READFICTION
A Thousand Happy Lives
Youth. His father lived a thousand lives before he died at the age of 53. He worked as a security guard for Gem Lake Casino by highway 29, spending his days watching screens linked to cameras placed high above people playing cards, pulling levers, drinking, laughing, and shouting below. Drawn to the most interesting and dynamic outfits, hairstyles, mannerisms and physical peculiarities of the people who passed beneath his gaze, he invented stories for them, and gave each of them their own personality. In this, he was able to flesh out out unrealized pieces of his own being – his wishes, dreams, regrets, fantasies and inspirations – for them to live in his stead. At night he would share these stories with his son. The boy would stay awake long past what his mother told him was bedtime, waiting beneath the dinosaur bedspread for his father to come home, the bedside lamp still on and books on paleontology and planes scattered across the floor. His father sat at the foot of the bed, his face half-lit in the light of the lamp, and told him of the woman who was once a star goaltender for the German soccer team – she blew out her knee making a spectacular save at the World Cup. About the man who had written poetry in his younger years, published three books in French, but never reached his full potential and now spends his time losing at the blackjack tables. And the family of four on their first vacation together (their first time leaving their hometown of Blooming Prairie in fact) enjoying an experience... read more
The Depths of Finer Things
The first time I died, Ima tells me, the sun flared its great, fiery disc and swallowed the whole world in a moment. And everything that had been was then no more. The second time I died, it was at the hands of a grand, dark army, their bayonets through my stomach and heart. And when I fell their boots marched over my corpse as though a body that falls was never standing to begin with.
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Bury Me in St. Paul
It is a warm and humid night in summer. The sound of dogs barking on the street. The sound of crickets from the brush and cicadas in trees. Fireflies flash like tiny cameras through the grass along rows of dark cars parked along the curb.
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Not For Sale
Gogo was raised by her uncle, whose name was George Sale, after her mother died and her father left for Africa. Her father never returned from Africa, and whether he was alive or dead she never cared to find out.
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The Definition of Hope
The day breaks sweaty like the last. Like every day in summer. And especially so in the city where there are no trees to provide shade – only countless blocks of cement baking like the desert, or like the desserts baking in oven pans from the church basement after service. All we can do is hope for rain.
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The Seasons
My memories are made of brick and cement and glass. My dreams are bathed in the waning sunlight of an autumn day. Long shadows creep over fences and pull at the sidewalk as the sun begins to set. My dreams are apples picked from trees and flat piano notes from songs I never learned how to play.
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To Be So In Love
A woman said that love is freedom. That love is falling and flying and falling and catching and getting back up together. That love is not what was before, but what will be tomorrow.
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When the World Becomes Water
Water is not something you can hold onto. It’s not something you can grasp, or something you can build a house on. But you can float, swim, boat, ride waves like California and Hawaii.
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It Would Be Safest if You Ran
There is a focus on borders and walls in these current times, and consequently, a rise in scared xenophobia. Or is it the other way around?
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Lazy Days, Falling Asleep, Stuck in School, Dreaming
It’s something that makes too much sense. Like watching a car crash/auto accident and subsequent fistfight on an LA highway, or M&Ms after getting high at midnight.
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The Cruelty of Children
There are those who say that cruelty is learned, and not inherent – the result of trauma and abuse. Freud’s view was that it occurs naturally, based in biology and psychology and a part of human nature.
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Why I Like the Rain
Sometimes grandma just sits at the edge of the window sill. Rocking back and forth. Like she would in her rocking chair wen she was still alive. Sometimes that’s enough.
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The Unchanging Nature of People
We stand in front of long white walls: No pictures, or wallpaper, or paintings, or even scuff marks to show that we used to live between them.
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An Exploration of the Night and Safe Spaces
They kicked the family out of the apartment upstairs and I saw them with their things on the side of the street. Everybody is looking for someplace safe.
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Everything So Beautiful and Dirty and Absurd
All the kids have dirty noses they wipe on their sleeves. There is a lot of truth to be found on the sleeves of children from the hood.
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One Street of One City
The air is a perfect 80 degrees. Winter is over. The people around us are musing, eternally, how much of their lives they’ve spent sitting in cars.
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As Long As We Fly
Science saved my life, but it didn’t make me want to live. I stay wrapped up in blankets. But it’s like Frank says, If we could fly, the world would have no end.
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A Quantifiable Attraction
A quantifiable attraction described as magic. Like Charles Bukowski in Factotum, “I kiss her. She answers with her tongue. Women are magic.”
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Rusty
We called her Rusty because there was a rumor that the hair between her legs was the red color of rust and aren’t the neighborhood kids so funny?
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An Old Man’s Story
One old man tells his story of life lived; the poetry of a world we were all forced to inherit, and that we will all be forced to someday give up as well.
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Empire Street
The rain bites through my coat and makes me shiver. A few cars roll past me on the street, tires squealing in the cold air. This is my neighborhood.
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The Future
On the island you can become a part of the ocean and the sand and the sky and the sun that are greater than anything people could ever build.
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In Bed With a Hush
From spending nights in a warm bed downtown to sleeping alone on a futon, one never knows what the end of a relationship will bring.
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A Short Story About Violence
Working at her father’s liquor store in the toughest part of the city, a teenage girl comes face to face with violence when a would-be robber pulls a gun.
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Ice Cream on a Hot Day
Everyone feels nostalgic about their childhood from time to time. We all have stories that stick out in our memories. Some stories stick out more than others.
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