1869 1 1
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He thought the scarab was bad luck. I knew too little about omens to argue.
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186911
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"We regret the inconvenience. Due to hijack activity, we have orders to secure this flight. Please remain seated. We will be landing shortly. Thank you for your cooperation."
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186921
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Mrs. Noah eyed the thickening clouds from the front stoop. Noah was still out in the yard kicking up sand in disgust, arguing with himself the whole time. Piles of cedar timber lay strewn all about. Maybe if they’d lived even three days’ journey clos
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186966
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A son packs his bag - bottled water, extra masks, and jerky. Mom paces behind him. “Don't go.”
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1869124
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I look for the boy we met inside the club, the one who claimed he loved playing with matches, setting fire to churches. I spot him smoking a cigarette, standing so cool against the side of the club, like he might be the nephew of some Viking guitarist hun
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18691914
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His work was done. For sixty years, beginning soon after his seventeenth birthday, he had listened to the gods- good, bad, somewhere in between-
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186973
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the air is a fierce tangerine tonight
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1869149
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186900
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18691814
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Also in development,/
the anatomically perfect robot/
pool boy and naughty maid,
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1869139
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Like many little towns, ours has an archive. It is a catalog of everything that happens.
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186965
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They think Van Gogh heard music when he looked at his starry nights. Working at a Bingo parlor, you get to believing in a one-in-a-million shot just as much as you doubt the rarity of a sure thing.
I only worked part time at the bingo parlor because I ne
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186830
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186864
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Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the…
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1868114
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Mounds of earth and grassless ground
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186831
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the future wrapped up in a dream
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186820
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I try again. "You can make a big cup by putting your hands and fingers together, see?"
He glares at me. "A giant could make a big cup," he says. "A giant could make a giant cup."
I thought so before, and I’ll say it again. A little genius.
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186862
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"What is a vageena?" I wanted to know.
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186884
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I awake one morning to find that still,
the leaves continue to fall.
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186840
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Except, something about Margaret was a little off. She would stop typing suddenly and look up at the plant, studying it, almost as if daring it to cross her. Then, she would go back to her computer and start pounding away again.
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18681310
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I see my siblings once a year when we all show up, as if required by law, to eat Thanksgiving dinner. It is apparent with every bite how much they hate each other.
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1868106
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“Ol’ Betty has a nice set of headlights,” he says with a wink as he springs out of the recliner.
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186774
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"Merry Christmas, Willie."
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1867106
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186753
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Having sex with her there made me feel like a child molester, I said. She said it made her excited.
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1867129
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His knife enters the Maui onion. He minces garlic and applies heat to pan and melts sweet cream butter and browns the garlic first and then he adds the onion and more heat, but it's time that will surely caramelize them. Salt and pepper and splashes of wine for the pan and…
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1867147
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where is the magic at?
the spit
the dirt
or the words?
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1867119
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He asked me to bury him in Vegas.
Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.
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186721
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I can still feel the texture of those humid Delta mornings, hear the rhythm of the voices of black children echoing down the halls. I still remember the sense of purpose that I had each day, knowing that this, here, mattered: a child’s education, their
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186753
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Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…
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