1600 2 1
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Everything seems still, but it's not.
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127921
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I try to slot into order the sequence of events: the book deal that appeared and then winked away like a dying star, the white gloves and the brick through Waterstone's window; my novel lying in the shop front in a bed of glass.
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160421
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As the jughead turned with a humph the old man muttered, "what a jerk." The jughead spun around and glared at the young black man and said, "Did you say that?" The old man laughed, raised his hand, looked up at the jughead and said, "I did." The jughead t
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27121
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Even as I moveTowards some form of true reprieve I can't make head nor tail of you Except when you speak in tongues In the dark progressive hills In the fields that freedom chills In the house Democracy built You will find a hint of guilt …
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144522
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156922
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For two days his parents had been fighting, and they would tell him to tell the other one something every morning that was supposed to be some sort of slight at their personal failings, which had been inflamed by their twenty years of marriage.
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174722
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He was just walking along, making sure that no white, Hispanic, Native American or Asian people were doing anything illegal when he noticed the young black man walking down the street.
He hadn't meant to.
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183421
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I didn’t always have this metal thing poking out of the top of my head. I used to be a self-respecting farm animal amongst a barnyard of toys, but then the kids grew up.
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128320
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Nothing came of the dust.
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234022
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“What’s a hushpuppy?” 264 asked 118, who knew three words of English.
118 said, “No.”
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107620
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I knew this woman would come up eventually. She used to wait on us at Villa Nova, while a bunch of us sat drinking
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173922
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Once, I asked my father why Rex turned around three times before settling down for a nap. He told me it was because one good turn deserves another, then he laughed.
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150422
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He sits in the best chair and it collapses so he unfolds himself up like a mechanical shadow and sits in the second best chair.
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174621
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We received the news unexpectedly. The suspicion was true. The nausea and fatigue were caused by the honor of your presence in our lives. We had waited for you for years. We had prayed endlessly for the universe to bless us with your gift; with you as our gift. And…
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190021
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(For Dancer and Guitar) …
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102622
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Hand shaking as she drinks from her cup,
talking non-stop on her cell phone.
Blue eyes, dirty blonde pigtails tied up with blue ribbons,
pink polka dot shoulder bag,
old pock-marks along her cheeks.
Having long discussions over the phone
wit
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136521
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“Lassie was a hack,” Jim the Wonder Dog says as he looks out over fields of soybeans. “She couldn’t act her way out of a 25 pound bag of Purina Dog Chow."
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134122
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“Miss Brown had spent the morning (was it just this morning? Or another?) purchasing parsnips and leafy green vegetables from the local grocers, when she was overcome by a wave of nausea. The world went black and she awoke in a windowless, doorless room.
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148422
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For Takama this created the second conundrum of the day. One even bigger than the first. When he’d first learnt that sensei and he would be boarding a flight together for a series of demonstrations in Geneva, little had he expected he would be locked up i
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117321
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There was a bottleneck ahead. We slowed down single-file, me behind, to wait our turn to pass the doorway of a vacant storefront church. In it, a lone black man sat atop an empty plastic milk crate. Nobody looked at him; they were all slowing down and cro
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114321
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The small of her back,
where the downy hair stands upright
like wheat in the summer light.
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152022
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As I fall to the ground I realize that in a few moments I will be experiencing a new kind of pain. The last pain. The last pain I will ever feel.
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104721
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Your wandering kisses entered my soul
Then my flesh, then my holes
You filled them all
Like a Norwegian hall
Like a Swedish sailor
Drunk with ale
You fell inside me
And you’re falling still
It was a thrill
I can’t sit still
I got a chi
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140621
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In college, I made friends with my Jewish roommate. Her name was Leah and she was from Brooklyn. When she asked me home with her for Thanksgiving, she mentioned we could go to synagogue together. I asked if there would be other black people there. "No," Leah…
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170722
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Light “I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.” The professor arrives on time, sockless. The former a sign of his polite upbringing. The latter, his lack of pretense and high …
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113820
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when the jewels weren't on his head; they were in his eyes.
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110621
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There is no love triangle more tangled than that which snares a pet, its owner and an amorous veterinarian.
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179921
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The chipping sound started around the time Susannah reached puberty. Not all at once, it was just now and then at first.“What's that noise?” she'd say, and everyone would cock their heads to listen. Her mother eventually took her to the doctor. He said it…
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143820
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Our ragged wits, ragged minds, after acting out all, imitating all honey-like tunes, air song, excellence of song, true flower of the world. So the sun has some of its honey wintered away, to bring it into contact with such a human voice as yours.
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262821
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Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound ...
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