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The summer of 1974, between high school and college, I got my first real job, paid corporate employment. My mother couldn't stand having me underfoot, sitting around all day, watching TV. She drove me in the family station wagon to a temporary secretarial agency. I told…
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84811
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I woke up and rolled over to look at my clock. Realizing I was not in my bed, I looked around the dark room for any clock. There on the ceiling, the time was displayed in red digital numbers. 5:30 am. I stayed at a friend's…
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143211
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Brian had spent the morning filling out applications all over Knox County, and by noon he was more than ready to call it a day. But apparently there was one last squirt of virtue in him, because heading home he saw a Help…
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67710
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My life accelerated by grime in my father’s garage.
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208111
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Pushing his jeans down around his ankles, he knelt, and pressed his moist dipstick against my hole. “Do you always do this on a first date?” he said
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146711
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On an overcast and humid day in August, Jesus—with Dad’s permission, of course—decided to make his grand return.
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143311
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She seems to be demanding someone donate to her a beard. No one has gone any further with this, and the electricity of her song about beards, listing, growing more undulant, crescendos.
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87811
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I must pause in his discourse to step outside and relieve myself...
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142112
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she shivered in the ceasefire like a virginal nude brought to life.
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87210
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A man came to my door today. He said little and invited himself in. He only stood in the doorway, a bit menacingly, if you ask me. He was dressed very darkly in a long grey coat and hat, and seemed bent on not allowing the light of day to pass through (he
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80510
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what i will always remember of you is of that singular sunday / when a black lock of hair brushed against your cheek
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For a fleeting moment, eyes seemed to clear and the man spoke as if he were coming out of the pea soup fog that formed over the lake on spring mornings.
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101110
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Your insincere smile,
eyes drowning in kohl.
Sweat and sweet talcum,
and the maroon cashmere stole.
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I think it cumbersome to walk within a darkened room. Too awkwardly uncouth, for one with such a corpulent frame, to hug the hungry. It weighs one down, to wave airily, to wildlings By cages, and pain, made tame. Best to look away, than…
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Michael had become quite accustomed to his morning routine. He woke at seven, made his coffee, and stepped onto the front porch with a steaming cup and a fresh cigarette.
He sat there for ten minutes or so, watching the neighborhood prepare for their d
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123411
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Lungs bursting in the alleyways
trying to keep with the beat.
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Too late, I feel a bite under my left heel, but before I can look, I blunder into Robert and Paul rolling across the bedroom floor. They knock me over like a bowling pin, and I grab Robert’s hands and try to pull them from around his father’s neck.
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150610
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He was almost dying when I reached the hospital. I walked past the open automatic sliding doors into the lobby, almost vacant except a few people milling around, the nurses fighting sleep behind the desks while waiting for their shift to end.
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84211
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Blobbing the safety tarmac with human glue
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92610
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Man I can hit a shot from forty feet. Snap! No rim. You can’t.
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180011
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"Ah, finally the rain stopped pouring!" She opens the window to let the sticky air out of the house. The colours outside have changed. The air is clear and the sky turns into light pink while the sun is drowning at the horizon. She takes a deep breath. The…
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160511
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My mother told me I came out of her screaming and didn’t stop for two years. After that I took up rocking.
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131911
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Come to the park and swing with me, sing with me.
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127911
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It matters little who thought of it first, what mattered was the schism. Or, to be more accurate, those on the opposite sides of the schism. And, of course, you are a part of this, dear reader. You are of one side or the other.
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103511
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Breaking the cat's cradled cord she examines her fingernails. She notices a crack in the paintwork, sighs to herself. Makes a mental note to cover it over.
Cover it over, paint over the cracks. There's been a lot of that recently, hasn't there?
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The schedule fell smoothly into place: After Imogene went home at the end of the day, Calvin locked the office door, then he and Rosalie marched into the examination room and she flossed him.
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I survived as a brave thought,
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“Eat more bugs,” said an old one.
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Shirley stubbed her cigarillo out on a dead chunk of honeycomb.
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The little girl picked up the toy phone. "Who is this please?" she said, mimicking what she'd heard her mother say many times before. "Snoopy," came the voice.
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