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This summer they had reached their fifth anniversary, the landmark they’d dubbed the Bacchanal year. Instead of exchanging gifts made of wood, they’d bought expensive wines and champagnes and emancipated their bodies of clothing for two straight days. The
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1694102
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I won’t be eating much anyway if someone doesn’t start reading me. I’ve got to get a hook so people will be drawn to my work. I’ve got a few concepts I’d like to share with you. See what you think.
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16932010
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Practice has perfected disengagement.
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169353
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“Me try anything,” he says, then laughs a little. “You’re fucked.”
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169352
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The past operates with incredible gravity. Powerful, efficient, deceptive. Thin, sleek cords sent out by it attach themselves to your back, your legs, your buttocks, the back of your head. Resist. Walk. One leg after another. Easy does it, like a baby. Do
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169355
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What does she have / that I don’t have / that I can’t buy / for myself?
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16931415
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The place is buzzing with little women, all clad in black smocks.
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169332
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All I wanted was to love her.
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16931212
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Your mother is a great and dying bird. Once, she tended her grand feathered nest. Once, she preened.
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169311
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so I tighten hands with my castaway and say/you failed to impress in your folded peacock dress
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169300
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Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.
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169376
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I’m supposed to be writing poems but it’s Saturday morning and I’m watching cartoons.
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169367
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Just take the mountain curves
as tightly to the inside and
as fast as surface conditions permit
and the road’s edge
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169233
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Her whole life was lived between high tide and low tide, moments of giggling grandeur and moments of sheer emptiness.
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169200
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When you have lived with pain so long, you grow old and the old man inside of you takes over. That’s just the way it is.
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16921311
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It’s been a series of bad clams
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169264
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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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169297
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It doesn't have to be force grown betweenus. We entwine naturally. It's agood feeling to have a friend who at oncedoesn't require a hothouse ceiling laidbetween each invisible touch. There's justwind. There's just rain. There's just sun. There's just you.There's just…
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169276
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So, I escaped from the Iron Curtain out of Czechoslovakia, as was called then. That was in 1956 I escaped, and came to Chicago where all of you were for some time already. I know our grandparents came over in early part of century, but my part of family
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169293
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During what's called "Children's time," one day at church Sarah slides her left foot halfway out of her tiny ballet slipper to show Davie her toenails are painted the same soft pink as the inside of her shoe. "Look," she says. "My…
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169210
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It's difficult to remember, much less write down, the hard times you thought were unforgettable when you have a full stomach. It's hard to remember that dirty little room you rented in that house, from a Bosnian landlord, on 27th avenue and Missouri. The…
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169242
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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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Rarely is Quay Street so clean,
Monday in rain,
Neactain’s ticking over with
Slow jazz and crosswords,
Stout and steaming anoraks.
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169210
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Sophie hoped that Ryan would just stay in the bathroom and never come out. Her stomach turned just thinking about him, but wealthy nerds were easier to work than wealthy regular guys. No self-esteem, no experience with women…no problem.
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169232
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my fingers vibrate magnetic/
a humming void/
where my brain was
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1691168
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Her clothing style varies from grunge to glamor and . . . she always looks good.
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1691108
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That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall
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169188
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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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169141
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Each drip off the corrugated plastic sheeting made a tinny sound that he could hear from deep within the damp sleeping bag and layers of blankets where he was trying to sleep.
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1691127
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The fish would need a name, but she didn’t know how to tell if it was a boy or a girl. Did fish have penises?
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