1661 4 5
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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.
|
166154
|
Quail looked up at her. Unsmiling, challenging.
Lemme just go wash my hands, he said.
She closed the door, bolted it. You won’t need your hands.
|
166120
|
|
166196
|
One frozen hand protruded from the snow.
|
166175
|
A performance is a series of situations. Each situation defines the characters that are in it.
|
166123
|
BABY MOUSE She and the baby squeeze into the neon blue star-studded rocket ship in front of K-Mart, a tight fit because the baby's still inside her and the ship is made for under ten year olds and the steering wheel dents her stomach and the baby backs up and…
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166176
|
Uh oh, the dry cleaning ticket
|
1660106
|
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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166032
|
I have committed to nothing. Therefore I have committed to something. The first sentence is now moot, and this story will eat itself.
|
166000
|
Sofia looked around and found herself at a boulevard. She could see the town exit ahead of her. The bike still lied on the ground.
|
166065
|
I'm sitting on the B-line toward Park, and there is a woman with the same black bob as Mad TV's Miss Swan, and she is leaning the whole front of her body against the whole pole in front of me, and even though there is plenty of space around her, she is pressed up…
|
166064
|
...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.
|
166053
|
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…
|
166021
|
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
|
166064
|
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.
|
166052
|
Robert wants so badly after reading a book where a man wakes up as a bug to wake up as a bug. He researches the avenues of metamorphosis where science has been where it is going. He is disappointed that of all things science has turned into other things, none…
|
166096
|
I cannot begin to list all the ways this conversation can go downhill from here, so I hang up the phone quietly.
|
166032
|
Your grandmother has gotten old, in that way where one day you wake up, and you realize that someone you've been looking at your whole life suddenly looks different. That hands which used to gently place band-aids on scraped knees are…
|
165976
|
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
|
165988
|
“Too dumb to live,” my wife said when cretins on a motorbike blasted around us nearly taking a side mirror with them.
|
165931
|
Her dress swirled around her as she stepped into the ballroom, looking every bit as sultry as her recent Playboy cover...
|
165996
|
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.
|
1659179
|
watch/
the second hand sweep
|
165966
|
What she didn't tell me was that her brother Carl got fried during an electrical storm.
|
165953
|
The Black Thing spread over the room, eating away his mother's face as well as the doctors and nurses who dashed in a frenzy around him until they too were swallowed in the black singing cloud.
|
165940
|
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.
|
1659126
|
I looked around in my pantry but there were no sentences I felt like cooking.
|
16591413
|
My art teacher hated Salvador Dali.
|
1659114
|
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
|
165996
|
People suck. They suck you down, and if you're not careful, they'll ruin you.
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