971 5 5
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A hot summer night walks into a bar and orders a drink.
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102950
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Bent, crooked and straight, knifed.
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209054
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It rained on the morning of the party, and the weatherman promised it would continue throughout the day. But Marilyn didn't mind. She actually preferred entertaining in bad weather. Her rugs weren't valuable enough to worry about, and the gloomier the sky
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109554
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I know this much: right now I’m over a thousand miles from my brother. I’ve been watching the odometers, adding it all up.
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135654
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I grew up in Detroit, and even though I haven't lived there since I was 18, I'm still a Michigander at heart. I'm also a (retired) bankruptcy attorney.You can probably tell where this is going. I own a Detroit municipal bond. It's a sewer bond, which means…
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147955
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But all that they found at the top was bloody red spatters on pure white snowflakes. And beyond that footprints that got smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely into the spicy green pines.
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119654
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I found the hand eight months ago, after I planned to grow a meadow of tiny yellow blossoms in my yard.
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470453
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This is what magic feels like. Excitement. Clarity. Danger. Justice.
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149054
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It is late at night and you lean / over me to make sure your alarm is set.
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105854
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You are different.
They are not sure what to make of it.
Your r’s roll out too easily.
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76252
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“I’ve gotta take a break from this,” Hector said. “I’m not feeling inspired right now. I’ve added about a thousand words. Why don’t you look it over and put your changes in?”
“I can do that,” said Martin. “Impressive! That brings us up to nearly sevent
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113052
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He spoke the "Why" and it stuck out its tail. He tripped and fell with his face wedged between the W. She kept the answer in her chest so the words wouldn't crowd him where he lay. The "Why" found its way back into his cheeks and puffed his face out like a disease. He…
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12553
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‘Your writing is terrible,’ she said triumphantly, and there was silence. I wanted to say, no Tara, that’s too much, he needs this – working terrible jobs for years, forever, always feeling the discrepancy between his middle-class childhood and his hand-
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91053
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Hey Sledge!
Yo.
Did you know Socrates hated the idea of writing thoughts down? He said it weakened the memory…made us lazy.
Say wha?
That's why he never wrote a book. The only way we know about him is through his student Plato's writing. St
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70354
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"Tell me what you remember."
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84252
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The rest is Scots,
people for whom a taste is enough
and a lyric’s as rare as a dragon
or a poet named MacDuff.
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149653
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A strange and unexpected shift has occurred.
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95251
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At 19 words, the whole piece is a snippet.
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92753
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The week before she left for Costa Rica with her new lover she called me. Often, she did this. We talked for hours. What should I pack on my trip? she asked. Setting out with him …
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106052
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The night sky was washed gray by city lights.
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119051
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Two weeks after the shadow shows up in Stephen's x-ray, you decide to do something about the bucket in the garden. You start by wedging it underneath the faucet in the back yard so tightly that it pushes against the pipe with the groan of grinding metal. Now the hose is…
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162255
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The story will starve. It will crawl up your throat to get the cracker.
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90855
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The television was playing reruns of Mr. Ed, but it was hard to hear because of the flock of birds in the palm tree. I’d sometimes imagined the birds coming through the window, a swarming of pink cotton mouths, mawing everything in sight.
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78154
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once he had planted Lucille things changed./his emptiness rivalled the hollow grave/dug for her . . .
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125954
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The tall, standing woman with bright red lipstick, elegant at one time, you could tell, responding, “She has dementia,” pointing at her brain. “She was a Holocaust survivor.”
And the one they’re talking about turns as she’s pushing her wal
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104350
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An expanse of trees, grass, scrub, heathers, sky, space. A grey horse, the type her gran would have placed a bet on, approaches. "Don't like flies?" he asks. He holds her gaze, walks closer. Seventeen black flies crawl over the right side of his head. "What…
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107852
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We talk of his time in the jungle.
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92255
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Seems I was in the wrong place, wrong time.
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109954
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He did not hear her enter the room...
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68456
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It all felt so tentative, he thought. The whole set up. Running water. Electricity. A vast network of instant communication. Food in all the stores. It was the latter that gave him the most concern. He'd never really been hungry. Even in his poorest days, in his early…
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