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Route 346

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Route 346 is the way Pop drove to Troy long after everybody else took Route 2. Today Charlie and I drive in the opposite direction. Back then, Pop drove us to Troy on Route 346 on Sunday afternoons with the car windows…

And We Sell Apples 1977

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I hear the car door slam. Steve, about to duck daddy-duty: Just gonna take a run to the Quickway. "Rudy," I say, "go get in the car. Tell Papo I said Wait."

Sri Lanka

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When he turned to the quiet sound of her voice, he knew he'd heard her before, that she had already called out several times, and that she'd reached him somewhere in a recess of…

The Virtues of Nerdy Women

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Back in college I had carnal knowledge of a woman who danced bare-breasted and frenzied as a Bacchante.

Fruits of Passion

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Lifting a pear wedge to my lips, I hesitate and dip it into my bourbon instead. I notice a tiny sphere of liquid, suspended, glistening with the flame of the candle. The sweet, subtle scent tantalizes my senses. Careless, sticky fingers bring movement.…

A Well Dressed Woman of Recent Times

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One Overcoat, grey striped; One Suit, fur trimmed, red velvet; One Evening gown and jacket, cretonne; One Negligee brocade; One Costume evening gown; Seven Straw hats; Four Shirts for riding habits; Four Collars for riding habits; One Negligee, green crep

The Insured

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Before the bills, before the fighting, before the need to blame something, there was a moment blown empty in the span of one doctor’s breath, a moment where bar nights and weekend benders had no meaning, a moment where the future was as blank as the bac

Like a Calm Sea

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“We should go again,” said Krishna. But Iqbal didn’t reply. He sipped his tea like he hadn’t heard, but a tremor passed through his right shoulder. His left arm was bandaged, and the wrist and lower arm were in a c

Tuna Sandwiches

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The tuna fish sandwiches were laid out the way they had always been; they were cut into triangles, with wet paper towels between them. They stayed that way over an hour, untouched, aside from a dimple the size of my cousins finger to test the softness. …

Staying In Place Staying In Place

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The way each intersection in a city where you’ve lived a while becomes layered with personal archeology. The cafe that replaced a liquor store you avoided, and the friend (or lover) you broke up with there, and the way on the day of the big fire you

House on Fire

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I started the fire. I started the fire in my room. I started the fire in my room because I was cold. I figured something small, in an old oil drum I kept in there, and no one would get hurt.

Excerpt from "Change" where a 1963D Quarter is followed for a hundred years.

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May 1890 Rifle, COLORADO Only pressure can change one thing into another. In terms of time, the…

DENSITY

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There were more of us before, laying in a puddle cuddling on the floor with heads tucked into the crooks of arms where light scattered their crowns in the morning and no machine exists for me to use trying to find that morning again. Carl could go off the side of the…

The Cenataur (Part 1)

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Love needs loathing like cold weather needs warm clothing. And all truths, untruths and part truths need a place to live when a mind gets too sardine-packed with information and cynicism... Some say there was a time when the light was brighter, the ear

Airport Hotel

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We construct what we want, from what has failed in the past. We thought this worked. The picture was buzzing for me and I tried to hold on. I went blindly forward.

A Losing Hand

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A group of us from work are playing cards at a friend's house, so when my brother Jimmy calls, I take my phone into the other room. I already know what it's about, really the only reason he ever calls these days.“Look, I hate to ask,” he begins, the way he…

COYOTE BAIT

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Light was always fucking with you in LA, especially in the afternoon where it possessed a golden hue that could knock you over if you weren’t careful. Its beauty reminded you of what you lacked.

Automaton

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I must say your script is rather impressive. “You will mesmerize a girl in velvet stained garment…” “The channels of cologne fade from a body, eventually.” The girl carousels home with a raspier…

luncheon on the grass

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I had a dream, I remember, where I am in this painting, Luncheon on the Grass. My dress was thrown off and the picnic basket, filled with bread and fruit, is spilled out upon it, and I am sitting nude on my underclothing, with two gentlemen fully dresse

Guidance Counselors Fight Boring Image by Ghost-Riding Their Whips

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“I was talking to kid who hadn’t applied to college, and I asked him why,” Branson says. “He rolled his eyes and said ‘Why go to college if I’m gonna end up a tool like you?’"

How to Score With Freudian Chicks

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Unlike me, Gino could walk up to a group of unattached women, say something sensitive and thoughtful like “Hey, hey, hey!”–and suddenly the fun would begin.

Diana

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Dreams were all she ever had, all that ever comforted her. Diana. But then there was Rachel. And Diana forgot about her dreams, because there was nothing but Rachel. At first it was nothing but innocent phone calls, plans to meet up for coffee…

Ramblers and Spinners

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IT SNOWED all day the Monday after Thanksgiving. After supper and homework, my brother, Will, and I sat in the narrowly opened window of the second floor apartment where we lived and watched the older kids run their bicycles down Sweet's Hill and hit their brakes at…

The Billygoat: A Beast Fable

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“I will become a respected novelist!” proclaimed Billy.

Buzz Kill

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Blood had soaked through his Converse All-Stars, and into his cotton sox. It was the smell of metal, of iron more specifically, that nudged his mind out from the fog of shock and denial, closer to the reality of his circumstances.

Record of a Living Being

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Kurosawa was silent as we traipsed through the destruction, carefully side-stepping piles of sodden pages and heaps of swollen, broken-backed texts. Workers in coveralls used wide brooms to push water toward a floor-drain at the back of the store.

and I used to sing, too, after sex

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Females exuding from the genitals, giving life meaning, shape, cleanness of line, purity of spirit. They may form man as the honey moans out its salt song, solitary, its epic shout of joy, the sweet science of the human form. Then to give back in re

boomeander

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A CEO would also be a an EOC, only inside-out and backward. But upside-down, both are still what they are.

SEVEN DEGREES LESS THAN ZERO

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One night the woman went down in the basement, grabbed an electric drill, and let the voices out in eight places.

poetry seductress

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And then there was this girl from Boston, named Pat, who was a little on the hefty side and wouldn’t get off me. And I was skinny then too. She wanted sex so much and so often that the whole time I visited her apartment in Cambridge, after I graduated f