1731 13 10
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Why is there a heavy weight and a chain and a padlock in her woodstove? Because, she says to herself, slightly hysterically, because this is yet another thing that you must carry. Why? Because life is full of chains and padlocks and heavy weights. Hea
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173152
|
|
1731188
|
She’s there, in a tin, loosely wound
beneath sepia tissue paper, a braid
to worry in your fingers.
|
173172
|
Of course the man went tumbling, and though he fell not far, a falling with a body full of meats and sweet breads makes the landing something awful-not so bad that Desperate got it-only so the leg puffed like a blue, rain swollen, earth-bound cloud.
|
1731105
|
I tell my doc I’m special, 1 in 1,000,000 special: unhitched, pushing 44, and knocked up. "Call Guinness," I joke, and fake jab his right arm. He puts his two hands over mine, smiles gently, like a father.
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173011
|
There was an ownership about the makeshift carnival. There was a therapy there.
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173096
|
It’s good to have some,
Extra weight -
Something they can
Grab on to,
In the sheets,
When it’s late-
|
173010
|
"So" he started, which troubled me enough to turn back around and make such focused eye contact that I did not even notice his glass was again full, "you wanted to talk?"
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1730137
|
a Ferris wheel gently rocks
its last riders
then dumps them to the ground.
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173011
|
He introduced himself as Jimmy Stamps and shook my hand with the confidence of a man who is Microsoft Windows certified. Reeking of vodka and Swisher Sweets he proceeded to expatiate on the virtues of X
|
172922
|
mr cummings sounded too formal for a man who didn’t use capital letters. As she climbed the four flights of stairs to the flat, she sang to herself, “I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart).”
|
172945
|
But the world is smaller when I see it /
from the crook of your neck.
|
1729198
|
Evening was drawing nigh and Mosby's horse had tired from the daylong ride.
|
172933
|
Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don't like mazes — too much like…
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172900
|
When I finally went back to school in the fourth grade, after coming down with polio, my classmates were very welcoming, though I couldn't go outside and run around like them yet at recess or lunch time. That would come, just not right away. But it was th
|
172971
|
She doesn’t answer. Ten minutes slide by unmolested in the anesthesia of cheap wine and resignation, the bouncers blurring and unblurring, the room dimming, quieting, the kaleidoscope of sundown giving way to the gentle sadness of candlelight.
|
1729910
|
When we were seventeen, after her dad, the preacher, finished his Sunday night church services that required our mandatory attendance, we'd walk to my car in the pasture-turned parking lot holding hands and stop at the passenger-side car door to kiss deeply, get…
|
172930
|
Warren Jeffries had called me on the phone the night before and said, “Listen to this,” as he held the receiver out his bedroom window at the noise coming from the riot on campus. They were spraying gas over People’s Park, trying to get them to disp
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172933
|
They said AK, AK, if you want to come here, if you want to come to Antioch, you have to bring your A+ game. If you want to run with the big boys. That’s what they said. So I brought my A+ game.
|
172932
|
Today's girls all look the same. Angie isn't even sure if one leaves and a new one enters. They blend together like paper-dolls, clinging to one another, connected, braided. This morning, while one of them lies with her legs in a V, the alarm goes off
|
172810
|
As Gino exited the supermarket, plastics bags in tow, he began doing curls with his right arm. He’d been doing this for years, reasoning that he might as well get some exercise during the walk home.
|
1728106
|
In the small hours, when the crackling of the embers had stopped and the room had gone cold, the boiler kicked in and the pipes began to clang. He was half-roused out of his sleep, and then slipped under again to dream of Marley's fettered ghost.
|
172833
|
I know I’m slipping
into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone
with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans.
And who is this listening to NPR in the morning
while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,,
peonies han
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172854
|
Their love was doomed at the onset, yet they engaged in it anyway, heedless of the numerous error messages and critical runtime failures. Abort, Retry, Fail? They selected Retry over and over.
|
172876
|
That morning, four children appeared in front of the train, which was ready to depart
|
1728108
|
Do you think that’s a good idea, you said. Sure, I said, as the men coiled up the anaconda and put it in a second truck that had arrived. You don’t think anyone will wonder what our motives are?
|
172850
|
So back to Berkeley we went, and started our own commune in a huge rented house on Derby Street where we could tear the fences down in all the neighborhood backyards. We created what we called “The Meadow.”
|
172853
|
He never bothered converting the tip money he pocketed at the Imperial Street 24 hour car wash as his world was replete with 25 cent transactions, making quarters the perfect coin for his realm.
|
172797
|
master carvers do not reduce with carving.
|
1727179
|
He deplaned Air France flight 9 from JFK to Charles de Gaulle airport at quarter past noon.
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