1787 1 2
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My parents were married for forty five years. “A lifetime,” is how the rabbi at my mother's funeral describes it. The man says it with such a tone of familiarity, of genuine sadness, that one might think he has known and adored my parents all their lives. But…
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17871614
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The woman carried a wooden log which was her husband into the house.
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178771
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Homer relaxes in his tan, faded recliner, remote in hand, and watches death unfold on his television.
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178775
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“It’s a sad thing,” I said, “when a man has to suffer just for getting a little on the side.”
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178762
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The figure was covered in a light blue chenille bathrobe, splayed out on her back on the floor by the glass door, her hair done up in large curlers, a slipper lying askew by her left foot. Richie crouched near the face and the rancid flame of bourbon lea
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178788
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It took all four of his kids to convince my father to pull the plug. Mom's car crash had left her a vegetable, but of course he hung on. Once they withdrew life support, she was gone in ten minutes. The first thing our father said was that he was hungry. He felt…
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178632
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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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178621
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When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo
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178642
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Had I scoured all five boroughs of New York I couldn’t have found a more perfect imperfect object for my affections. Morgan was crazy as a loon, with the common sense of a mackerel and the emotional stability of a canary. But believing love could conquer
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17861913
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perjured like a fickle impulse
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178610
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178602
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I might as well just keep driving. Past my exit. Beyond my job. Just drive. Until the tank runs out of gas. A blank future is better than this bleak one.
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17861816
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We die in order to get some rest
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178553
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Even though it was late November, it still bloomed. Extravagantly. Obviously it had no shame, obviously it reveled in its own beauty.
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178500
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It seems every time we get together, Seiko is there. She just started working in Keiko's department and now they're always together. I think Keiko feels responsible for Seiko. Like if Seiko's not getting any, it's bad manners for Keiko to do it.
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17852010
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Went back to his cab and returned with a whip...
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178597
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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”…
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178521
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Gracious have been my years of late;
The windy drifts blown soft.
Truth be told, such luck seemeth bait
Eliciting doubts and wonderings.
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178585
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What kind of person would she be remembered as if she died over night and someone looked in her freezer? She took out a package of bacon from the freezer that was dated 2009.
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17851311
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When the planes crashed,when the levees broke,when the ground shook,there was a song I dreamed of,humming subsonic,a chorus of voices and prayersuncorked like the little brown jugthat holds all the love and memories.In the outback, Aborigines believewe create the world by…
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178543
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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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178542
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Why do men become explorers? he asked. Because they want to cannibalize the unknown; to leave the chemicals, the furniture (and, yes, the shrew) behind; to make their way hi ho into the brush, whose weeds and lianas remain empty of the exhortations of Jesus Christ, whose…
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1784107
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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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178484
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“I don’t know what’s going on there,” Hank, who hated his name and wanted a more Biblical name because those names (Jeremiah! Matthew! David!)—although common—sound ominous, said as he pointed up to the top of the apartment building that housed the whores
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178411
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“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.
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178422
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Marion had decided to stop whenever she came upon Amarillo. It was close to two a.m. when she pulled into the motel parking lot. Momma, read the nametag on the woman at reception. Her face was illuminated by a TV. Her hair curlers were illuminated by the lone desk lamp…
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178462
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It was already 3:30 PM. Where had all the time gone? Linda looked up from her computer monitor over at Carlos, who had his face intently pointed at his. "We have to go soon," she said. "We want to avoid rush hour traffic.""Where did we put the address?" Carlos answered, not…
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17841010
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A block after his first crime, he found a bookstore to commit another.
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178400
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wrap me in the soft, cool blanket of night. waning,the moon peers down at melike the heavy-lidded eye of some cyclops. and if I be lost like poor Odysseus,cloak me in the soft, warm wool of night. and if my eyes fail me like old Tiresias,stitch the cloth with…
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1784135
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Dad woke us up and said it was time to go.
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