1703 7 3
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Her skirt is so short, said the teenage girls to each other. I was 7 years old. I said: she looks like a slut. They laughed; I blushed. Later, the slut smiled at me. I tried to find the teenage girls but they were gone. I wanted to say: it's actually a pair of…
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17031915
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1703138
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170386
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I knew my cat was capable of telepathy when I began to have isolated, random, non-cause-related thoughts about food and feelings, little signals, and I realized that the signs — images of tangerines, tuna, bones; the idea of choice; slate, names; the feeling of…
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1703127
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What purpose other than misery/
can cancer serve? And Parkinson's,/
AIDS, and STDs?
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17031916
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Try it with and without/
middle name or middle initial.//
Try different keywords.
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17031613
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I wrangle word juice
from the Oxford American, sighing at photographs of blues musicians with solemn lakes for eyes.
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170353
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The electricity animates my body into myclonic dance. I do not rest. I dance with the demons; I dance with Nijinsky rage. I dance with the fury of Saint Vitus and his wooden cross. My shoes are fashioned with my own fear, tanned and stretched over my feet
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170293
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cymbals guy — another way of saying hey turdshitface haul your skinnyass to the front of the bus.
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17021110
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When her husband left she was not yet thirty
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17021513
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I am eternal/
as long as the power holds
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170231
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1. there's nothing more to say about it and I don't want to be drawn2. beautiful she couldn't hear me anyway I was desperate and there were moths3. they'd replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked4. none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a…
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170267
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When he took Medieval German Lit in graduate school, Ackermann read Der Ackermann aus Böhmen by Johannes von Tepl. His professor was amused both by his last name and that his grandparents were Germans from Bohemia. Of course, only his grandmother was from Bohemia and…
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17011211
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170100
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I found him dead underneath a sycamore tree. I knew it was a sycamore tree because of all the acorns surrounding the body.
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170174
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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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1701117
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War came home tonight. We weep and hug, while he stares over our shoulders, like the statue we'll make of him. We pour a drink for his shaky hands, wheel him past his friends the dead, and lie to each other about other, far off places as if we knew.
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170197
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Rory and Betty Sloan entered the first of 40 rooms in the new Motel 6 to place Holy Bibles in 40 night tables.
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170183
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I think I’ll get a tattoo. Not just any tattoo, one I’ll regret. I’ll catch people peering at it, trying to interpret the twists and swirls of the black ink on my fair skin.
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17011814
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There are things we must not say.
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1701129
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All young and loud and big and I swear her face like a lighthouse lamp, glowing—I remember thinking, ‘She’s drunk at nine in the morning.’
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170165
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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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170178
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The weatherman can't predict
accumulation. He can only tell you
it will be cold. Expect ice, wind, snow, expect
delays. Your daughters play outside,
dancing around the Evergreen, its branches
bearing the weight of snow, its branches
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170030
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She burst
Into the glass shop
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170000
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Ben tossed the newspaper aside, muttering. Carol, curled up on the sofa, peered past the glasses at the tip of her nose and past the crossword puzzle.
"What?"
"The Brits wanted to fight rather than be taken hostage. They had an escort boat ridin
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170022
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She thought of an animal checking a scent before mating, and imagined that he said to himself, “All I need is for this woman to be hitting on me.”
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17001513
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I almost kept him
on the shelf with all the trophies.
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170084
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He had become an accessory to a murder.
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17001110
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It was just lying there by the side of the road next to a mailbox, pockets turned out, weeds kinda rolled flat around it. I counted three nickels, a dime, and a cigar butt too. I could sure use the change for gum, but I didn't want to get near it. It looked dead,…
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169965
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“Can I feel it?” he reached his hands out immediately, expecting I’d say yes. I am the type to always say yes, right?
“Sure.” I confirmed, swallowing back my fear of his touch. He didn’t seem himself, like this. I led his hands to my hips and let them
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