Stories tagged flash-fiction

Poetry Reading at Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley

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Man in audience immolating himself, cutting his leg over and over And moaning: Oh, God, oh God. Groaning, more like it I could only think: This guy must absolutely hate my poems I was reading from Puppet X, the first time in public Of this long

Think About the Baby, Paul

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Paul and Mary Jo lived in an apartment at the top of a long, dark flight of stairs that were so high, I remember as if it were yesterday thinking, the night she pushed him down the stairs, he would surely be dead by the time he hit the landing at the

Adultery

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I took her out to a drive-in movie and we had sex in the back seat of my car. Then went into the concession stand to get something sweet after so much sex, and everyone was in there doing the same thing, you could tell by the flushed look on their faces

Lovelandtown Tavern

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James Hubert III sat at the bar. It was late. His wife and kids were long in bed and he knew he should be, too. But with the Lovelandtown lift bridge stuck in mid-air, a drink beckoned him. He sat next to Vince DeSantos, a small, stout man, with a bowling

March for Me

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A son packs his bag - bottled water, extra masks, and jerky. Mom paces behind him. “Don't go.”

A Clean Tent

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“No,” he says. A simple lie. “I -” He pushes the sleeping bag off of his legs. Their getaway reset was a mistake.

Hard Times

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None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…

How the Monarchs Thrive

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Daryll said he wished he'd followed his tuba into the Raccoon River, plunged down below the ice, trapped, freezing, never again to surface... He reckoned freezing was the best way to go, gunshot the second.

Adultery

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I took her out to a drive-in movie and we had sex in the back seat of my car. Then went into the concession stand to get something sweet after so much sex, and everyone was in there doing the same thing, you could tell by the flushed look on their faces

Dear Credit Card Thief

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Dear Credit Card Thief, I think of you—hunched, green cast, a zombie of the ephemeral, greedily parsing code, stealth hands like a lover's over my plastic doppelgänger, wafer of identity, your key to the internet of things, to me. Did you have a pleasant…

The Psychopath Less Travelled

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The windows were open at the pink apartment building, upstairs and down. People enjoying the warm day and the remains of the sunlight, when this woman in one of the upstairs apartments began yelling about the Children of Israel. It was approaching dinnert

(living in the flames)

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After it is over, I go out into the world to the café. The flower sellers are setting up their booth outside the glass doors. Classical guitar over the speakers. A soft rain falling. Heads are bowed there, reading the news. Coffee, croissants, cappuccin

Big Ruckus

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Suddenly a big ruckus or commotion erupted in the restaurant “Yeah, come and get it, if you want it so bad,” said the waiter Pulling off his white apron and tossing it on an empty table “I got your red snapper, right here.” He grabbed his crotch

The Road a Scripture

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Granny says Jesus works quiet and curious but mama leaving with the UPS man weren’t no great mystery.

Meat-loving Ravens Are Snatching Steaks from Costco Customers

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Customers at a Costco in South Anchorage, Alaska, have been noticing that their shopping bags are a little lighter, and it all has to do with some cunning birds that hang out in the parking lot looking for their next meal. The Anchorage Daily News rep