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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.

The Sad Giraffe Demographic

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...there’s one thing we’ve found, an untapped demographic.

Diary of an Angry Psychologist: Wednesday’s Appointments

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--New Patient: Pearl, 48, 15:00 PM Pearl is not her real name. Her real name is Stella. Pearl used a fake name to get past the intake screeners. Pearl is my ex-wife.

Wait

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I'm not dying. What is it called if you think you might have Hypochondria but you really don't? I'm worried that's what I have. Is it cold in here? Or is it me, dying?

February 16, 2006

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When we arriveand are met by strange friendsstrange like the fog on the redreed mudflatsthat span the low tide around Incheon -When we arrivecarrying so much we will not needlike the bus they hire to take us through the darksix people to fill so much more space - When…

Things to Do in Prague

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We are not doing a good job of ignoring Pink Floyd.

Subway Imitator

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The imitator’s segue to his sad life story was, “But what isn’t funny…”

Going in Circles

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Once, I asked my father why Rex turned around three times before settling down for a nap. He told me it was because one good turn deserves another, then he laughed.

Radical Middle-Aged Cake Acceptance

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Cake is not the enemy.

GRACE

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The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders

Ethnomathematics

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His academic nightmare is set in an examination hall, where the student takes a seat at a folding table in the center of the room.

Heart of a Poet

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He sneezed Hit the wrong buttonDidn't mean to kill him,but he didHeld onto me then, cryingand could not stopI feel so awful, he sobbedHe was asking for mercyAnd I meant to say, "yes,I will spare your life,"but I hit the kill buttoninsteadIt was an accidentHoney, it's just a…

The Beginning and End of Comedy

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Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.

Wherein the Air

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He inhaled the spears of aroma...

The True Price of Bed and a Bath

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So it's me and two other girls...

goddess of personified flesh

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And yes, I may be the goddess of personified flesh, the same little goddess of curled locks, of little sleep, on fire, ablaze. With my sudden weakness, stoppage of breath, pulse cut short, leaving the wrist. And you of stolen, fraudulent face, troub

Kite

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One year, she got a kite.

Secrets / Cigarettes

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We gave our cigarettes names.

From Day One

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On the first night I met you, you fell in love with the waitress. She had a loud voice and a strong Irish accent. She wore an oversized t-shirt to minimize her large breasts, and baggy jeans. No makeup; crooked teeth. But you…

Parallelogical Circuit

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{A} So I think maybe I am a robot. If I was a robot, I would do lewd things, metallic (cold, hard, shiny, heavy, malleable, loud, acrid, industrial, immovable, unstoppable) things. I would do the things I do in my dark powerless dreams. People would understand and…

The Tall Guys Club

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Some of the guys wear earplugs. They wear ‘em because they don’t wanna hear it. Oscar Livitt fucking. Nobody looks.

Filtering Grace

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...She was my first, my only, she broke me in then brought me down. Alone now, I cycle through hundreds of variations of her image like a flip book narrating some abstract story. That’s all she is now to me, an incoherent melange of tints, saturations, an

from MLKNG SCKLS

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94% Battery Power Remaining Last night I dreamt about a mutt whose tail never learned how to wag, and under a sun that gagged us with heat, the mutt sat stoned with its mouth belching cones of pot smoke. Sometimes the smoke shone orange – sometim

The Cracked Sidewalk of Kentucky

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One summer night, as I walked alone down the cracked sidewalk of Kentucky underneath a canopy of maples where the moonlight fell through branches and lit my path with uneven lines I wondered: where does the residue of lust and desire go when everything you want to…

Excerpt from House in the Attic

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We stopped at the Western Summit of the Mohawk Trail. Below Richland lay in the valley. I could see all the way to New York State and well into Vermont. From memory, I picked out the Hoosac River running south under the railroad

The Boundary Line

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These things were indeed the wealth of our respective nations.

Six Down

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“You own your own burial plot, but you don't own your home,” he'd said, and I couldn't help but agree.