1577 2 1
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When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo
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1163 1 0
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Read signs sometimes and you just might get where you're trying to go. When Eddie suggested they stop for a Whopper, Dennis said no. "Fuck Burger King, man. Let's get that Wendy's up there." They got…
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1037 15 10
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No canopic jars and fine Egyptian cotton.
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1501 5 3
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Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…
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786 9 7
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No one believed me when I told them this: I took all of my novels and tossed them into the fire.
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1473 11 10
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I should have known to wear boots on Teddy’s motorcycle, but I didn’t know that when the engine heated the exhaust pipe became hot as a griddle. Teddy didn’t warn me, and I thought there was something wrong with that, but I let it go the way I jumped on h
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1266 1 0
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Lise started making up words when she lost her voice.
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1235 7 3
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They called him “Albert, the Human Armadillo,” and he was. Rows of hard scales ran down the course of his chest, and he was studied and biopsied by doctor after doctor. “Psoriasis,” they said. “Or, eczema.” They prescribed ointments and oils that left him
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1484 8 5
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Most loss control specialists wear standard rent-a-cop outfits, but notSister Joseph Arimathea and Sister Mary Clarus, who wear the grey, white and black habits of the Precious Blood Sisters.
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1486 4 3
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When she told me to write itI did; I scratched out what I wanted to sayin quick print letters. Not all of it.I could never get it all out in an hour but thegeneral idea was definitely there. We had to finish it in the rain becausewe couldn't light the…
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1389 2 1
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Boys start fires all the time— it's a rite of passage— so when your father gives you the task of setting fire to the family's trash, you don't mind, and when the flames ignite inside the old dishwasher he heaved into the woods behind the house, you…
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667 3 0
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I wanted the pain to go away
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1006 0 0
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Heaven and hell. Hadley believed in neither. One way or another you’re a meal ticket for someone, best to be the one spending than the one being spent. The worms and insects are getting their meal ticket now, that’s for sure.
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1323 5 4
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You can’t take a chandelier on an emergency dash across a nuclear desert.
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1936 22 13
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Pretty boy looks over at me and grins, got a smoke?
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1162 4 4
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Bud Light, B. O.
and Freeloader Heaven,
they step onto the
back of the bus without a cent
We pass by the Karma Wash
but no one gets off the bus
We pass by the
Endless Soup and Salad Kitchen
where we witness a crowd
swarming over a ch
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1053 8 7
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I'll always remember those warm, weekend twilights on the beach after the frolic of the waves seemed to flatten with the impending dusk, sending the surfers home and, after the bait was spent, sending the surfcasters away, I'd claim a square of sand as my stage,…
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935 1 2
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1854 14 9
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I passed Buster Keaton on the way to work this morning. He was standing, hands in pockets, at the corner of Riverview and Keil. It was the young Buster, handsome and still strong enough to pin down the scars that marked his childhood. This was the Buster
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1249 18 15
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When I first met Luther he was sitting on the sidewalk, his back pushed up against a vacant storefront wall, thumbing through the “help wanted” section of a few-days-old copy of our local paper and I was moved to offer him a couple of dollars for which he said,…
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1737 10 6
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So when they shake a finger, when they yell, she remembers Miss Whalen saying, “It’s not for keeps.”
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1047 5 5
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My wife said she’d only be gone 10 minutes. 10 minutes. She left me with the 2 boxes we couldn’t fit into the car, and went home to unload the 5 others. She’d be back in 10 minutes.
I got a call after half an hour, she was on her way back to get me. I
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775 4 1
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The mind likes logic, but the heart loves chaos. The light is always on in Reality, isn’t it? Maybe I sought you out to make sense of my life, I don’t know. Maybe I wanted some sense that you were still how I remembered you (at least a little of you tha
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767 2 0
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I’ve lost interest in the limelight since I’ve come to understand that I’m not meant to be in it. We walk past the Porker Palace and see crowds of the rich with piles of pig in their hands, stacks of pork piled up on their plates as they swirl amo
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1080 0 0
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I watched as you tried to fit yourself quite awkwardly into the small chair. Your eyes fluttered curiously around my house, and I smiled to myself. Your vision landed on my smile, and your face wore an expression of puzzlement."What are you smiling at?" you asked, your…
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1079 2 0
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A rock group named Stuck Gas Pedal. Another named Tweezer. A group of young punk-rockers wearing neckerchiefs named Mein Kampfire. But wait, there’s more.
A song called “We Were Being Facetious,” co-written by them all.
Lost Flyswatter. That
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1042 0 0
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A decade, at minimum, was how long their notes had transpired.Still, they all knew how it would end.
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1414 1 1
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I read the runes, the cards, the signs, the sticks. I consulted tarot cards and read tea leaves. I listened to you, deconstructed every word and look and tone with the harshest logic and cynicism I could muster. If there was some way to decipher what you
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2162 25 9
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When I was young I used to carry a butcher knife to bed. My grandmother placed it in my small hands before tucking me in.
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704 6 5
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For PearlSo radiantly a threat to themare you, so radiantly a threatyou present, my dear, but between usthere is still that unspoken pact; justone more song, please. So radiantlyyou fill their cups with the beauty ofleaves and grapes. So radiantly yoursmall reassuring smile…
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