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We were pushing ninety down the highway through a stretch of what rightfully should have been called the Badlands. We were both absorbed and coping with the rapidly escalating stages of desperation and so neither of us noticed when the yellow figure stepped…
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183300
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First thing each morning, Miss Murgy, a tall witch of a woman, cornered both of us like she did every day. "Girls…" with that she clinked a tea spoon on a shot glass, "do I have your attention?" "Yes, m'am," Vicky said. 6 a.m., six…
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183374
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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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183333
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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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183311
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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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183311
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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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183374
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The officers carried him away in cuffs as he yelled "I NEED STATS! PLEASE! JUST GIVE ME THE STATS!"
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183300
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On stage, students from the junior college join children from the community to speak and sing in American-French accents. They are timid, heart-broken, in love, rebellious, faithful, resigned to their fates—and all in the matter of a few short hours.
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183386
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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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183311
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Seventeen-year cicadas are the sometimes-singers that surprise spring with the ugliest mouths of all.
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183364
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And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …
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183373
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Having read the poetry of Dennison
I hereby give up writing.
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183330
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As they left, Roddy kicked over a statue of a blindfold and half-naked goddess of justice. "I piss on you Justice!" he yelled. The bailiff pushed him out the door as he continued his rant, inaudible.
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18331213
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My wife goes away for a few days to the little town where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.
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1833127
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But those burning red numbers persist in my mind
and I can't rest 'till they're gone
They always come back
Like the cat in that childhood song.
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183200
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A Body Divided: Memoir
1
When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it broug
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183211
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The muster zone was south of U.S. 119, off the Halleck Road. The search began on a large parcel, some 75 acres of farmland, property of one Mr. Shakelford. Shakelford had allowed the earth to go wild; brush, thistle and small…
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183262
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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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1832113
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In May of 1982, my daughter and I planned a trip…
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183211
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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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183264
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A junkyard Bison seems an odd choice over the usual dog, but it did the job--trampling trespassers, vagrants and unautorized salvagers with a violent and admirable efficiency
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183275
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—You must be joking, he laughed.
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183287
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1832116
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Altodog was dressed in filthy chef’s trousers and a long-sleeved purple dress shirt, somewhat dignified by a tattered black vest.
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183263
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I stand corrected once more.
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183174
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not that we ever had before
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183187
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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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I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.
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