1665 21 19
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I once read a book of warnings.
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166573
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Note to self: look up Bobby Sands.
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166533
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And him, now there’s a him. I’d like if he were perfect, but perfect things never are. My daughter says it best, when she contrasts the two of you, “Daddy worked to forget about his problems. When he works, it makes him feel like there is a problem.”
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16651412
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Behind them all, in the background, a tray of vodka tonics waits on a glass table, the limes losing color as they drown.
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1665119
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What if I never feel like a real artist? What does it even mean to be a "real" artist? What if nobody ever cares about what I make?
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166542
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They leaned against the hood of his pickup, which sat heavy on its wheels, the back of it filled with the things that he’d held out of the yard sale three days earlier.
“When’re you leaving?” she asked.
“Early. Get on down the road. Shut ’er down ea
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166521
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It will only be minutes before I can slip out of this shelter, but time has suspended itself like a web over the sky. I look up and see a break in the clouds moving north from the furthest tip of Lake Erie. Rain turns to drizzle, other guests arrive toget
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1664164
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He ran his forefinger round the rim of the lid then sucked at his fingertip. The texture's like chalk, he thought, it tastes of earth. He hadn't anticipated this — but dipped his finger in again and swallowed. It was like scraping his tongue against a blackboard on…
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166443
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There is nothing so obscure it is not enhanced by talking, nothing so dull it cannot be coaxed into brilliance, nothing so deep it cannot be dug from an abyss and brought to the surface in paroxysms of red.
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1664136
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Men aren't good at these kinds of things, my mother tells me. She states it as if it is a scientific fact.
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166475
|
skies electric blue,/limpid dewy air, the world/framed by a small farm.
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166430
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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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166497
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we wipe the blood of our progress
from our hands.
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1664108
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nothing can stop a group of genteel Southern women from a card game, and divine intervention makes one's participation in such an event quite worthwhile
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166411
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I. The girl within the sleeping woman dreams her dream of ending. To her comes the cowgirl with no kids: she's riding high atop her turquoise horse, steady by its braided mane. Silver pistols holstered. The girl in the woman in the dream she's dreaming…
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1664128
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The people with the lucky faces Are always sneaking out more credit For everything than they deserve. Maybe They are right, maybe it's our fault For buying into the myths of the Land of mirrors. The people with the Lucky faces haven't…
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1664106
|
He is drilling the door of a safe to access the keys he locked inside.
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1664136
|
The three were up early to await the deer with rifles, ammunition, and coffee.
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166387
|
When the full moon changes trajectory and comes close it pushes you to different gravitational fields
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166383
|
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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16631813
|
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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166300
|
Once upon a time, not so long ago in Los Angeles, Jack and Jill Woodman’s father remarried.
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16622214
|
I thought each day died inside the clock.
|
166287
|
I usually idle by Spades Check Cashing on 8th Ave. and catch folks that way. The Homestead cops, they moved stations from a little up Amity to down on 7th, which is closer to Spades, but they leave me alone. I've drove jitneys almost ten years. Only been cited twice,…
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1662206
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She lifts her head, nose heavenward. There’s a wet spot on my dress from our lovemaking, its aroma as heady as Claudine’s bouillabaisse. I hope she smells it.
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166221
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"How could anyone say that I was wrong, that I was crazy?" These thoughts scraped across her mind and tore open the reasons she had knitted herself into over the years.
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16621410
|
Sid, the owner of the red convertible, always slept with his twin Lhasa Apsos, Helpless and Hopeless. He was an early riser and took his “girls”, as he called them, out for a brief walk, yes, and also he was up early to take his morning penicillin because he…
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166200
|
"Being honest with me," said her teacher, "will hopefully allow you to be honest with yourself--writing is about being honest, and articulating that honesty."
It sounded like a riddle, and her teacher looked at her with the sanctimony of a wizard.
|
16622913
|
Cinnamon and smoke
infuse the days that shorten,
chill, accelerate.
|
166176
|
Alexander Ivanovich stuck out his leg and tripped Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev. Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev stood up, took two steps forward, stuck out his leg and tripped Alexander Ivanovich.
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