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She is cutting his hair. The wind is in her curls. She rises and falls like a sleeping animal. He has removed his shirt. There is a towel around his neck, the smell of spice and banana, the scent of vacations. You are reminded of the time in the beach house in Florida…
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14831713
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She lies on her stomach by the side of the pool staring into her towel. On her back, I can make out a pastel isthmus, surgery's pink art or charlatan's scab, I can't tell which. She is beautiful as rare roast beef is beautiful.
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2141710
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Whenever my mother’s will-to-live wavered and her hand reached out for the electric fence, my ash would whisper, “Live, live.”
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15461710
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Some idiot was gonna let a snake eat him. I know, but I saw it on the internets. That's some dumb-assed stuff right there. Everyone knows about snakes. The Jesus book tells us all about them, inside us, slithering through ruby-red and eating our guilt from inside out.…
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22021714
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my foreign mouth embarrassed the teachers. my jumbled words gave people sad faces. so wrong these words of mine. even the mentally retarded girl would not talk to me. just looking at my garbled mouth made her slap herself. and my writing. oh no. my writin
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17521711
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I fired God today. He wasn't showing up for work, slept through meetings, wrote ambiguous memos and killed too many innocents. Things just weren't working out.
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1261179
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A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night
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15821710
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The leaves are telegrams sent from the branches to the wind, saying, “it's over stop don't send kisses stop forget me.”
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17021712
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1748177
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Since the divorce had gone final, the matter settled once and for all, he’d taken to a masochistic bingo of sorts.
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2041179
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I have been mother
to a hundred soldiers,
holding their hands
barely knowing
their names
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19541712
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"If Hillary can forgive Bill, why can't you forgive Dad?" my seven-year-old son wails one night as I put him to bed.
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21331712
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The sea dies where a cello torques on sand, leaving me without its compass. An old clock sings.
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981179
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The cornbread for dressing cools./
The cranberries boil with one cup each/
of sugar and water. The aromas are nice
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12231710
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Another new spring and the leaves
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1340178
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When I was young and self-born in religion my aunts, uninterested in being washed in the Blood of Christ, called me Preacher Boy. I didn't pay them any attention. It was fine by me, I said, if they wanted to sit around and paint their toenails . . .
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15601715
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Before the days of “customer experience,” Eddie figured out whatever information he could about his clients. He asked them for business cards, recorded their phone numbers from the reservation book, snapped photos of them in his mind…
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14091715
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Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
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1404176
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The Viper turns so quickly that Father's grabbing hand now faces its head instead of its tail.
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1368179
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Shakespeare had red hair / Van Gogh never painted a nude
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8401710
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I hate turnstiles and revolving doors
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15521710
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“What are you doing, Maestro?"
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1793176
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A young man pushes a stroller filled with a sleepy child. A young woman strides alongside them, her gait leisurely. They are the first to visit the park today. The trees loom, vigilant.
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1654175
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I try to help my pet-mouse by dangling cheese from a piece of string in front of him. Or by making meow sounds. Sometimes, my pet-mouse wins, sometimes the hamster with the great body.
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16751713
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No fear of that, / he assured her,
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17161715
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When you prime tobacco the old way . . .
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1355179
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watch/
the second hand sweep
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1552176
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Tasha loved to tease the rain. She sat still with her legs folded on the bench, never once looking the clouds in the eye.
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1224179
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This will be the century of infinite sadness,/
sadder even than the Twentieth/
with its expansive catalog of horrors.
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24911711
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But I didn't sleep well and my dreams were full of octopi
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