1944 39 14
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Where seldom is heard
an encouraging word
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194445
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Between the wars, I hung around in an air-conditioned room. It was tiny, and I was shoved to the back, but after living outside on another man's back for months of bullets and bombs, I welcomed the stuffiness. White paint kept close walls from reminding me of the trenches'…
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194400
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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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194421
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"Look at this," she says while thumbing through the guide book, "look at what we can do on Jooga Booga island. Says here, 'Parasailing over the sapphire blue sea, one soars hundred of feet above water-skiers, boaters, and snorkelers, and the picture is b
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1944146
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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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19431313
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We honor fierce, quick, cunning/
thought-in-action types
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194332
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... her hair spills like spinach all the way down to her backpack, the top pocket where the bowl and the cinnamon estrange themselves from the coffee.
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194365
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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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194300
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An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.
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1943115
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She wears a green and pink bikini and walks real slow, poking her chest out so people will notice her.
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19432010
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A sardonic moon/
surveys our plight and cackles.
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194300
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Caroline smiles before reaching out to touch a shapeless shadow dancing on the wall, closing her eyes as the bumps in the primer serve brail to oncoming dreams.
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194342
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The stern tone of the chairwoman made him miss his mother, the snap of her accusations, the sting of her belt on the backs of his legs.
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19431712
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A starved hunchbacked figure covered in blanket gently steers a one eyed dog along with him. A four legged shadow serving as his longtime companion against the all-consuming vacuum of the universe. A friend for all times.A thin scar runs from his cheekbone to…
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194312
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Phil was scared.
Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.
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19432118
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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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194386
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"Love, against the dying of the light." (An unusual story about George Whitman, former owner of the revered & beloved Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, France.)
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1943215
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You got a lot of people, out there
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19421613
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Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.
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194200
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Seven black and orange Tortoise-shell kittens nursed in a crate the day Sue returned from rehab, to her parent's Atlanta home.
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1942139
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Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…
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1941138
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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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194191
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Stupid's rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that's not how the alphabet goes.
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194120
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A Vicious Deer
The man came across the hall to talk to us.
He was buying some paintings.
He had a white deer on a leash.
Fosca (our Malamute) said: “That's a vicious deer.”
She kept putting her paw on its shoulder.
I said: “You bet
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194194
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Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.
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194141
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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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194174
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The things we do for books, she thought.
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194184
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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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194132
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You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.
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194100
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There’s an old journalism adage, usually uttered by editors who haven’t had their butts out of a comfy leather newsroom chair in years, which goes: “You know… the news just doesn’t walk in the door.” ... But sometimes, it does.
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