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Fake Letter: From Your Gay Son

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Dear Mom, You told me the connection between a mother and her son is like no other connection. You carried me for nine months. You scheduled visits with the doctor; you thought and discussed and re-thought and re-discussed with dad what my name would be; you…

Investigation

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In this way a section of a marsh or weapons testing range, a forest or corporate landscape is transported into his living room.

Ascension of the Conquistador

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One of Montejo's cap­tains has us drilling in the rain again. The sun hasn't shone for days and the air is sti­fling, like try­ing to breath under water. Every­thing looks gray except the palms. Each green leaf droops in the rain like a…

who really wants to be a virgin anyway?

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I remember thinking virginity was highly over-rated. Who really wants to be a virgin anyway? I got out of that state as fast as I could. Sixteen years (okay maybe 15 and a half) is long enough of not knowing what to do with your body. Screw that! But th

Filaments

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It's always dark when Cal and I arrive. We park under the bright sodium lamps, closest to the doors. The lights will probably be off by the time we return, unless the sensors miscue in the uncertain light of early morning. When that happens, the lights…

Change in Status

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First, he wrote it in a patch of new, wet cement one night at the intersection, for everyone to see, “Tad Loves Kimberley.” Maybe they were still in high school, or one of them worked at the café on the corner, and the other at the ice cream shop. Then

gravelortian part 13

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Upon further investigation two soldiers were found

Bigfoot Walks into a Bar

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Some claimed seeing him that first time in the grocery store staring in at the pints of Haagen-Dazs, his breath fogging the glass as his head rested against the heavy freezer doors, stinking in his Sasquatch suit. The second time he was…

Too Much Info

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  It wasn't meant for our brains to take in so much information, I hear someone say on NPR The information age, seems to be suited for me, I can't get enough of it, it floods my mind and nerves, Reading wikipedia and blogs for hours and You tube   And im…

Longing of the Broken-Hearted

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I remember sitting on the screened-in front porch of my house on Illinois Street that summer that we met. I had just come up from school at downstate Illinois. I remember eating a peach and listening to the sounds in my neighborhood, just listening. The

Blackballed

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When I was a small child, my father was just barely a man, and he was independently wealthy. So it didn't matter that he was an adolescent inside. There was never any mention of "working." No notion of career. Just the girl he knocked up and the amusing…

Take Two Llamas and Call Me in the Morning

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A Massachusetts nursing home that doesn’t believe in antipsychotic drugs uses a llama named Travis to calm patients.

The Witch from Bilbao

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I remember the first time I saw her. I'd just pushed through the crowded bar and waited to place my order.

just a girl on a couch

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behind the curtainof a ballsy fragilitythere lives an easethat was not easythere exists a gracethat is not always gracefulbeauty can maskcheekbones that sometimes look sadwhen they are smilingeven grin determinationneeds downtimethe prize is still thereeven if the eyes…

Rescue 1973

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I remember it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella and I was standing there on the corner, waiting for Rudy's school bus, thinking, Why don't I have an umbrella?

Animals in the Sky

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When the great comet passed over, everyone was at my door with pitch forks and rifles with extra long bayonets. Don’t kill it yet; I want to study its habits.

Sushi's Night Out

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... she’d stolen her boyfriend away from her, leaving her with a goldfish and a cat. Oh, and a pillow and some lights, she added. And I can’t really see you, because I’m blind.

A Lapse in Concentration

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[...] A crimson post-it note/ illustrates the squiggle of a resting pulse wavering/ near the broken pencil leads and whorls of/soft wood which may be classed as evidence.

Children are always beautiful

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“Your children are beautiful,” she said, handing back his wallet after removing several bills. Her mouth was fringed by bitten-off melon lipstick, a calm kind of mad. She told him to call her Sally, “like the song McCartney rips his lungs on.” She…

The Shield

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The girl has big tits for only being fourteen. She leans in the passenger side window of my car and asks me for a bag of ten Oxycontin.She has no clue what I could do to her right now, that I'm a cop and could bring her ass up on charges if I wanted to. I want to do…

It Is Enough

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I don't know what my mother is thinking. She's either cart wheeling into crazy land or turning into a ghoul.

Playground in the Fire

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People questioned my motives when I became a smokejumper again. They said I had a death wish, or that somehow by going into battle against the big Pacific Northwest forest fires, I was still trying to put out the flames of the burning car in which my sons Jake (age…

Stupid's Rising Up

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Stupid's rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that's not how the alphabet goes.

A Tinder Ghost

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Do you know if you were actually speaking to me there?

The Semaphore of Civilization

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We're alone and besieged / by badness.

Berniece

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"I expect 50% of the agreed fee. In cash.” I dropped the envelope at the designated spot and parked up the street.

Automatic Writing: A Cure for Writer's Block?

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Knocked off around noon, drank some retsina, checked Olympics results. Can’t find Medea’s motivation. Why would she kill her kids?

The Faraday Effect

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Because he tells her to, she puts on a vintage Easter dress one size too small and sprawls in a circle of light on the dusty floor...

Swimming Lessons

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The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

Sheer

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That's when we struggle, got it? Right there on the floor. It's not the brawl of the century, and I'm not the pilot who delivers the Enola Gay.