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We are all in big trouble. Here's some fiction to let your soul experience the beast.
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94975
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One day, Dasha confessed to Igor that she had an incurable illness: Purple emptiness.
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82273
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To understand how and when things have gone wrong, it works best to proceed from the beginning and put them in order.
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115876
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In the panic following news of my motorcycle crash, my honey fled the house without coat or wallet, and now, nearly midnight, we don’t even have cab fare home.
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90577
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I live in a small fishing village where small people fish and others gossip or invent bizarre methods by which to irritate each other. During our weekly power cuts I go outside and cross the street, sitting on the pharmacy steps to watch myself not be at home in the…
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95675
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Everything conspires to kill you:
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116474
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Francesco needed a magnifying glass to read her little missives.
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117575
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Nine sated elephants and an ass sit around a decimated Thanksgiving table discussing the state of the union over the hacked to bits carcass of a twenty-three pound turkey. Two years in to The Great Communicator's Lame Duck term and the nine elephants, whose…
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107073
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At last, we learn if Blow has the cojones to fight.
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126170
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I am a scavenger. I sit on the telephone wire, a ravenous vulture watching a man and a woman arguing across the street. The clouds remind me of ashy marshmallows I found in a fire pit yesterday. The woman starts violently shoving the man; he stumbles…
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115375
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I was tired and lonesome when I checked into another insufferable, shop-worn Holiday Inn. It was the only motel around with the internet — dial up only — in that little jerkwater town, Notmuch, Alabama. It was too late for a nap, so I jumped in the shower,…
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11577
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The High Priest Psychiatrist at Orwellian Industries Medical Center where I used to work loved to hear himself say the following, to my horror, at every staff meeting: "We psychiatrists prescribe the poisons to the patients and the…
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95078
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Number the herd. Number/
the baskets after harvest./
Note the reappearance of the moon/
after its short absence.
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98275
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His house incubates memories. As he sleeps, they hatch.His house is neither here nor there. It occupies a space between watchfulness and insomnia. Grey birds nest on its roof.His house is a refuge from everything except himself. The floor, walls, roof are fat with him.…
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130778
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The weatherman can't predict
accumulation. He can only tell you
it will be cold. Expect ice, wind, snow, expect
delays. Your daughters play outside,
dancing around the Evergreen, its branches
bearing the weight of snow, its branches
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79576
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We go to the spa on my wife’s day off and get a manipedi. A swarm of little women pounces and works on our fingers and toes.
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24876
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79075
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“Look them straight in the eye, keep your mouth shut unless spoken to, and make no sudden moves.”
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207475
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Voltaire drinks his coffee standing up in front of the microwave and he likes to hold one hand on his chest where his heart is while he drinks. He likes to feel his heartbeat quicken and then he imagines that he is a machine or something mechanical.
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141575
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This was a dream in which I didn’t know fear.
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109177
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She tossed the big bird into the air. It wobbled, then flew away.
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176475
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You ran so quickly for a while no one could find you. Finally, you sent us a report. You had retreated to the sea, you had your legs stitched together, you became a mermaid and were applying to join the school.
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230477
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My father-in-law is drunk. This is something only my husband and I know: the old man does not stagger or flail, he is not vacant; neither too-friendly nor hostile to the woman who shows us to a table and sets down three bundles of silverware wrapped in paper…
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113775
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One day it was boring / to be alive.
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143473
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Roanne banged the chiva, turned tricks, and ran out of road.
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111972
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It waited and witnessed the seasons complete a grouping and form a year. Then it watched them do it again. Winter, spring, summer, fall. It watched from the inside of course. But it could see. Big sliding glass doors and long and wide windows stayed the course also, way…
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125877
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I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.
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213274
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In his dream, he was choking on an ice cube. He didn’t know what would happen first — if it would melt or he would die.
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96077
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Over dinner last evening she said things have to change because she can never be happy with our lives being so concentric and I knew she meant that while we share the common core of marriage, she felt she was a small circle and I was a larger one, enveloping her,…
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112563
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On Tuesday, he wears his suit to the cafe. Of course they'll let him pay! Of course. Under the table, his wife accepts their wadded bills.
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