2008 13 11
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You were busy, moving, alert inconstant motion; packingbooks, clothes, paintings;deciding yes to this, no to that. I was simply tryingto settle somewhere in the space.We'd known it for years when things were in place. Now, this abrupt interruption of…
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2008 13 10
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sacred ground bleached with the salt of bitter tears
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2007 6 1
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Bearing the smell of paper on her fingertips. Ink in her hair.
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2007 15 5
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Megalomania is a kind of backwards leprosy. It rots your insides out while your skin glistens and grows tighter around your bones.
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2007 16 14
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The woman carried a wooden log which was her husband into the house.
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2007 3 3
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People ask me sometimes what it’s like to meet your wife when you’re six years old, and I have to admit now that I don’t really understand the question. Marla and I, we were just friends for most of that time. She made me laugh. I let her crib off my math
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2007 14 12
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The hour reflected those pleasant moments when evening hunger can be satiated by anticipation alone, before the pangs become demanding.
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2007 7 6
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This no man's island I'm perched high above isn't always so beautiful to the casual beholder of newly printed maps. Oh don't go and get your clouds all wrong. Puffed or thin, everything I say I believe in is a real feeling, until the music dies…
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2007 9 3
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We hit the road, headed west.
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2007 4 2
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All right, so the frog I risked my lips on (not to mention the contents of my stomach) . . . .
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2007 2 2
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She hated the noiseless dying sound they made as he stuck the hook through their eyes. She always wanted for them to scream, but they never did. They didn’t even blink.
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2006 5 5
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He has one good eye and is missing the other. The socket of his missing eye squints with a disturbing and unfathomable insight.
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2006 10 7
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Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,
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2006 18 14
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it corrupts the smells//
and flavors of the world/
and plants its swollen face
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2006 8 3
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“Who says?” she purred in reply
“They all do” he countered smiling , chewing on an ice cube
“All of them, huh?”
She leaned forward, raising a wicked left eyebrow and whispered,
“And just who are they, anyway?”
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2006 18 15
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Together / they peeled and fed each other pink fruit, / ordered expensive pink beef, went on / vacations and viewed pink sunsets / on paradise beaches.
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2006 3 2
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your olive-pitting thumbs
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2005 4 3
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Grace Gibbons is a way of life.
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2005 7 4
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Juniper Mélange was a cat person, not a dog person. Truly detested when she perceived falseness in another person. She wore glasses and drank tea. Had dark straight hair and light skin. She dressed conservatively and would watch the sky most days. She wou
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2005 2 2
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Her face had that strange preserved quality Maybelle saw in many aging Boomer women — like an old toy never removed from its packaging.
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2005 12 13
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Papadad has one good eye. The other fell out during a rant and has since been replaced by a rifle scope, which he uses to scrutinise enemies.——Papadad is an authority on everything, even topics he has not researched. He expatiates on these at the dinner table,…
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2005 22 12
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The drinking will continue/
until morale improves
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2005 14 9
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It would be another difference a building has from a “sculpture”. It would be something that even photographers would have difficulty in disguising, since many modern buildings, even many modern photographs of buildings, place such emphasis on symmetry. For both…
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2004 5 1
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One of her favorites was of an old axe asleep on a desert floor. She told people the axe had the western lips of September. That it held the song of the ocean and the dreams of a scarecrow. Some thought she was mad to talk in such a way. Others believed h
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2004 4 2
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So if we all have an idea what goes down when the young person at the cash register (the registerista?) asks, “Can I help you?” then we all know there’s a different way to habla at Seattle’s gift to the world.
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2004 5 5
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“You’re not in Saigon anymore, Mai Bi'ch,” I said, craning to read her name badge. “They’ll need to be much better than that if you want to stay in this country.”
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2004 5 5
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Called in sick at work for a week straight when I first met Tony.
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2004 15 10
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. . . quit being so rigid, open up to the pasta.
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2004 15 9
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She tells Tuesday's lover that there's nothing wrong with cheap thrills without anesthesia,
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2004 19 13
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It’s not the money. The money’s/
just a way of keeping score.
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