2030 8 7
|
Once upon a time, before there was Prairie, there was Swamp.
Therein lived Salamander and Snake. High above them, in the tops of Cypresses lived Woodpecker.
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2030 11 5
|
Hippy health food. It all began with Hannah’s homemade granola.
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2030 6 2
|
1. Think up problems that don’t exist
2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist
3. Elation
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2029 7 2
|
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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2029 10 5
|
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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2029 0 0
|
No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…
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2029 4 3
|
She brought the ends of her fingers to her mouth and moistened them in her warm saliva. The whorls of her prints glistened in the harsh light of the room, but it wasn't her own outlines she was interested in raising. His hand lay outstretched in his…
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2028 17 10
|
Even if your heart is as large as a small car, your tongue as heavy as two grown men—even then—you will have to carry it with you wherever you go.
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2028 0 0
|
At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f
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2028 23 22
|
The painting was on loan from a gallery in Chicago. We stood there connecting the dots.
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2028 6 6
|
ghosts are local plagues/of unexpended grief—tears/can't be bodiless.
|
2027 3 2
|
The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…
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2027 3 1
|
Dizzy but still alive
Inside this conversation
I ask if you have a sister
And if she'll know me
If I'm with you.
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2027 6 5
|
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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2027 13 9
|
Things don’t happen here, life is so boring in this little Irish town.
|
2027 26 6
|
She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.
|
2027 0 0
|
It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to
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2027 2 0
|
What the heck to believe in??
|
2027 3 2
|
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.
|
2027 5 1
|
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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2027 21 5
|
You got a lot of people, out there
|
2026 11 7
|
I walk back home, alone and without the bus fare. Distancing myself from the shadows that float interminably against the drowsy sun. Where frightened boys often roam, going in circles against the long lines of epitaphs and gravestones. Puzzling…
|
2026 22 17
|
The bungalow was unlocked. The screen
door was unhooked. The trout on the
counter was deboned.
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2026 9 7
|
A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…
|
2026 0 0
|
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.
|
2026 21 11
|
He hid in parks and abandoned apartment houses until his wounds healed. He ate nuts, berries, and seeds. A shy, gentle soul, he watched children playing on the monkey bars, and thought of his lost youth.
|
2026 19 11
|
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2026 6 3
|
I am at a wedding with a new girlfriend. The bride is her old college roommate. I don't really know anyone else here. The wedding is being held at a huge estate, located on the edge of enormous cliffs that overlook the ocean. Despite the danger of this precarious…
|
2026 16 13
|
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.
|
2025 13 12
|
He introduced me to key lime pie, and for this alone I would have loved him forever. It was an innocent time for me, and I was easy to please.
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