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Shirts and Skins

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The boys finished their laps and returned to the center of the gym, Hamid shuffling up last, as usual. Amid the T-shirts and shorts, he wore faded blue slacks and a grubby, long sleeved dress shirt. He always dressed that way, even in gym class, as though

Acapella

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What time is it exactly? A time no one should know? A time of unrequited beauty? A time when gods must go to some level of subsidence? A parabola long unseen? Some point bereft of distance? A cosmic mezzanine? A…

I Wonder

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I wonder what it would be like to dog-paddle in the middle of the ocean. I wonder how Jean Auguste Ingres got the flesh tones for “Odalisque.” I wonder if bees have dreams.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 4

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There was no one there, but the smell of cooked bacon permeated the hall, triggering borborygmus in his stomach. He loved that word, but not his empty stomach.

Terminal Velocity

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...she did wish she lived somewhere in Ancient Rome, and from one of those seven hills, perhaps during sunset, she would resolve to roll down and meet the flaming orb just as it descended so she would dissolve into embers and ash...

The Diaphragm

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They had a deal, she reminded him. If he didn’t want to wear a condom all the time, he’d have to help with her birth control.

Drunk and Driving the Family Home

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I felt like-

The Four Despairs of Lumpy

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children love to push the gas up and down my limbs

Swallowed Gulped Engulfed

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Last night the thesaurus exploded. Don’t ask how. It just did. Exploded. Burst. Blew up. Flew into pieces. Discharged.

Blackouts

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The Bird King is trapped behind the mirrors. Sometimes you'll see a hand, a wing, fluttering in a dark space. You may even see his breath, a pulse of mist in a corner of the glass. But don't ever smash his silvered prison. Don't ever let him out and into the world.*****O…

Terry, the virgin

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Terry had an apartment not far from Lake Michigan, where we could stroll to one of the beaches. It was close to Lincoln Park. This was in the summer of 1966. We had to walk up to the fourth floor, and on those steamy hot Chicago summer nights in August,

The Roses Ask For You

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The roses ask for you when I smell them They seem to remember your touch more than others. They can’t bear it when you’re gone and wonder when you’ll be returning I am beginning to do the same I no longer go outdoors to be with them

Tabula Rasa

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When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

Tiffany's Economy

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The world waited with bated breath as Tiffany stood in the grocery store aisle that housed the various kinds of fruit spreads for sandwiches and toast. She tapped her toe and nodded her head this way and that while she compared the qualities of two jars of…

A Mess

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A.K.AAmputated narratives of the not yet come emancipatory orderModesty would be forestalled (left aside) in the case of the title "The Mess...."But who can shoulder the visceral (cough) burden of what is to come?" - The God of Trifling Grammatical…

What I Remember

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“She’s in shock,” I heard my mom say, so I assume Jill must have asked how I was or why I wasn’t crying. I did not want to talk to anyone or have anyone talk about me, so I just watched the trees go by as we drove back home.

The Weird Gods

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"The weird gods climbed down from the moon, past low-hanging clouds and upon leafless treetops. Their unusual boots first touched ground in a parking lot in the city. The snow crunched."

My Glass is Waiting

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The trouble with alarm clocks is naturally that they are miserable. And their curse is that their misery is useful: we employ them because we want to get away from them. But we would never have one as a friend.

Sensible Things

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Thirty-seven stitches to sew your ear on, five more to close the skin above your eyebrow...

Starting Over 1974

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Stone-gathering became my job by default. Digging the foundation, trundling the loaded wheelbarrow away from the site, yours.

The Woman with No Skin

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Far away or up close, she appeared just like anyone else, a young woman with pale arms and legs and a milk-face unblemished by a single freckle or pimple or blotch. Only when she turned a certain way did it become clear that what rested atop her muscle an

Visitation

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My mother looked up and began to laugh, it was a nervous tittering, but there was delight in her eyes at the crazy spectacle of our small black puppy eluding, probably taunting all these armed police.

Sunday Morning

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Elvis on a Saturday night in Hades sings deadlines and parlour tricks

DING!

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He tapped his foot, swished his hips, swaying across the worn tile floor with an invisible partner in his arms, the batter-coated spoon still clutched in his right hand, momentarily forgotten. Nearly a decade had passed since he last shared a dance with h

Brief excerpt from the Fantasy thing I'm writing.

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Lucien Lucien Tidesquall lay almost sleeping amid the soft green grass. His eyes irradiated green midnight under vanquished brows. A plover hovered somewhere in the distance. It reminded him of a poem he had written as a teenager, a haiku that went as…

dealt.

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Stealing time. Always gambling. I used to wake up with wet eyes; remnants of nights and days spent in places I never wanted to leave. I took to insomnia to escape the dreams that reminded me of places I could never return to.Now I sleep here. When I can.

Killing Bin Laden: The Television Series

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Certain basic realities have escaped us. This is a good time to remember.

How to Hypnotize Women

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The irony is that Smart's work of self-abnegation has surpassed that of her erotic master; George Barker is largely forgotten now, while the reputation of Smart's one work of genius seems secure.

THERE AIN'T NO REAL GROWN-UP'S NOWHERE NO-HOW by Leanna MacFarlane

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[Huh!]

Swiss Miss Index

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Rye goods * Cracker brot: best practices * Recipes: never embellish! * Boughten: what to avoid