906 5 3
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Once, in the past or future, but definitely not in the present, I worked as a transportation minister for a friendly dictator, whose name was neither Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Kim Jong-Un, but whose mustache was toothbrush, whose smile was sardonic to the p
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96155
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Like when she said the word 'but', it came out ‘bet’.
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107554
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It was uncomfortable to realize people had agendas. That there could be invisible realities.
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31151
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A pale-faced manwearing a bright yellow wigonce said to me“never read literature when you're drunk"now here I am,at a window tablein the Libertine cafe,eating my words,wishing I had been a monk.Across the street loomsa gallery front,where, in large red…
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114554
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...listening to the ache of errs our mouths had become.
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78950
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It's the kind of neighborhood where the bar above the hot dog stand functions as a drug warehouse. Lowest prices, biggest selection, friendliest — highest — associates. I live here, a block over in the midst of sushi joints and frat boys, but I live…
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118254
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I feel unlike myself, I think. I've been afraid of notebooks, pens, writing. I've hoped for telekinesis between empty pages and my mind. The hoping leaves me empty handed, and I have nothing to show. I feel unlike myself. I feel the whites of my eyes as…
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115454
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The same night your best friend of two years called you up to tell you they don't want to think about you anymore was the same night you had stood silently, leaning, head against the mustard wall in your mom's boyfriend's house, stuck listening to Randy…
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106556
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It's tough when muscle gets in the way of memory. The way pain is the only thing I can remember about certain things. Fifth grade, that's what I think of. I think of pain. Not just abstract pain, not some we'll get to it later adolescent angst or ennui.…
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59055
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where will we be/ when it happens?
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58355
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. . .and still wild roses star far fields the same.
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107954
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Swatches of Chinese silk in vivid red and lavender fly through the air. My granddaughter in her mid-thirties reaches for the cloth. I see in her mirror a shape forming; a slim, gray haired woman with a spring in her step. I pause to admire my reflection and pass over the…
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97054
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I don't have to show you how to fly. I don't even know who you are still possibly trying to be in this crazy grounded world. But the words make us family. I can't help that or what you might do with that public tweet tweet…
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113554
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“If you guys ever get back together, I’d make him sign a contract.”
I smiled, but cautioned, “Not sure that would work.”
She answered with emphatic confidence, “You haven’t seen how good I am at writing contracts!"
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167053
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They met on a bus. The bus got lost. He had corn chips. She had a tuna sandwich. They shared. “This is good,” he said. “Did you make this?” …
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88253
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The questions piled up so high I thought I'd neverget through the door.The ease of alcohol, the incline of submission. Guttural sounds and spittle.Wipe down the morning afterwith a shower.Redress in last night's clothes.There's coffee if you want it.Sincerity too -no,…
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133952
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Within a day, she had a scummy apartment which belonged to the government. It had cockroaches, which she was not used to. They churned her stomach, repulsive little things. Not even creatures. Two brains, she'd read: one in the head, one in the ass.
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68554
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"Why bother?" Her companion muttered something not dissimilar.
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93752
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I remember the first time I met the virgin, Terry (not Mary.) She was in the back seat of an old Plymouth convertible with its top down, jam-packed with raucous high school girls vying to see which one of them could be the most loud and obnoxious, and w
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167953
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I missed the cadence and remembered the verse too late. Now, that place where everything comes together is a first taste of things that have somehow become slightly bitter, and I was choking on it.
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98352
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Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall, the Good Lord made them all.
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173353
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Please stay on the line. Or don't stay on the line. We don't care. If we cared about your call, we'd answer it. Which, to be honest, isn't going to happen. We're going to make you hold. And while you hold, we're going to subject you to some really bad…
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73153
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I've always been a sucker for a pretty face. It's unreasonable sometimes. Yesterday, in the middle of nowhere was a house that might have seen better days in the dustbowl of depression era Oklahoma. Two Australian Shepherds launched from the rickety porch. It was clear…
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124152
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I always sat in the backseat of the Dodge when my Dad drove, never in the front seat beside him. It was safer there when he ran over the dogs that wandered onto the road.
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110055
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"Your loss," she cackled, stumbled to the bed in the corner, hummed a tuneless song, and began snoring, too.
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162153
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There are times when I run out of places to sleep. I thought my whole life that god gave up on me. The newspaper bin is where I go when I'm desperate. In the center of town there's a large bin for recycling newspapers behind…
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92854
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I have constructed this emotion with tinfoil and stilts. I wear the mask of a typewriter. I have roots in Minnesota. I have a glass hat and a junkyard monstrosity pregnant with parables.
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102555
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I'm not sure whetherI drink to numbthe pain or toactually feelsomething.
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80853
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And then there was a man pissing in 2 urinals,
going back and forth between them,
saying, “You know how they say
2 heads are better than one?
Well, now I get it!”
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117255
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Cockroaches in bed was the last straw. Alicia was sure she’d swallowed one in the middle of the night . . .
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