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I met Barry Hannah once in my life. I’d come to Oxford, MS, to meet an entirely different writer whom I thought then and think now very highly of. I’d also come to escape from another slew of regrets. Oxford is a great city to run away to.
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165270
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On the way to the drinking fountain, Elysia Martin, a third grader at St. Michael's Parochial School, heard a voice calling her name. When she turned toward the white plaster statue of the Virgin Mary that sat between twin hedges in the rose garden, she
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165243
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Prabo was late.
It wasn’t like him, I thought, sitting on the steps of the Galle Face Hotel, the Indian Ocean pounding the beach abutting the nearby Galle Face Green and spraying fine mist everywhere. Or at least it didn’t seem like him.
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165221
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"Now, I'm not no Holocaust Denier . . . I just think it was a little bump in the road! Like Reagan said about Watergate . . . 'Mistakes were made,' and all. Well, shoot . . .…
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16521412
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Usually I’m the only guy in a roomful of women. Some of them are foxy, too.
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165244
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When I got that brain tumor I hallucinated this crazy doctor. Dr. Doug. He came into my…
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165243
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Don't throw earth on bones.
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165220
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My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top
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1652118
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I was sleeping the night of a hurricane party. I awoke to lightning flashes. They lit the undersides of descending clouds, and lit the shadows of scattering dancers. The hurricane must have turned inland.
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165267
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The last night, I shivered in bed until three a.m.,
the blankets wouldn’t work,
or the socks,
or my tears,
but I reassured my heart
that my next love would be warmer.
He was.
And our air conditioning bill was so high we could’t afford it.
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1652118
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Me and Dale chuck rocks at it.
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165232
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Some claimed seeing him that first time in the grocery store staring in at the pints of Haagen-Dazs, his breath fogging the glass as his head rested against the heavy freezer doors, stinking in his Sasquatch suit. The second time he was…
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165232
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Harold Smithe awoke that Tuesday morning precisely at 6 am. He did this every day for as long as he could remember. Even on the weekends when his schedule varied. Well, varied slightly. He lay in bed trying to wake up and mulled over the things he needed to accomplish for…
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1651147
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We sat in the weight room. The coach walked in with his clipboard and stood until we were quiet.
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1651129
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How to Boil Water
How to Cook an Egg
How to Eat
How to Think
How to Love
How to Die
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16511612
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A little poem about prison
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16514128
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She pulled into the doorway. Uncertain where to spend the night. Certain there'd once been a place with food. Here. This place. She remembered. Curtains. Small tables. Coffee cups thick-handled and sturdy. Crockery.
Some words came back.
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165110
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Pay attention: our names were Bobby, Didi, Joanie, Mitch and Sam. It was popular in those days to wear big name buttons across your chest, and we’d line up side-by-side as we watched our reflections affix said buttons, anchoring them to our stiff lapels
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1651147
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We flew./
In my dreams, I can fly.
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165140
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She wanted wolf cubs. Not kittens, not husky pups given as infant gifts with red bows around their scraggy necks. No, she wanted wolf cubs. Even when it grew to pace the length of her hallway - proud as men - she could not love it. …
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165122
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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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165156
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It's tough when muscle gets in the way of memory. The way pain is the only thing I can remember about certain things. Fifth grade, that's what I think of. I think of pain. Not just abstract pain, not some we'll get to it later adolescent angst or ennui.…
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1651108
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The next time I see you, I’m going to pretend you’re a stranger, and that I’m meeting you for the first time.
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165130
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You’ve known her since grade school and even though you’ve never copped a feel, it gave you a strange chill when you heard boys talking about her breasts, pressing against madras or chamois with some devilish life force, or how one day she’ll fuck l
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165000
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The church pews were straining at the crowds who had come to see David get saved. There was no salvation in the water really, but the Baptists preached the gospel of immersion. There was a certain Baptist church in Kentucky that pressured a man who'd been sprinkled to get…
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165064
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Luke was in the gutter, his face in stagnant water littered with cigarette butts, condom wrappers, and green shards of glass from broken beer bottles. A man was kicking him in the face with a boot the size of a U-boat, over and over and over again. Blood
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165054
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Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?
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165022
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Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house they went, Will and his new girlfriend Emma from Atlanta for the annual family dinner and drunken disaster in Allendale.
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165064
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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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165052
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Ben considered his options in the taxi to Charles De Gaulle airport.
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