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Sometimes these fools shoot themselves, playing with their weapons.

They were such dummkopfs they kicked out the Jews.

It was a very strange dinner. I didn’t dare ask my parents questions.

No woman he’d ever been with responded so unmistakably.

Frank Avery came into the kitchen. In his left hand he carried a .22 pistol.

poor Larry. you never asked to be raised from your tomb.

I’m told that even during war, she took the time to put on lipstick.

Left Behind climbed the Octopus Tree to find the source of fire.

The talk was heady, but the conversations were dead-ends.

Desire whittled me a tool I’d never seen but knew how to use.

That’s how a lifetime passes, closing the wound, a million stitches.

Their breath rose in small clouds. Their flag rippled above them.

Over the air conditioner, she hears, unmistakable, the bleating of a siren.

Each time he retells that morning my dad forgets I was there too.

I never entered no-man’s-land by any light brighter than the palest moon.

There are certain defects which well mounted glitter like virtue itself.

We could hear the parade three blocks before it arrived at our corner.

Fletcher was a squad leader. He ought to be able to get a girl.

Third Place

With a world full of foolishly dangerous men, what’s a mother to do?

Men can’t sense like that. Or won’t. Even a father don’t dare get that close.

Late March 2002. “Mud time”—so called in Mad River Junction, Ohio.

Sherman Alexie

Grant had a lot of buttons on that coat—when he wore it.

Cruelty is cruelty and you don’t ask why, you just hit first and hit hard.

The dope worked, though he felt ashamed using it, smoked in secret.

It suddenly seemed to her that the world was filled with little miracles. There were moments when love overcame her despair.

Some days are stretched so taut it feels like changing might break us. We feed the baby bitter melon, flower pepper, bloodroot beet. The first snow comes in January, fresh gauze over an old wound.

Firing stopped, and Bedouins herded camels across the artillery range.

He is too young even to be drinking let alone educating us.