1740 3 1
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173920
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There's this sepia-toned photograph, which my mother gave me, of my brother and me when we were still both youngsters. In the picture my brother's dressed in a skimpy checked suit whose sleeves were already too short for him — on its way to becoming my
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17392011
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The box thuds at your feet: mug, plant, wedding photo, the 25-year pen.
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17392013
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1739147
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17391211
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Coward, cuckold, she taunts: So be it. He's not a young man anymore, nor as clever as he once was, or thought.
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173933
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He was a sushi chef, and he would spend hours in their kitchen practicing his knife skills, and the speed with which he can put that there and this in that and so on; and she would see him on the floor most mornings, still wearing that dirty, tattered ban
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173965
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17392213
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Only scotch and cheap champagne/
retain their reliable flavors.
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173985
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Twice burned, it buries its graves.
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1739105
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As a boy I fished under the Tappan Zee bridge which spans the Hudson River above New York City.
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173942
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In a small, cozy diner lived a homemade meatloaf. The meatloaf spent its days lounging on a warm plate with some mashed potatoes and sweet corn. Together they watched television, argued about sports, and ate blueberry pie...
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173821
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‘Miguel! A pint of Guinness, please!'
I might as well have asked for his mother's immortal soul. A smile as benign as a stiletto. But he served a clean and tidy pint.
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173852
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We lay in what we have made, minute fleshy bullets in the target we have made.
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17381611
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I don't know how long I was down on the curb. When I came around it took several minutes to realize that it wasn't the moon overhead at all but a street light and the sticky feeling stuff I was lying in was, yeah, my blood. And the hand on my shoulder wasn't hers. I…
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173800
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The money stank on the table. Money is dirty she said, one of the dirtiest things. So many people touch it. This pile of brine would not explain its reek, only demanded that we accepted its stench as requisite. It had to have been the cash that stank, prior to its arrival…
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173800
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Walking home, carrying his guitar case, Jed felt the sums of his life adding up to dangerously high numbers, the deadly inertia of vaguely comfortable apathy swallowing his time. His moment would soon be fading. Because, like many young men before him, Jed…
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173833
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Nearly everyone knows of that celebrated poet’s story coming down to us from classical Greek mythology: the tragic tale of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. Well, there’s a much lesser known story of a legendary 7
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173853
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Smoking is like hooking up with an ex-girlfriend: you know she's bad for you and that it won't work out, but it feels so familiar and comfortable and so easy to slide back into.
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173800
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If you were the ozone,
I’d want to leave you gaping.
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173782
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Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.
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1737178
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1737138
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Every morning if I don't have to go potty....
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173762
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"What the fuck are you looking at, Carl?" She snaps, turning her head toward me as the truck edges off the road and into a field of tobacco, into those broad green leaves of ancient sacristy and modern ablution. This is not a blissful kind of field. It is not full…
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173797
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They rise up, a sullen, sorrowful/
army of reproach, staring,//
stone-faced but eyed with fire.
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173796
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I cannot begin to list all the ways this conversation can go downhill from here, so I hang up the phone quietly.
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1737136
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The clacking ventilator reminds me of ice cubes rattling in your highball...
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173787
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the steady, persistent work of beauty
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173720
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Last night aliens invaded our dishwasher.
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173696
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A horizon shrinks a burden until it’s a seagull getting fat off vinegar fries. I’m in love with the way your mouth moves when you aren’t talking. When it fills with salt.
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