1963 8 4
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I want crazy at my funeral. I want clowns, a petting zoo, fireworks, craps tables, male and female strippers, and a three-person band composed of old men wearing striped vests, black pants, and straw hats: one plays a banjo, another on tuba, and…
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196351
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The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n
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19621815
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We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.
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196200
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Remember the glass changing room just off the pool terrace? It's been replaced by a juice bar. Seems fitting, really.
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196241
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What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.
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196232
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The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders
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19621710
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Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"?
Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.
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1962146
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The handsome man at the opposite table swivels his head at the tall cool slim blonde entering the breakfast cafe. The ordinary woman sitting with him adjusts her chair accordingly. She pretends to ignore her husband's distraction, smoothes her hair, licks her…
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196194
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Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.
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196141
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Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an
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196165
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I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.
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19611715
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There he was. Minnesota Fats, short and pudgy, jowly and blond-haired.
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196174
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The things we do for books, she thought.
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1961105
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1.There's a young woman in a nightclub seated next to a window out of which she watches the slow descent of snow, illuminated by strategic lights. She imagines herself falling with those flakes. Her friend has left her for the dance floor. The young woman is…
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196100
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She turned to the window, staring into the dark. A smile crept to her lips and she laughed softly. “No, we can’t. I’m Mexican and we speak Spanish.” The smile vanished and she moved to leave. “No sé qué decir… sólo puedo llorar. Nada
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19611311
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When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.
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196154
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Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar
the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.
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1961227
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Men have a way of doing that, Lord, why? I always thought retirement means you get to sleep longer. Nope He must arise early, make breakfast, after 40 years of eating mine. Next, he insists on coming with me to the market. When I try to…
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1961129
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Wake up! But it was already too late for Charles.
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1961215
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You got a lot of people, out there
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196077
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“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f
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196064
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When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never
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19601313
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We honor fierce, quick, cunning/
thought-in-action types
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196072
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They waited until the crowd was gone before making their move. Gill kept watch while Warren bypassed the lock.
“You sure about this?” Gill whispered. Voices echoed down the hall of the museum.
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196000
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He had forgotten what the culture was like in certain parts of the city. At the
lower end of Second Avenue, there lived an amalgam rare anywhere in the
world, save other pockets of Manhattan. Punks, hippies, gays, the homeless, and
artists of all strip
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1960115
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Hippy health food. It all began with Hannah’s homemade granola.
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19602118
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When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.
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19601613
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If this was the day when the bribes of whiskey and US dollars would fail to work. If on this day a black bag, smelling of shit and fear, would be pulled over his head – the bloodied roots of a knocked out tooth tickling his neck.
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1959138
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There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.
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195965
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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…
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