844 4 4
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I threw my cards on the table. The jerk was playing his classical records again. I could hear that lousy music a mile away and he was the kind of kid that makes your skin crawl. But he had a CD sound system and it was up loud this time so that the house
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170041
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"Now, here daddy was on the back porch at night talking with some man about leaving."
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141443
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I remember reading poetry in the library
/ when I was in college, after skipping
/ Sociology, Psychology, or Theology.
/ I remember thinking: What is this nonsense?
/ I don’t want to waste my time on any of this.
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123143
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You want to be Teilhard de Chardin? You’re getting started way too late.
There’s a better chance you’ll be tomorrow’s Peking Man if I bury you in the cellar.
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169442
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There existed within them the deeper perdition, of course, the perdition of culture, American culture, the 21st Century suburban version, made up of Strip Malls From Hell.
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157240
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After sportscasters announced the assassination and while the reverberations of the words were still fading people were already shouting
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150343
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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.
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376441
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"Both my parents were hypnotists. As were two of my grandparents."
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241643
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I’ve paid my dues in this dimension/
so show me where the rest of them are
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280441
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This is a story about Jim and Robin. They are strangers. Or at least they were. They are at the same party, but standing on opposite sides of the room. Robin is standing near the door thinking, “I wish there was someone here to talk to,” when she sees Jim. …
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138842
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Some great, doubtless precious;
some hollow, likely empty;
some only shards, but you never know...
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149143
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Her son was doubtless the biggest wanksta that ever went to Andrew Jackson in the whole crumby history of the school.
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161640
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She wakes up sad. She can't shit. She spreads out the foil. no creases. folds it in half. She puts the stuff in the crease. holds a lighter under it. A zippo. then smokes it. Well smokes the smoke. It's like kissing god or the…
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167844
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Moore doubted, perhaps, that readers could sympathize with a man who had killed someone for a cause or a girlfriend who forgave him. Perhaps she felt that maiming is (not) worse than murder. Perhaps she decided that the story should be about that.
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151542
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Anatoly Gringovitch took a swallow of beer, thoughtfully put the cap on his Ferrari da Varese custom fountain pen, and launched into his story:
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198240
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Ann finally got her eyes to focus, and there he was, her husband, looking better and happier than she'd seen him in ages, with the same Bombshell she'd seen him with earlier (So it was him). His hand was on the small of her back and he was talking and she
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119640
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I wonder if this is how my parents viewed their marriage.
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177441
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She heard mortar fire, whose percussive power rose above the tapping typewriter keys. A perspiration of terror broke on Loretta’s brow, under her arms. Then suddenly, the whistling of shells.
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135942
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A daydreams about a woman whose name he’s forgotten next to B, who’s been drunk since afternoon.
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163643
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Except for the bathroom stalls—you know the one that goes “Here I sit all broken-hearted”—the only poetry in the house is composed by Hazel, recited to her fawning sycophants.
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387344
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You were watching TV when it began. That much is obvious, since you have always watched TV on Thursday nights, and Thursday was when it began for everyone in Polisville. Around 11 PM, a train on its way to a Nevada landfill jumped the tracks. It's a secure landfill, and the…
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158942
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197842
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So if we all have an idea what goes down when the young person at the cash register (the registerista?) asks, “Can I help you?” then we all know there’s a different way to habla at Seattle’s gift to the world.
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148741
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When I came back from California the second time, in the summer of 1965, I was the first around our town to wear my hair long, influenced by the Beatles. And I bought a bunch of blue caps that everyone in our gang wore, with the number “69” sown on
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305142
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...the teeth she began to lose went under her pillow, though no money ever appeared. She could not bear to throw them away and finally deposited them in her jewelry box next to the string of seed pearls she received on the morning of her confirmation.
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161444
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I want to ask him why not now, right here on the living room floor when Rosie is out for the day. Instead, I suggest Sunday afternoon. I can make grilled cheese sandwiches and we'll eat them on the veranda. I'll take off my tennis skirt and unbutton my...
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132342
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Imagine this: One day you are walking down the street (wearing your protective mask, of course, the cloth one you bought the other day because you liked the color and design) when, by chance, you happen upon a strange sight.
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169940
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So ya think you’re a writer? First of all, shut up. No, seriously, the very first thing you need to do, this very instant, is to just shut your mouth and take a seat.
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185941
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Wives, without exception, have birthdays,
which if forgotten, are much-less-than-mirth days.
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132042
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My boyfriend had to work but had gotten a turkey for free and thought I could make it for everyone for Christmas Eve dinner. I had never made a turkey before, and not much of anything else. Now if my sister had been there, it might have been a meal of cul
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