1664 2 1
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Sometimes it waited after dark, when everyone was asleep, and moved in slowly like a thief, working its way into all the ruwas, up everyone's nostrils, seemingly intent on making the people's mountain existence a troublesome one
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166477
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...I had a string of Sunday School medals that knighted me a warrior for Jesus Christ of Nazareth...
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166422
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There’s a crack in the cosmos,
and pink is leaking through.
There’s a crack in the cosmos,
fix the sink, the toilet leak.
There are many cracks in the cosmos,
numerous. This is how time escapes.
Good grief, they’re going to suck the cream
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166300
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“Wait, so you’re Burt Lancaster? You’re not tall enough to be Burt Lancaster.” I popped a hand over my mouth. Wine as truth serum would do me no favors.
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1663127
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The dog awakens at the sound of a petal falling, sure that barbarians are at the gate. She opens wide her yellow teeth.
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166300
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Niggers and spics, kikes and Micks (don't forget the krauts and deggos, too) live on land that belongs to you. If your skin is red, you're better off dead than deal with this sordid affair. No one told you caveat venditor, “Let the seller beware.”…
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1663147
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166310
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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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166342
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Sparky took to me immediately. In some atavistic canine way he knew I was simpatico to a dog like him.
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166397
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I remember meeting you many years later.
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166300
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166201
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Dear Butterfly, Are you there ? Wherever there is ? Are you there, crossing your feet on top of each other, sipping your coffee while observing the sky from behind those cat-eye glasses of yours ? 3 days, 8 months and 11 years. That's exactly how long since the last time…
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166233
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It is only seven-thirty but the night is full, gloom seizing Highway 66. There is a carcass on the road, maybe a human, slumped next to an empty ice cream truck. Several stars hang up in the East, drunken constellations scrambling to find meaning.
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166254
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Time has wings. They are bright and beautiful, like those of a butterfly. They are delicate wings, and they carry the years away from my decaying mind. I would break those wings if I could, for tomorrow I turn seventy-three, and I grow weary of their ince
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166210
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I'm going up and down elevators all over the Financial District and I have no office.
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166220
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Benton showed her his old room, a shrine of old posters and records. But it had been cleaned out, made to look like a guest room. “Kiss me,” Benton said. “April.” “That was just a name, so don't get any…
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166211
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The last row of furniture is all black leather. In unison the tigers hop onto a couch a piece, sit calmly on their haunches, and reach for remote controls buried in the cushions. Roaring, they paw at the remotes.
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166133
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Satan is a wide-eyed Pollyanna mime who communicates with a ventriloquist dummy that corrects my grammar, speaks in internet acronyms, tells me that I’d be a lot prettier if I just smiled more and lost fifteen pounds, and nags me about how all my problems
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166155
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You will never know how much it hurts
When someone else touches your face.
But I also know how much you count on others
To pull the slivers out of your heart.
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166185
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Remember when I entered a room and turned heads
is my youthful charm a sputtering fire in the hearth
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166141
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I'm in our bed eating yesterday's pizza and chain-watching pirated foreign horror films
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16611310
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Sin by Nonnie Augustine After my mother died, I met Aunt Shirley. I found her in dozens of snapshots piled in falling apart cardboard boxes we hauled down from the attic. Small girls, with huge bows bobby-pinned right on top of…
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166153
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"Bortne! Bortne! Shushort!" she exclaims, shooting her hands over her wobbly head in pleasure, causing it to again pop off. This time, it's a three story drop from a balcony.
Terrified, he yells "Sneeeeew nuuuu! Oh nee padoooo!"
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166194
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We shot out the windows of an abandoned building nearby so as to trick them into thinking we’d had snipers stationed in that building.
They shot at the abandoned building.
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16611412
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She was sick and tired of marriage. She didn't want to be a mother, but now she was.
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166152
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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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1661126
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a little bitter for the better
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166121
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Blood had soaked through his Converse All-Stars, and into his cotton sox. It was the smell of metal, of iron more specifically, that nudged his mind out from the fog of shock and denial, closer to the reality of his circumstances.
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166100
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Locked at the highest rung
Unable to budge at all
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166110
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But that night we were happy, looking all around at the bright lights of the several cities that we could see.
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