Stories tagged flash-fiction

Polyester Purgatory

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They line the bar beside me. Talking about themselves and estranged children, while rubbing necks and wrists, searching for the pulse.

the spirit inside my clothing

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I’ll tell you what happens after stories like this get loose. A small swift tongue darts out of the head lewdly, its promiscuous gender common in deception to its lovely buttocks, its brightness wild and fierce after its first talkative babbling. Th

Mountain Pose

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Lying in the dewy grass in corpse pose, the stars of heaven above him, it was hard not to let worries take over his breath...

Things to do in Cleveland

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"Wasn't me. I was out of town."

The Right Time

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The barricades pierce her heart in a blind spot of hope undone. Like a dead bird in the air falling to the battlefield, between distorted faces and arms entangled in blood, forever fooled by a grand promise. Her voice breaks against children's laughter, a

Sparking a sneeze

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I asked her about it in the schoolyard, the rough white bandage covering the accident of her marriage, tapes cordoning off the scene of the crime. Two fingers held together, for better or worse, for sickness, for poorer, for a few weeks more…

savor the day

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Savor the day while it is there in your mouth, this was all I knew. Mouth, bone, face, while the tongue held its silent ability. And the body of he who enters me, host to the stranger, the guest who comes along with me, to laugh at the gods far above. O

The Death of Narcissus

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Aging nudists, sun-rumpled and shameless. Their display of flesh suggests it’s expendable, easily replaced.

Karmic Tide

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Digging in another garden, jumping into another space and time, I impaled a toad on the tines of a garden fork. At first I thought the toad was a clump of clay, stuck to the thick tine, but before I could kick the clay off with my…

the dreamer of eggs

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How much sucking, faithlessly, can there be? The body being a night thing off which steam rises, that attracts like a magnet or loadstone, whose curls attract, whose ringlets or tufts of touched hair between the legs glory up the nightly watched miracle,

Death Along the Jersey Rails

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like old discarded snake skin, dry and coarse after the bite... immortally tortured by broken glass bottles.

running naked through your dreams

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How can you stop a man from running naked through your dreams? I want to know. This ought to be taught, somewhere. In schools, or somewhere. I could never stop you from doing what you wanted with me, and didn’t want to either. You had complete leave of

All the gaping mouths without a voice

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"Mammy, why do they throw sand in our eyes?" a girl could be heard screaming from the 30-foot-deep ravine, Babi Yar.

let out of my cage

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I have been let out of my cage. And stand outside it now, seeing the whole together, visible, unbroken. My master, selector, chooser shining in the sun after being cleansed, purified. Grace walking the land, the earth, washed, suffering from nothing of

Jerky

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The same old, same old, woman, eh?