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Brody Carlisle halted his horse on the crest of a shrub-covered hill, slapped his Stetson twice sending dust floating skyward, and after placing it back on his head, coaxed a swallow from his canteen.
To the west, the sun slid behind a scattering of tall pillar-like plateaus. Their...
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Food. Globes of mashed potatoes glistening with a thin layer of gravy, plump slices of pie gushing with ruby red cherries–food
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Stan stood on the sand, crumpled by how many people and birds running and sliding into it today. Now, it was getting dark, the last of the purple, streaky clouds turning black against a pale, gray sky.
Go or stay, just two choices.
He reached down...
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10
Amos stood on a thick, muscular knoll on the shoulder of a dark river. He shivered, soaking wet from his silver hair to his leather shoes, and stared, disoriented, at the pines across the river. They seemed to stand with their backs to him. Amos felt...
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In July the monsoon rains returned and with them came the little green frogs. Price Aurigena had first seen them in the summer of 1969 when he’d arrived in Korea and now, a year later, they were once again everywhere. Frogs sprang from the ground like exploding popcorn...
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I have studied martial arts all my life: Karate, Judo, Kenpo Tae Kwon Do, Aikido, and Hsing-I, but as I've gotten older, I pretty much stick to Tai Chi. I used to study Tai Chi at a park in Washington, D.C. called Glen Echo Park. It's an old...
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July 20, 1942
Escorted by her eldest brother Neil, Annabell walks across the front lawn to meet Bill. her groom. She is dressed in a long gown of pink net overlying pink point
Read more: Wedding Portrait – Life Portrait
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S is for Scintillation.
Their arms and elbows locked as they vied for control. Major released her grip and dredged her beet-colored nails across his muscled chest. Zane glanced at the four lines of ripped skin, blood dripped onto the rim of his pants. He lunged forward, grabbed...
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Black, ginger, and tortoiseshell felines zoom through the open screen door onto the deck. Black Nic pauses and surveys his domain from the top of the steps. Kittens race down the ramp and scamper into the backyard. Glory, the tortoiseshell, runs to the maple in the corner, ...
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Here am I, on this grey morning, here I am again, entering this day as I entered yesterday and the day before and unless I am spared by death will enter tomorrow and the day after, endlessly growing older with the anxiety that brings, the fear of coming...
Read more: Beckett – you asked for this
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Mattie opened the front door. "I'll be back in a while, Henry," she said, then stepped onto the porch and clicked the door shut.
It opened behind her and Henry stuck out his head. "Wait, I can come with you."
She shook her head. "I need...
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The eight-year-old 1958 Chevy was purring along through rural Kansas with ease. Don smiled with pride. When it hit 180,000 miles he planned to celebrate with a smoke and an ice-cold Mountain Dew from the cooler. It was a beautiful late April day with the sunny...
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This is from an assignment in the Innovative Fiction Course taught by Karen
I'm just not making it in my innovative fiction course.
What is innovative fiction you might ask? Well, if you have to ask, I'd say you're one of those rubes...
Read more: Why I’m Failing My Innovative Fiction Course
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The Don, whose real name you do not want to know, ever, has vast experience solving problems. Our organization, Don’t Try to Find Us Press, never advocates violence. We take no responsibility for violent acts committed by those misinterpreting the Don’s recommendations.
Now for...
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Todd shivered in the dark, seated cross-legged on the linoleum. Coats and dresses draped gently over his five-year-old shoulders. He flinched as a slit of bright light flashed through the space at the bottom of the door. Seconds later the deep, rolling rumble followed. “Mommy?”
Silence.
“Mommy?” ...
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I fell down the rabbit hole straight into the town planning committee meeting. A large basin of Sangria sat in the middle of the scratched wood table in the center of the room, and a keg rested against the back wall. Al, Stan, and Art...
Read more: Mad Hatter Town Planners
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You’re at Grandma’s house again for dinner. As always, the family is gathered together and everybody’s trying to out-talk everybody else. You ask yourself why you continue to go through this ordeal every week, but you know why; it’s Grandma. Also, it’s a family tradition that brings you...
Read more: Dinner at Grandma's
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At age five, Amy told her mother that the thought of swimming scared her. Not surprisingly, her mother poo-pooed the idea, and said that fear showed weakness and stupidity. From then on, Amy said she hated swimming and never admitted any fear to her mother again. I don’t...
Read more: Mommy’s Little Secret
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I had been in Oz for a few months when I received an emergency call to come back to South Africa. Every émigré who leaves elderly parents dreads this call.
But this was worse than death. Our family lawyer called me to attend a meeting...
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The late August sun hung hot in a bare blue sky. Matilda picked up a tattered straw bushel basket and trudged into the garden with it. The rows of beans were dusty green, the corn stalks tall, their leaves edged with yellow. She settled on...
Read more: "I’ve Been With Willy All Day"
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Nomi stood a few feet from the curb, watching her breath in the November Seattle rain, waiting for her mother. She hated asking for money. The feeling of dread almost compelled her to flee as she saw the silver Mercedes approaching. If only she didn’t need another fix.
“So, ...
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The toe drags umber, the pressure of holding paint forces the belly to bulge, and the canvas texture causes tired bristles to bend and stretch, casting tinted shadows in their wake. The resulting undertones bring life to the painting. The vitalizing paint bled from the brush is drawn from the...
Read more: Her Fortune is the Future in the Past
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She was buzzing in his ear again, the world’s largest and most annoying fly.
“This isn’t the beach you promised me. Can’t we go into town at least?”
He flicked a hand over his shoulder at her, go away, and stared into the waves. His eyes sought and...
Read more: The Compulsion of Water Lilies
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From ‘The Road from Setup to Payoff’ by Karen Barr, (Writers Village University, MFA 250-261 Story Focus series based on the book by Lisa Cron)
One of our most hardwired expectations is that anything that reads like the beginning of a new pattern—that is a setup—will in fact, be a...
Read more: Lessons In Plot: From Setup To Payoff
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Art Subklew is a 55-year-old Paramedic residing and working in The Southern Berkshires, Massachusetts. He began creative writing as a teenager, mostly focusing on fictional short stories grounded in his experiences as a teenager growing up on a small farm. He has attended numerous classes in Creative Writing...
Read more: Meatloaf and Mashed Taters
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This essay is part of a Talk-Back series – I owe that title to Karen. A Talk-Back is my response to a chapter in a WVU textbook, my communication with its author.
This Talk-Back is a response to the exercise in Lia Purpura’s chapter, ‘On Miniatures,’ (Flas...
Read more: Talk-Back, Dear Lia, on FnF
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“Why the F--- Do I want to see
The last time I hung out with my Uncle Dan is when I dragged him to Gatorland to do something touristic. ...
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“Does he look at you?”
My cousin’s innocent question triggers a flashing red warning light in my brain. My baby doesn’t look at me. I assumed he was too young still, but my cousin’s baby is only four days older than mine, and they are...
Read more: A Fear of Broken Things
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It is a joy to hold a lovely scene, a delightful moment, in memory.
~Marjolein Bastin
Frank was four and I was five and getting ready to start school when Dad and Mom moved us into a new house on Glasgow Avenue—a three-bedroom home that wasn't quite finished—in...
Read more: Wild Roses Growing in the Ditch
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At some point, everything comes to an apex. Status quo can only persist for so long before the natural balance of the universe calls for consumption, and then it all comes down to a choice. That’s it, a lone decision that ultimately leads down a pathway to a higher level...
Read more: Hazardous Happenings
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Sending your writing out into the world can be scary whether you write poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. But, at some point, if you are a serious writer, you will do it. Getting a rejection letter back can be more devastating than asking a girl out as a teenager and...
Read more: Dealing with Rejection
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I took an hour to walk outdoors in my yard, first to clip dead honeysuckle branches, pluck dandelions, and then to fill the birdbaths and feeders. And to ponder what to write about one of my backyard neighbors, the gray squirrel, Sciurus
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My four-year-old son has a friend over. I overhear my son’s friend tell my two-year-old daughter, “Gracie, you can’t come in here.” Then my son’s voice: “It’s okay, she can play with us. Here, Gracie,” he says, presumably handing her one of the toys they are playing with. My
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I can hear my parents’ raised voices upstairs. They are fighting again. I turn on the sink faucet, letting the sound of the running water drown out their voices. I thrust my hands in the nearly scalding hot water and methodically scrub each dish in the sink...
Read more: The Weight of Emotions
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I'm sorry that I hadn't thought of how I would take care of a puppy. It had seemed like a good idea, accept the gift of a puppy from acquaintances. She had the coloring of a coyote and was named Brindle for those tawny markings. I'd...
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It was Christmas Day 1950 and my sixth birthday. Under the tree was an unusually long, large box with my name on it. I was excited to open it. I couldn’t wait. When I finally did, I was amazed to look upon the most gorgeous doll I’d...
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I think about death quite a bit. Not morbidly, nor do I worry about what happens when one dies. Although I enjoy a spiritual life, I am also philosophical about the end of my life. If there is something else, it will be darned interesting. If there isn’t, ...
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My father, Thomas George Sawyer, was absent at my birth and absent the first seven months of my life.
It was Christmas Eve 1944 at the two-story white house on Beechwood Drive-my Grannie’s house in Victoria, the capital city of British Colombia on Vancouver Island. Grannie Price, my...
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I'm always looking for ideas to use in writing: for that prompt at which I first gulp and then slowly retrieve some thread of an idea, for the poem I need for the Monday morning poetry group, for an essay that's due in two days.
I've heeded...
Read more: Gathering: A Contemplative Essay
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Last spring, a wild turkey hen incubated her eggs for twenty-eight days. When they hatched, she scrambled to keep up with them. Poults to scientific literature. Babies to her. She didn't need to teach them to scratch for bugs—they came with that instinct. Nighttimes during their first four weeks, ...
Read more: Seasons in a Wild Turkey Hen's Life
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Roles
Teacher – Karen Barr
Student – Joy Manné
Teacher
WELCOME TO WEEK 8 OF SUBTEXT.
There is no word count, but the challenge is to get all ten types of subtext in as few words as possible. Here they are:
Show don’t...
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I woke to warm, gooey air smothering me even though the ceiling fan was spinning on high. Dangling lightpulls smacked and banged the glass globe with each rotation of the blades. The base of the fan swayed and groaned, ready to jump from its screws in the drywall any second.
...
Read more: Teenage Escape Plan
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The mother and father watched as the sun rose on a cold morning in February 1945, wondering if their four-month-old son had lived through the night. Could miracles really happen? Perhaps this child they had wanted so badly wanted wasn’t meant to survive. His mother was a month past her...
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When I flew to California in September, the golden archipelago summer, verdant below and mazarine above, still held sway. Twenty-three days and eleven thousand two hundred and forty miles later, if you’d sat here with me on the back deck this afternoon--you’d know, too--autumn now envelopes Sweden in...
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Under the shaky match’s sulfurous flame, the last Marlboro’s tip blazes brightly, dims and flares.
Broken, quivering...
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Bless my paper, bless my pen,
bless my keyboard, Lord. And then,
please keep track of all those...
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She’s
Endearing spirit, smile
From birth’s first...
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From the breeze, I saw the glistening web.
The big, cozy spider stared out at me.
I wonder...
Read more: Spiders Are My Friends
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Hide behind an actor’s mask and prybar;
Some humans are born with souls as dark as night.
Abduct, ...
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All victims resembled his x -first love, Stephanie Brooks,
Long middle parted brunettes with small framed feminine good...
Read more: Resembled His First Love
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The main clause of the sentence names the thing you mainly do
but it can have subordinates and...
Read more: Phrasical Subordination
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Morning sun shimmers through gray clouds,
etches shadows on
Empty beer cans surround broken fire hydrant.
...
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I don't believe in Dracula,
don't even know his story,
Count Vlad the Impaler of Romania, circa
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I doubt I am noticed, behind trees, that line of
I turn...
Read more: If I Set A Clown On My Lawn
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My mother
sank into cold lake water
bit by slow bit,
first up to her ankles,
then her...
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I wonder how many others are like Ted Bundy.
He bludgeoned his victims so they couldn’t make a...
Read more: Ever Wonder About Ted Bundy?
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Dreams and nightmares roll around,
fantasies I weave at night,
land of dreams I cannot share,
panoramas to...
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Blueberry jelly
Splattered across the table,
Ingrained in the rug
Flowing patterns spattered on the wall
Sitting in...
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We discussed dandelions in my poetry group. Some grow so tightly their stalkless stems have to be dug up with...
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INTRODUCTION
During the recent MFA314 Japanese Poetic Forms class, WVU students had an opportunity to explore six forms...
Read more: TAN RENGA and NÎGUIN: : Japanese poetic forms for two or more writers
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A Prose Poem
It is just after ten at night. Michael changes the channel so Captain...
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I watch Joy munching on her cat grass, head down she gobbles without stopping. Down one row and up the...
Read more: The Guinea Pig’s Obsession
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I stretch out over the back of the couch, lounging soft, boneless skin, soft fur stretched so far...
Read more: Tomcat Under Nine Antennas
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F. Michael LaRosa wrote this piece for MFA376. He tells us, it is a blues song in prose that laments...
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A pickle meets the side of the barn. Ignoring the rats. With arms like tendrils, it sneaks its way...
Read more: A Dream: Must Have Been Something I Ate
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Thunder
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Norva hosts an open mic musical fundraiser two days after Christmas so that people who are home for Christmas can...
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Summer, 4:00 a.m. and I step out onto my deck. An indigo dawn rises over the silvery mist that hides...
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To put it in simplest terms a prose poem is made up of sentences and paragraphs. The prose poet depends...
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The ghosts of yesteryear journey through my mind.
The white frame house stood sixty feet back from the road. ...
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Two little guinea pig boys flew out of the hut and ran with joy around the cage. They popcorned, jumping...
Read more: I’m Called Midnight
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A Poem in Free Verse
Stargazer, Rhode Island Red
So much like me,
Always...
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A poem in free verse
Before the nor'easter "Stella" arrives here—
weather warnings have...
Read more: Eagles in Winter Storm "Stella"
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Bathed and blessed, in fine white cotton clad,
to...
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I looked up and saw it. I would have missed it if I hadn’t looked up when I...
Read more: Do you wear shoes? Do they make a sound?
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A Sonnet
These midnight doubts have
and numbing...
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A Cinquain poem
dragons
dance on night walls
swift runners, fire breathers
...
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