1663 5 3
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Slept on a chair last night in the Springfield, Mass., bus terminal. It was March, and a dude in shorts asked: "Yo, you smoke trees?" I said, "Sure. Who doesn't?" He said, "You buyin'?" I said, "Nope, I'm going out of the country." He smiled and said, "Alright." He started…
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166364
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This year I did not markthe day of your death.I let it slip by in an afternoonfilled with music you'll never hear,words you'll never read,a chorus of voices raised in protestat the unwavering passage of time.I don't need a numberto know that you are gone.Since you went…
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166377
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They stand together in the doorway looking at the crib.
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166300
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Mayra heard the bell ring and opened the door to her small home in downtown Havana. Mayra was in her 50's and had the beautiful dark olive skin of most Cuban people who have a mix of Caucasian and Negro in their blood.
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166373
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166300
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"Then why? Why?" she choked. "Why are you so... so mean to me?"
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1662106
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My first girlfriend had blue Christmas lights strung on trees in front of her stone house. My family had all gone to bed. When midnight came, it was snowing.
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166276
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Brody was standing against the wall with one hand in his hip pocket, as if he was holding a gun. The motel was set in the undergrowth of several weedy small towns, but a flashing neon sign made it impossible to miss from the road. We used it as a safe hou
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1662116
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The time has come
to scrape the wax from my menorah.
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1662107
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Hurried, hassling suit in front of me is being awful to the barista. So she refuses to serve him, turning away.
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166263
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Ellen decided to soft-pedal the one month to live thing. Really, there was barely time for the patient to read Ellen's brochure.
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166296
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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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166232
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I have committed to nothing. Therefore I have committed to something. The first sentence is now moot, and this story will eat itself.
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166211
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Will wondered if Doobie was afraid that it might be nothing but the abyss waiting on the other side, but he promised Doobie he’d let him pass on if it was finally his time.
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166255
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What does she have / that I don’t have / that I can’t buy / for myself?
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166266
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What she didn't tell me was that her brother Carl got fried during an electrical storm.
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166200
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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available/a-Babel towers of post &toastmodern doom/daze
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166240
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I’m not the creative type like my friend Bosely, an Irish Setter. I’m a traditionalist. I like to eat exactly at 8:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. I take my bone with me everywhere I go. I will not carry the poop-bag.
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1662114
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I have an appointment set for the day after next; you said you thought you might be firing blanks and then I feel a kick into my chest—two kicks, three, seven at least—my cat is going crazy at the stinky tom outside the window and the birds are waking, sc
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166245
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. . . a visitor from the preceding century would have been aghast to the point of vomiting to behold the regard with which pandas were now held almost universally.
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166264
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the first day of preschool/ my mother walked me down the street/ to a tall building that cut/ like a knife made of bricks/ right into the street,/ an american flag/ sticking straight out/ just above the door.
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166296
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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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166222
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Our Core Values define evil as the concealment of information. And those who conceal information are evil.
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16611112
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The shop is swarming with little women.
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166131
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Her dress swirled around her as she stepped into the ballroom, looking every bit as sultry as her recent Playboy cover...
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1661179
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watch/
the second hand sweep
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166130
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“Listen, Mother – you’re my ticket out of this burg and I’m not about to cash it in!”
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166121
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The other night while we stood in the kitchen locked in each other's stone silence, he finally said, “You're waiting for something to get you to the other side of grief. But there's no such thing.”
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166188
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I scratch a red welt onto the inside of my white knee. The knee itches like crazy. Pain too, down to my bones. The Congo calls.
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166164
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...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.
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