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Custard and Blancmange

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Who here of us has not yet caught Advanced to leaden fife, The answer to our waiting What, That answered, “Such is life?” I saw a jelly man go past, Who wobbled in his strife And cried, “No stiffness that won't last …

Holocaust Car Wash

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There was always something about the air in the deep south. The summer air. It was always so thick. So heavy. Joey didn't notice. He didn't know any better. He had lived in Savannah all six years of his life. He did remember the one time his father and…

Life As a Beach

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Life is a beach, not an enormous ashtry.

VENICE IN THE AFTERNOON

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It's cloudy out. So I go to the Assisted Suicide Center on Venice Blvd. It doesn't mean I'm gonna off myself because it's cloudy. There just happens to be a kind of puzzle of clouds in the sky the moment I decide to head over there. I find it fitting, thi

So, What Happened?

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the bay was littered with corpses

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Manet

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The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale and Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl Two roses in a small clear glass of water A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway up from

Born Here (from Grand Street literary journal)

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I really only started reading books after the folks left. Right away I thought maybe I should have a system for it, so I go alphabetically by author, one book by one author. The first time around I was reading the books everyone knows, so when I was in th

Last Night, I Had a Beer with God

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"So" he started, which troubled me enough to turn back around and make such focused eye contact that I did not even notice his glass was again full, "you wanted to talk?"

Bile: The 'Sexiest' Fluid You Can Share with Other People

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[SABATOGE!]

Latte Art

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The barista with the fake rainbow nails and amazing cleft. . . .

Snap

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Sweet Tooth needed a little snack, so he ambled on down the hall to the kitchen. He figured to make one of his patented peanut butter, potato chip, tangerine, raisin, and banana sandwiches because those things just always hit the spot. Unfortunately, when he tugged the…

Exiled from English

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Then they made him stay after school and met with his parents. Scott was sent outside to play in an empty playground. He didn’t feel like playing. He sat on the steps outside the classroom and listened to his Dad shouting through the plastic walls.

Florida Dreams of Peru

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Kiln dried mummies, landscape of once were alpacas. / Now all the wool is farmed in Alva

Postman

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About 10 years ago is when it started. I was 14, sitting at Pop's knee, listening to his stories, and Mom came in crying. She could hardly get words out. I think that day was the last time I felt the sun.

BARCELONA CON AMORE

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The fog drifted in, wreathing the woman in undulate shadows as kleigs danced in wind and ships moaned. Souchet had come through the Barrio Chino to stand on the pier at the hour when dead cease their ramblings and sleep.…

The Gatekeeper Of The Pathogens

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It was in his teeth. A blackness, a subscription to an outsideness, a painful contraction of burnt out trees scattered there among sand drifts and tidal debris. His face, lightly weathered and troubled, a tightness built into eyes of thought and separation. His arms, strong…

The Scrawny Dog Gospel

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Opportunity, says Webster, is a, "favorable juncture of circumstances." In my Oxford book of quotations, there are seven famous lines about opportunity. Seven – that’s it! There are twenty-seven regarding failure. Seems it's been easier for the great

Photosynthesis

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While searching for wildflowers along an old logging path bordering a ravine, I heard voices. “Damn, Clete. Where are we?” “I think you didn't make the goddamn turn, Mert, you idiot.” I looked over the edge of the ravine beside my path.…

writer’s block

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round & round this empty block again & again i go

Robots Among Us

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Father hands Billy a length of rope. Billy builds his resolve, fights back his tears, heads into the kitchen. It's time to become a man.

Beautiful Are the Feet: Part One

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Naomi hadn't expected them to come in such a big box. When the UPS man tried to hand it to her, she told him there must be some mistake, but then he pointed to her name¾NAOMI BROWN¾right there on the top. When she finally got off all that tape, she had another…

Destiny Knocking - 2

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. . . why did it take so long?

Puppet X, 8

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After too much I had forgotten how to fly. There was a small owl with me on the old dirt road by the wind. It was a very dark gray, like an ash. Its beak moved, it opened and shut, opened and closed, but I had also forgotten the language

gravelortian part 3

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god's seed is asleep in the carseat

Man-Bomb (excerpt from a Bromance in progress)

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The crowd- which consisted of exclusively men with beards and djembe drums and women with hairly legs poking out of corduroy patchwork skirts- cowered and crawled in fear around the angry man-bomb, mortally frightened yet encouraged to shimmy because the

Penny

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I saw a woman stop, Stoop on the platform To pick up a penny, And wondered what it was worth To her, that disruption, That eddy in the flow of the day's rush. One hint of brightness, A tiny windfall And something changed. Lucky heads…

One of Them

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Who the hell wasn’t aware by now? What about prostate cancer awareness? One out of six men got prostate cancer, but you didn’t hear them whining. They weren’t waving blue ribbons in your face.

Pirate

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“So, I’m watching the feed from Garowe and, by Allah, there’s a picture of Mohamed Guled, I can’t believe it, with a rocket launcher.

Fourth World

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Where are you going, boy who never was?

The Mate

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It sits there, watching, waiting, multiple cycles over.