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1The Bird King has fallen in lovewith a radiator.He adoresher pockmarked skin,her neurotic arias,her coldness,her impulsive warmth. 2Tiring of his dalliance with the radiator,the Bird King woos an armchair.She's amply upholsteredand groans dreamilywhen he sits on…
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160430
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I was a Cub Scout, and the face of God was a joke that was told to my little pack. The joke went as thus:
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1604125
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Thistle and cracked corn were thrown to us each morning and the occasional live chicken...
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160432
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So I'm digging, clawing the black earth, disappearing in its ore and shadow.
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160395
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Sundays after Mass, Sister Edburga gathered the team in the shower room, we stripped naked in a circle, held hands and said a prayer we’d win our game. A boy no one knew walked alongside her with a box full of jockstraps.
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160385
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1603106
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160387
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When the full moon changes trajectory and comes close it pushes you to different gravitational fields
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1603115
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Beside her door there was a black squirrel in the dogwood she saw scratched his armpit.
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16031611
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Is there a recipe for / lasting happiness?
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16032411
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"Baby, he turned gray and dead before he hit the floor".
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1603114
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A wall of icons can be beautiful if you don’t look closely at the hands. The hands tell stories of too short lives and unrequited love.
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160301
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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”
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160244
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People were just doing it.
Doing it everywhere. On lawn chairs and stray patio cushions and watching. Watching every one do it.
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160255
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These are the small miracles we witness from my barrio stoop.
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160211
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Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .
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160243
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Viewed correctly, nature is an inexhaustible storehouse of clichés. A successful landscape is their pleasing rearrangement.
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16022417
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He wore his hip in his hips, his lipsShe wanted to know if he would lick the edgesWhen he pulled the coffee cup from his mouthA bit of foam clung to his moustacheShe watched it there, wondering if he wouldTwirl it off with his fingersOr lick it, his tongue darting out like…
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1602117
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The world knows how to make you smile. I'm certain, but it's your own unique grin that they want for themselves. It's always been their perfect prize to horde. The trouble of course comes from wanting something that only exists in…
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16022214
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the signature of God/
consigning everything/
to the saturating energies of time.
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16021813
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My uncle looks into the bleached eye of his cat and asks
"What happened to my ear?"
The meerkat’s eye replies:
"You had cancer. Remember?
They had to cut off your ear to save you."
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160231
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Mr. Lowell knelt down and put his face in his hands, his knees quickly covered in blood. Sobs.
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160264
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"Fax the Beaver" was its last, secret title. The beaver is a dirty trick, and it belongs on the index card.
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160174
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Before he knew what happened, Shelia ran out of his life forever with their baby in her belly.
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160192
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You never thought you were capable of rape.
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16011512
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To touch our skin was filthy,
to spread our legs a mortal sin. You closed
the keyholes to keep us apart, so we used them
to keep you out and keep our secrets to ourselves.
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160154
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Her pudgy face, flour-coated and sugary and so life-nurturing in the past, had a different spark now, a searching look I’d seen as soon as she opened the door.
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160111
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It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.
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160122
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Most nights while in his sleep, with his one good eye deeply shut, the old man can hear the whispers of the specter in the remote wanderings, holding the surrounding woodlands in its snare. The sound of it closing in, with the bones of the universe crushing in…
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160100
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Once upon a time, not so long ago in Los Angeles, Jack and Jill Woodman’s father remarried.
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