1887 1 0
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Artie invited me to go with him to pick out a Halloween Pumpkin for the house. I had recently moved into a communal living situation and we were still getting to know each other. Artie was the kind of person who made a special occasion out of ordinary life. Why…
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1887 20 5
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He tells me that only a few things had happened in his life but some of them he had felt deeply.
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1887 3 2
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Harold Smithe awoke that Tuesday morning precisely at 6 am. He did this every day for as long as he could remember. Even on the weekends when his schedule varied. Well, varied slightly. He lay in bed trying to wake up and mulled over the things he needed to accomplish for…
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1886 22 17
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Sometimes cats had to die or dogs
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1886 1 1
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Amid the swerve and pulse of hungry bodies Girma Dali picks his spot, a tissue-wide patch of net where's he going to strike. A green-jerseyed defender closes in on him his brute momentum unleashed like a kamikaze pilot swooping into enemy orbit, his lunging body makes…
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1886 21 8
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1886 4 5
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PORNOGRAPHY First He went across the floor to where she sat. One sleeve of her shirt dropped to show her shoulder, salted and brown. One hundred fish filled the wave. Now, he said. Now is now. Second The car wouldn't…
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1886 12 12
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you were very very small, you were everso small, you were like – the tiniest creature, hopping about on one leg
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1886 4 1
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“He spent four lonely days in a brown L.A. haze, and now Jimmy Buffet is dead.” —Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News “Jimmy Buffet—beloved parrot-head singer-songwriter—has given up his search for that lost shaker of salt. He…
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1885 8 3
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love notes yellowed through the years
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1885 0 0
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—with spinster goddesses in the middle of things / circling looms.
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1885 15 14
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it was your hands—caked
with years-old clay & quaking
from too much solitude
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1885 12 10
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Poor kid. She didn't mean to leave my business card on her kitchen counter next to the telephone. It was a mistake.
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1885 8 2
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1885 10 11
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The man of a thousand faces was defunct.
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1885 5 2
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The courtroom smelled a lot like mold and it was hot as you could imagine. I sweated through my shirt and wondered if he wasn’t dying under his robe. He looked down at me from his bench and I just knew he was going to call me a commie and sentence me to l
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1885 4 1
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fated and cruel, a person I don't love
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1885 0 0
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“Have you heard about Lucius?” The lawyer turned to the carpenter. “They say he's gone mad. Just gone; the madness of the gods.” Sitting in the barbershop were the former two, one in his forties and the other of his fifties; a gray-haired…
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1885 1 0
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The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare
It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale
and Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl
Two roses in a small clear glass of water
A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway
up from
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1884 16 13
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Suddenly a hand shot up on the other side of a hedge. “I’ll have one of those!” cried someone who remained invisible.
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1884 0 0
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Reining her small hands around the molded handle grips, her bottom bouncing athwart and wildly off the seat, Symphony wrenches her center of gravity inward, commandeering as much control from the road it would allow. With her breaks behaving as stubborn
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1884 6 6
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Little rambling soul,/kind guest, friend: leave me laughing,/pallid stiff, and bare.
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1884 1 0
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and we got the apartment, which was on a street that backed up on an alley situated, as it turned out, right across the alley from the very first Hari Krishna house, where they would wake up at four every morning and begin their maddening chanting: Hari K
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1884 13 10
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the ugliness will not be denied
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1884 9 5
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I'm warming my stool at the far end of the bar as usual, nursing my fourth draft on a balmy Wednesday afternoon when I lock eyes with this lady who's bashing her head through the front door. You've heard the expression, “50-yard fox,” right? —Looks…
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1883 12 9
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The bus is late; the papers disappear.
The china breaks, and the suit does not fit.
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1883 4 6
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The thing that really gets you about the house is the hurricane shutters. They're up already, even though it's the end of May, because Buck's uncle is back in Rhode Island for the summer and he's prepped the house on Key Largo like Armageddon is coming.
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1883 9 8
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The giant hurled threats and insults. He brandished a knife that was a foot long.
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1883 0 0
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His mouth smiled but his icy eyes did not. "You like it?," he asked with a thin deflated voice. "Old family recipe. Enjoy."
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1883 18 12
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There's a man sitting in my room holding a jar of my ashes. That's what he claims.
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