing out the dead.

Graduation (For My Mother)

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I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

The Continuum of Flames

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Molly was from dull and wet Kansas City, Missouri, where she learned to pass the time in the many record shops and bars that lined it's inconspicuously storied streets, catching the attention of a young red blooded all American Kansas City man, from time

Mom Dream, from the Family Album

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She was trying to hold something, gathering in … lips blue/ black, saying: “I’m all right.” I remember her telling me, over the phone one time: “It’s a baby rabbit, and he was having a picnic. He was chewing away and chewing away. I had six tomato pla