1848 2 1
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The Kharal kept us safe, we knew, kept the colony functional in the oft belabored effort that was living our small, human lives surrounded by death, for in their ring of constant invisible protection, when they did not come, we thrived. It was not as tho
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184876
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I'm a librarian. A reader. I identify as a four-eyed person. I've always worn glasses. I got my first pair in the second grade. It was a miracle! The blurry world I'd inhabited all my life suddenly came into focus. I could see the blackboard! I could read street signs! I…
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184822
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Her wrinkles came into focus, the sort of old woman's face photographed for coffee tables and art galleries and corporate boardrooms, for prize juries and grant selection committees, and Luc searched his formidable memory for an exact match. Over the long, tedious…
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184854
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A man with bleeding hands at the back door of Out of the Closet
this morning asked me for the bride and groom figurines at the
top of my donation box
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184800
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He went to the switchboard and rang one of the rooms. I moved away to a discreet distance so he could make his pitch in private, and soon he came back to the desk front. "He d-didn't like it much, b-but he said to s-send you up. Room 412."
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1847146
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I was a six year old with no bike. Only the males in my familyhad that privilege. So one morning I got up very early, before the older siblings awoke, crept out the back porch door where Iknew there would be two bikes in the yard just waiting for me and my…
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18471513
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I'm still working on this. I'm always open to your thoughts.
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18472410
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Clayton had a grin like the hand of a beast that stretched as long as her gravel road...
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18471612
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So I went to see the wrinkled
and rumpled poet, who insisted
on reading from memory, stumbling
through his sheaf of poems.
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184794
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“Why do I have to sign these cards? You haven't written your dreaded holiday letter yet.” “I told you not to complain or you'd be the one writing it. And addressing the envelopes. Then you can stamp them and take them to the Post Office!” …
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1847145
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When I come to suck fresh raspberries'
juice from your hair
pressing the clasp of my mouth's purse
on the oyster of your ear;
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184762
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So, when Daddy grabbed that cock by the neck and threw him into the hole that he quick covered with dirt, I knew right then that men would play a subservient role in my life going forward.
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184721
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Papa said he'd be in the stands watching: section H, 5th row, seat 35. During warmups, she had looked, during stretches, she had looked, but she had stopped looking right before the race."Don't worry about me," he had said. "Focus on the race," so when the man had said on…
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1846104
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Across from the Hell Hole
the Cage on Sixth pulses,
sweats, swooshes, hot concussion as players
play for keeps.
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184610
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This is about a mescaline trip that went wrong. It happened back in the '60s and I know, the '60s have been done quite to death and nobody ever gets the trip right but--you'll like this one. Joey and…
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18462911
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They may have heard parts of it, the memoir in me. Then I took a trip—to New York, though they wouldn't have known where—and when I returned, I was entirely mum unless I had the phone with me.
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1846133
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The spoken world is bigger than I had ever imagined it to be, wonderful and relentless and unforgiving, and to be a part of it was my grandest childhood fantasy. I don’t know what the world sees me as now, but inside I will always be a stutterer.
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184695
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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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184673
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Looking at his pale and pimpled flesh, he was repulsed by his flaccid and lifeless member. The accompanying bits, dangled about far from his frame as the summer heat drew them away from his sweaty and unwashed body.
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184620
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This is an older story that was inspired by research on naming conventions while trying to find record of my own ancestors in the Ukraine. I did not find them. Instead I was inspired to write this.
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184698
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If you get crushed in New York City
that's your own problem.
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184620
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Crazy. I really hate when people use that word.
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184622
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Jacob could tell it was a man he had just walked past, a broken man with an olive green Vietnam era military jacket, a man who had probably served his country as honorably as anyone chosen at lottery and forced to kill for a subsistence wage…
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1846115
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What did they even invent
clothing for? I asked.
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1846104
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He got up to the pulpit and said that he thought he might have made a mistake. I will never forget the desperate look on his face. He recalled being at his Ivy League school and wondering just what he was interested in upon his graduation and what would b
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184683
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45s I’ve kept wrapped in newspaper in the attic. These are all mine. Some doubling up in sleeves. Some pushing tears in the seams.
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184685
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1846124
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It rises rigid and plumb from its heavy base, the severity of line yielding to grace only at the throat where it crests into a subtly constrictive pinch.
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1846149
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I never thought I’d miss the sound of church bells, reminding me of my sudden apostasy,
faintly ringing over the rumpus where even the birds can’t get a word in edgeways.
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184554
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It is late at night and you lean / over me to make sure your alarm is set.
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