1820 8 7
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I do so want to bring you into the sacred linguistically eternal loop of all ordinary things on earth, but it can so easily turn into a very sudden unsparing trapdoor, or a hissing angry knot tying up itself into even more tricky sorts …
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182062
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he told me to be careful,my feet may bleedI watched him walk up and down the path,occasionally bendingwhy?carpenter nails, pieces of broken shinglesall along the pathnow I know why
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182074
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A cow wanders onto a roof and falls through the skylight. It's a calamity, but such an innocent mistake. Mightn't you amble onto a rooftop once upon a full winter snow in Vermont?Another cow climbs a gravel mound in…
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18201512
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She wears three or four tattered sweaters on cool days. She pushes a basket borrowed from a grocery store. There is a plastic lawn bag in the basket with God knows what inside.
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182011
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No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.
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182012
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It distresses me that you will never lust after me /
the way you did for that girl /
who had her hands around your belt
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1820127
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What purpose other than misery/
can cancer serve? And Parkinson's,/
AIDS, and STDs?
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182086
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We were just as bourgeois as Bloomingdale’s, one generation past canned ravioli dinners with cheap white bread.
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182011
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The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.
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182043
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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…
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1820115
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The Americans don't want us. They want knowledge. They want to eat with us. They want technology and weapons. They want the results of research they themselves are too craven to perform, answers to questions they ask themselves in whispers, in the dark. T
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1820137
|
a Ferris wheel gently rocks
its last riders
then dumps them to the ground.
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1819124
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"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."
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181971
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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.
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181933
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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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181920
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Someone had shown me a page on the internet where writers could have their stories analyzed, seeing whose work their piece was similar to. Normally, I only went on the computer to find apartment listings and pornography.
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181987
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“Susan,” he says menacingly, as if he’s a husband who’s caught a cheating wife in a discreet liaison with another man. “I thought I made myself clear about this sort of thing.”
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181900
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Lean closer, she smiles, smell my perfume let yourself be taken to a wild forest where owls grow and trees fly.
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181944
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At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.
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181911
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Her ghost/kept coming back/to Hamlet
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18191010
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One day we went for a hike. We climbed a small mountain. It’s called Mission Peak. We got about halfway up a steep trail, decided that was far enough. We embraced. She said “I love you,” and I said, “I love you, too.”
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181855
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Vandalina embarked on her career of serious dramatic roles to widespread acclaim, her depth of feeling and potency of delivery winning her thunderous ovations and gushing reviews . . .
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18182015
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The boys drank in one room. The girls in another. Always the same, no matter the letters.
Greek Letters.
Shabby sofa on the burnt-out lawn.
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181841
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What about the goons? Those criminals thwarted and left for dead in every action movie for the past thirty years. I'm sure at least a dozen survived the slaughters. I'm sure at least one or two came out if it reformed. This one who quit working for Columbian drug smugglers…
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18182913
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With such demeaning precarity, I can’t read/
anything more than a thousand words
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181794
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None of us took it too seriously when Gregory from underwriting said he was dating a real-life witch. Being an underwriter is not as interesting as say being a writer. That's why the greatest underwriter in America, Ajit Jain, gets paid per hour what Jame
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181733
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Behind the plastic kitchen, where the special children sometimes sit, a large boy in tight dungarees had grabbed Stephanie's hair in one fist.
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181732
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It was hard to believe that, even very recently, there had been first days of school where nothing happened.
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181722
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“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.
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181711
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I’d made it to the motel parking lot when I heard the footsteps. A sombrero may make me look good, but it does shit for my hearing, so the bastards were able to scoop me up real quick. The first one gave me a hard slap on the top of the head with an opene
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