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Messages from Upstate

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My eyes are wide open. I look like a graphic novel. My world is black and white. I’m poorly drawn. All sounds have an exclamation point.

Rook

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What can I say about my brother, Stroman. We are twins and we hate each other. He is an honest, brave man with scruples. He is full of bullshit. He thinks I am morally twisted. He probably has a point there, but I don’t see what that has got to do with

The Miracle

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On the way to the drinking fountain, Elysia Martin, a third grader at St. Michael's Parochial School, heard a voice calling her name. When she turned toward the white plaster statue of the Virgin Mary that sat between twin hedges in the rose garden, she

Fast

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Everything seems still, but it's not.

The Letter

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I knew nothing about the letter at first. When I came in that morning and smiled and said good morning, it was a genuine smile and a heartfelt good morning. But the letter, which had arrived the previous afternoon, was already doing its corrosive work of

The Kid With the Hair

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threads of Cocoa Krispies

another love letter

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Buoyancy

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When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo

NOVEL EXCERPT: Jimmy Gollihue

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Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound, a long voice from up the mountain, and the baying of the dog pulled a keening lament from his dream of the highway.

Ring, Ring, Ring

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If this is trouble, please call someone else.

Kickstand

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Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.

Gothic Clockwork Apparatus Man

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an awkward stage between glued popsicle stick marsupial, and mechanical tin foil mammal.

Pictures of an Inhibition

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Fun times. Deep breath.

Egypt.

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When the sky was thinner and water faster, we would chase the falling stars.

A Bum and his Shopping Cart, Giving Up his Ways

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A bum leaves his shopping cart in the middle of the intersection at 7th Ave and Perry St and walks away leaving everything behind Shopping cart gets hit by an onslaught of yellow taxis whizzing by The contents flying out into the hum

Centipede

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Five o’clock, and Madame choosing her evening legs. Elizabeth assisting. Elizabeth will continue to assist until midnight, despite the chaos, at which point the authorities will tell her such assistance is no longer necessary.

Octopus

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My ride, my good friend Morning was due any minute, but of course, he/she was always late. My costume was a dog. I was stuck to another dog, in the act of passion. A stuffed one. A basset hound. I said my name was Lightning.

The Game

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Cammie Richard's house was just like all the others in Wilchester. The exterior was vaguely reminiscent of the Dutch style; gray stone with cross beams of dark wood, with two stories and a bay window. Her yard was fertilizer green, with a giant STRATFORD FOOTBALL…

The Grief Counselor

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At first she kept repeating "I don’t know why he's doing this" as if the cops thought she was mixed up in it somehow. When they convinced her that all she needed to do was talk to her brother and tell him to give himself up, she looked hopeless.

His Nightmares

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Motionless seconds turned

Blonde Woman with Sunglasses

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Sometimes everything becomes as meaningless as a blonde woman with sunglasses. Still, there is something reassuring about the blonde woman with sunglasses, as she sits there alien to any regime, while I build my new empire of vanilla ice cream, so…

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.