1731 7 4
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My mother's afraid the dog will drown. It's raining and our street is flooding and the dog is standing on top of his doghouse. My mother is pregnant. I can stand beneath her stomach and not even see her face. I watch her from the kitchen window. She's shoeless. She holds…
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173198
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173110
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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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173166
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At night, I wake up, and Daddy's in the bathroom with a hanger in his mouth....
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173054
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My mother saw the Devil everywhere, even in my dance teacher, with his black leotards and chest hair like bean sprouts. "You're flamingos," he'd say in class when we balanced on one foot; when we lept into the air, "Now you're panthers!" I pictured him in a dark robe,…
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17301512
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He hiked the hills of her condition
She biked the path of his delight
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17301415
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The place is buzzing with little women, all clad in black smocks.
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173032
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fate is an illusion we use to ease the terror of our mortality
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173020
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I only knew that my heart was not in my life as I was presently living it. I needed the breasts of my Helen in my mouth forever, or I was going to die. Die! Ah, the life of a poet! I couldn’t go on living like this. Why should I go on living like this?
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173093
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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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173087
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But what if it grew into a nasty tea party-ish bimbo right winger -- a little Michelle Bachmann nubbin?
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173075
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words have their own ancestors,/deeds are commanded by their own lords./
knowledge and thought do not make me understand—/no surprise, then, that I am not understood.
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1730128
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she lifted and threw her legs out the open
side front window of the speeding auto
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1730153
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173021
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I knew nothing about the letter at first. When I came in that morning and smiled and said good morning, it was a genuine smile and a heartfelt good morning. But the letter, which had arrived the previous afternoon, was already doing its corrosive work of
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173075
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A performance is a series of situations. Each situation defines the characters that are in it.
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173010
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Alicia got to third block early and scribbled down some of the derivatives homework. Others trickled in intermittently, drifting to their seats like impurities getting caught in a filter.
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173022
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Sit back n enjoy the show in a puffy puffed-up chair
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173064
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It was a lover’s dark. They had been talking for hours when daylight lost interest and had gone elsewhere for sport.
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172900
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“We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'," said Dostoevsky. Well, sometimes, I think otherwise.
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172931
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At five a family relative took my life away from me and no one cared
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172966
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Age Eight: Custody battle. Reassure your worried mother that it’s alright, this will give you something interesting to tell your children one day. Until now, life has been very vanilla.
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172996
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One frozen hand protruded from the snow.
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17291411
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I visited the grave of Rimbaud. / It was pale blue
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172991
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The television volume softens in the shadows.
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172900
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He must have been pleased with his composition, as he repeated and repeated and repeated it. Paul joined in the song. Then the children at neighboring tables joined too, until the song rose into a dining hall chorus.
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17282520
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I read my book of names. Over and over again. Our name appeared in the newspaper 254,991 times between 1896 and 1944.
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172852
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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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172821
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An undercover agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish woman in a sting operation that led to the arrest of two rabbis for kidnapping men who refused to grant divorces to their wives.
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172845
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On Soapography, two actresses are discussing
everyone’s personal heaven, and in another room
you can hear a woman who is your dead mother
combing her hair in a doctor’s smock in a dream,
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