1495 6 1
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The unpublished writer remembered the carnage that surrounded his Foxhole in France and decided he was done praying. All around lay the evidence that no one was listening. The drunken pastor stumbled away.
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149553
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For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.
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149500
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There are three ways I can love you, not even half of one more.
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149531
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I suggested a threesome for her birthday. In jest, I thought. But here we are; me in my checkered Oxford, Katie in her red silk blouse, as planned. We're at this sushi place at the corner of 9th and Bentham. “Zuma.” I hate this restaurant, to tell you the…
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1495137
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That year, if you asked Al, was truly the best of times, the worst of times.
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149510
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He huddles against the wooden beam of a chop suey stand, glaring out into the giant technological organism that was his city. Lights, hulking monstrosities and endless possibilities were teeming in the night-hustle that surrounded him.
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149552
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He is sitting in his bedroom trying to decide what to wear. He has an appointment at five. If he wants to make it he has to either catch the bus, which comes in about fifteen minutes, or drive in. If he wants to drive in he needs to put petrol in his car,
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14951110
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44 miles out
the gauntlet of Red River pines
cast shadows pointing north.
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149595
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Now that I am dead, my god will fight your god...
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149564
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Corina's skin is a circus tent. Her red-striped peppermint scars are a reminder of Christmas and family traditions. The obedient poodles of her childhood dreams jumped through hoops of fire until they became bald and grotesque. Poor dears, now, they no longer yap. They…
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149552
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I am getting twisted like a cruller into the mess I have made of this morning and I am stretching the meaning of morning to way past its boundaries.
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149521
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Odd bookends
stuck in familiar territory,
we have become lethargic
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149522
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I am heading to work. It's early and Clare is still asleep. When I hit the breezeway I realize that I forgot my keys. I walk back into the house and start rustling through the junk on the table by the door. After a moment I sense someone standing behind me and…
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149582
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Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor. I don't like it but I can't stop listening. It doesn't fit my mood, or the high plains landscape, or the early evening, pink and blue, pastel colored sky.
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149433
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two roses her eyes
aqua-blue
no, blue-green
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149465
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You load the pipe and suck in the fireworks. Whistling missiles, slithering sparks, shivering teases, dripping embers. You fall asleep with flashing neon outside and the Fourth of July in your veins. When you wake up, your room is the saddest place o
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149400
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Mayumi could see as far as her eyes could, all the buildings hugged by the trees. Roads stretching outward as if reaching for something far away.
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149441
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"Now, here daddy was on the back porch at night talking with some man about leaving."
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149400
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Everybody knew Billy Miller. He had messy hair and crooked teeth that he hid behind a thin-lipped smile. He and his friend Jimmy Rodgers, who everyone called Cock on account of his red hair that stuck up like a comb, were inseparable. They liked to ste
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149451
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Two weeks after the shadow shows up in Stephen's x-ray, you decide to do something about the bucket in the garden. You start by wedging it underneath the faucet in the back yard so tightly that it pushes against the pipe with the groan of grinding metal. Now the hose is…
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149442
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There is nothing literal about the color of strawberries. It is a beauty too celestial for this world. It can only be imagined.
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149400
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As airplanes fly low over her children playing in the kiddie pool on the front lawn, Maureen learns something else about her father's new house that lies in the flight path of an international airport.
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149400
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149485
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Marv felt a stirring. Warmth in his gut. "Maybe we should get together," Marv said.
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14931310
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Uncounted hens and piglets/
die at my demand. The killing floor//
runs red for me. I am/
monstrous to creatures small and great,
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149395
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Burren-grey, the sky through sky lights
is cigarette ash smashed across July.
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149365
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LECTURES A Bra Burning When Freud painted “Envy,” the women collapsed, holding fans to their faces. Hot that year, they retired to the Tyrols. 50 Days of Palindromes Although Thiebaud painted cakes like women,…
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149332
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She never saw me pull the wings off live flies or throw wood lice in the fire just to see them shrivel, drown a beetle in a stream of warm pee.
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149311
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There is no Vinny’s Liquor store as far as she can tell. She begins to think there is something odd, that people are jerking her chain, sending her on a fruitless mission. It feels familiar, like sorority hell week. Maybe there is no liquor store at al
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149350
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Flash’s hackles stood brushlike but he kept his head bowed just enough beneath the bigger dog’s stare to delay the inevitable fight. Flash, Mal thought approvingly, would pick the time and place.
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