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Fiction
Fiction
Chinese Dumplings
That first time they came in, he tried to explain to them, “Dumpling big, that lotta dumpling,” but they insisted they knew what they were doing.
January 1986Fiction
The Match
There was a woman with one desire: to win a tennis game with God. She invited God to play tennis. God agreed and they set a date: Saturday, March 3.
December 1985Fiction
Grief And Happiness At The Home
The Home for Refined Ladies was an old, turreted, red-brick building converted from a Catholic girls’ academy which had moved to a newer building in a better part of Dubuque, Iowa, up on the hills overlooking the Mississippi.
December 1985Fiction
The Secret Of Life
I recall another day back in junior high. He wrote upon the blackboard large: DNA/RNA. He pointed to the letters lying there like some Kabbalistic mantra, then said, “This is the secret of life.”
November 1985Fiction
Lord Shantih
At the Monastery of the Sacred Night the priests perform the ancient worship of sleep. By secret methods they fashion their dreams into a kind of prayer to the gods, and in this way they offer praise on levels which to ordinary men remain hidden.
October 1985Fiction
For You
I did my job. I picked her up when her mother threw her away, I handed her over to the shrink when the time came. I did my job. I’m the stepmother, not abnormally wicked.
September 1985Fiction
Love
Before my father died I loved my mother, but now it’s different. I can no longer go to her, put my arms around her, or anything like that. She has become somehow strange to me, and so, not lovable.
August 1985Fiction
Eating Rattlesnake
I was sitting at my desk near midnight, when the hair on the back of my neck rose, and a chill ran down my spine. I think someone is standing somewhere a ways behind the cabin, watching me through the windows.
August 1985Fiction
Lord Of The Wind
The Lord of the Wind was born unconscious of himself, during a storm that shook his egg from its nest and flung it from the tallest tree on the highest cliff downwind to the valley floor.
July 1985
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